Working parents comprise more than a third of the U.S. workforce, yet support for those working parents is often hard to come by. The pandemic only served to increase burdens on an already strained and expensive child care system, leaving many parents with few options for their kids. Now, a new study shows, they’re getting by with a little help from their friends. In the midst of an ongoing child care shortage, the majority of moms say they’re relying on friends — not family — for help and support to get through these tough times.
More than 60% of moms report struggling to find child care, according to the results of a new survey of 2,000 working mothers conducted by The Mom Project and WerkLabs. The survey includes respondents from urban, suburban and rural communities, showing just how widespread the problem is. When parents can’t find care, often a grandparent or other extended family member is called in to help. But at this moment, friends are making a real difference for parents.
Why parents are turning to friends over family
According to the survey, 45% of mothers report feeling more supported by friends than their extended family, particularly when those friends have similar aged children and are managing similarly difficult child care realities. The support may come in the form of emotional understanding or practical aid, like volunteering to watch the kids.
Moms say they’re turning to friends more often for a few different reasons:
- They don’t live geographically close to extended family.
- Friends are better able to understand what they’re going through.
- They don’t want to be a burden on family members.
- Strong community connections offer a greater sense of belonging.
“It’s hard to find people who get it unless they are like-minded and in the same phase of life,” one survey participant explains.
45% of mothers report feeling more supported by friends than their extended family.
— A NEW SURVEY FROM THE MOM PROJECT AND WERKLABS
What the findings say about the bigger picture
The results of the survey highlight how important community support and parental friend networks have become to parents, especially as the pandemic has made it more difficult to connect with other people and driven more and more mothers out of the workforce. Women accounted for 65% of jobs added to the U.S. labor force in April, but thousands of woman are still leaving the workforce each month, and women accounted for more than 12 million job losses during the height of the pandemic.
The difficulty of accessing quality child care is one of the primary reasons women stay out of the workforce or experience joblessness, according to the survey. Child care-related factors also have the greatest impact on moms’ abilities to feel successful and productive at home and work. In March 2021, Congress passed the American Rescue Plan Act, which allocated $39 billion for child care. Unfortunately, even that large sum isn’t enough to fully solve the problems within the child care system.
At least half of Americans live in a child care desert, which the Center for American Progress defines as having “either no child care providers or so few options that there are more than three times as many children as licensed child care slots.” In some parts of the country, parents are camping out overnight to secure child care spots for their kids. Other places report huge shortages in the number of child care options available to parents.
Throughout the course of the pandemic, we’ve seen moms band together to support each other through the most difficult days. They’ve offered each other advice on how to navigate working motherhood while kids were home from school and dealing with massive upheaval. Dozens of moms even met up on a field in Boston to scream out their pandemic stress.
While it’s wonderful that moms feel like they can lean on each other for social support as they navigate the complexities of the current job and child care climate, ultimately, employers and government leaders need to step up to provide more support as well.
Dr. Pam Cohen, the head of the WerkLabs division of The Mom Project, sums up where we need to go from here: “Given the need for great talent in the workforce, and that moms make particularly excellent and dedicated employees, it behooves all organizations to look into subsidizing child care and providing flexible options to allow women to advance in their careers while raising the next generation.”
