Child care is inaccessible for millions of working mothers.

Mandatory 8 a.m. in-office meetings. Required weekday dinner and evening events. Weekend projects and overnight trips. Team retreats over a stretch of three days or more. No flexible hours allowed. Hybrid work is not an option.

These are every working mother’s –and parent’s--nightmare. Opting out is seen as a failure to comply with organizational demands and a lack of ambition and goodwill. This can result in lower pay, lack of promotion, training and an assumption of carelessness.

Happy Mother’s Day in the age of the Motherhood Penalty.

There is a childcare crisis in the U.S., and it can be solved by leaders offering financial incentives, an empathetic understanding of family realities as well as company, plus state and federal policies that support the individual and their family.

“U.S. #childcare crisis can be solved by leaders offering financial incentives, plus state and federal policies that support the individual and their family. @takeleadwomen @MothersDay”

It is also critical to communicate to the entire workforce that these adjustments are not unfair accommodation unavailable to those individuals in the workplace who are not parents. Instead these outreach adjustments can be offered to those who deal with elder care, disability and other time-consuming issues.

A huge swath of the workforce are mothers, as 73.9% of mothers in the U.S. with children under age 18—over 24 million women—were part of labor force as of early 2026, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The vast majority of mothers with minor children are working or looking for work. The stats show that the number of working women with children under age 5 hit a record high.

“73.9% of US @mothers with children under age 18—over 24 million women—were working in early 2026, according to Bureau of Labor Stats #MothersDay”

“Motherhood is the unfinished business of gender equality, and at the Moms First Summit we mobilized thousands of moms to join together to finish the job once and for all,” said Reshma Saujani, founder and CEO of Moms First, as reported in Forbes.

“There’s room for all of us in this fight: moms of color, single moms, moms who work and moms who don’t, people who want to be moms, and people who don’t. And when we come together, we are a force,” said Saujani, the author of the 2022 book, Pay Up: The Future of Women and Work (and Why It’s Different Than You Think).

Listen to Gloria Feldt in conversation with Reshma Suajani

Women are leaving their jobs because of childcare in a national exodus.

Forbes reports, “A University of Kansas analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics data found that the first half of the year marked the steepest decline in employment in more than 40 years for mothers of young children. Lack of affordable childcare was identified as the key catalyst.”

“2025 had steepest decline in employment in more than 40 years for mothers of young children bc of lack of affordable #childcare. #employment #motherhoodpenalty”

So simple a solution, yet so unattainable for millions.

“The last time we saw that many women leave was during COVID,” Saujani tells Forbes. “The reversal is fueled by a rollback of flexible work policies and a lack of investment in the care economy. For many women, the ‘double shift’ of professional output and domestic labor became unsustainable, leading to a mass departure that rivals the most unstable days of the pandemic.”

According to the recent Moms First: Workforce Report “The U.S. child care crisis is quietly costing businesses up to $70 billion annually. Child care costs exceed $13,000 annually per child, more than half of Americans lack sufficient access to providers, and staffing shortages are pushing many programs toward closure. For working families, reliable care is increasingly out of reach.”

The report shows, “Child care instability drives absenteeism, non‑participation, attrition, and presenteeism—ultimately leading to measurable economic cost. Yet, child care benefits remain a major missed opportunity— only ~15% of employers offer them. Still, targeted employer-led interventions to reduce these disruptions can deliver universally positive returns on investment, ranging from averages of 5% to nearly 300% when feasibility and employee preference are aligned.”

“Child care instability drives absenteeism, non‑participation, attrition, and leads to measurable economic cost. Only 15% of employers offer #childcare assistance. @MomsFirstUS ”

In her recent book, Over Work: Transforming The Daily Grind in the Quest for A Better Life, best-selling author Brigid Schulte, director of The Better Life Lab, writes: “Why is it so difficult to combine work and care? Why are there no real laws, policies or regulations to support working families, and why is work organized to so easily discriminate against those with care responsibilities, when the majority of workers have them?”

Listen to Brigid Schulte and Gloria Feldt on motherhood

A separate Child Care Aware of America 2025 report shows, “Families struggle to find and afford quality child care, the child care workforce cannot afford to stay in the field, child care programs operate on razor thin margins, employers are losing billions of dollars in productivity, and the military has determined that the child care crisis is impacting mission readiness.”

Additionally, according to the report, “Quality child care benefits children, with positive impacts on multiple aspects of development.”

Gloria Feldt, cofounder and president of Take The Lead, says, “When female leaders and motherhood are both normalized in the workplace and beyond, we will know gender equality can’t be far behind. Until then, there are issues, and we need new solutions in keeping with the way people live today.”

“When female leaders and motherhood are both normalized in the workplace and beyond, we will know gender equality can’t be far behind,” says Gloria Feldt, cofounder, pres @takeleadwomen #motherhood #equality #childcare. ”

Including child care in the mix of the economy, having children is expensive, A new report from LendingTree shows the “bare-bones cost” of raising a child in 2024 was $303,418 per child over 18 years.

To help solve the issue, on site child care in the workplace is also an option, yet is offered by so few companies.

The International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans’ Employee Benefits Survey: 2024 found that “6% of U.S. organizations currently offer on-site or near-site child care. The likelihood of offering on-site child care increases with employer size, according to Mercer’s S urvey on Health and benefits Strategies for 2025, which found that 9% of employers with 500+ employees and 13% of employers with 5,000+ employees offer or will offer on-site child care in 2025.”

The data shows there are over “610,000 total childcare businesses (centers and home-based) with only 10.8 million spots available for roughly 14.8 million children under 5 needing care.”

Yes, it can be expensive for leaders and employers to pay for childcare, but the return is beneficial, according to the IFEBP. “The return on investment is 5-300 %. Employer-backed child care interventions, such as subsidized care, backup care, or care navigation, already exist, but they remain the exception rather than the norm. With fewer than 15% of private-sector workers having access to employer provided child care benefits as of March 2025, the gap is wide—and so is the opportunity.”

“IFEBP: “The return on investment is 5-300 % with employer-backed #child care interventions, such as subsidized care, backup care, or care navigation. #genderequity #motherhood ”

What happens when leaders adopt on-site daycare for employees? The IFEBP reports it can “boost recruitment, retention, productivity, attendance, loyalty (employees feel like the employer is investing in them) and morale.”

Additional research shows this to be incentivizing for parents. “According to The Future of Working Motherhood Annual Report, published by Executive Moms, 97.5% of working mothers say they would stay longer at a company that meaningfully supports working motherhood, yet 40% leave their job after having a baby when that support falls short. The findings suggest that attrition is not driven by a lack of ambition or commitment, but by systems that fail to evolve when employees do,” Yahoo Finance reports.

The report shows, “Of the nearly 40% of mothers who leave, 65% do so within the first year, indicating that most do not exit impulsively but after sustained strain. Also, 63% of respondents identified flexible work design as the most impactful systemic change for improving the sustainability of working motherhood, outweighing compensation or one-time benefits.”

“ExecutiveMoms: 97.5% of working mothers say they would stay longer at a company that meaningfully supports working motherhood, yet 40% leave their job after having a baby when that support falls short. @motherhoodpenalty”

Read more in Take The Lead on new moms

To address the expense and lack of access to childcare in this country for far too many families, Equitable growth research shows, “Many economists have called for robust public investment to correct failures in the U.S. child care market.”

The Child Care for Working Families Act introduced in 2021 within the Build Back Better framework offered state by state subsides per families as well as child care federal tax credits. Many states do not offer financial help at all or enough financial help.

National Database of Childcare Prices finds that child care costs families between 8.9 percent to 16 percent of their median income for full-day care for one child. The typical standard of affordable child care is 7 percent of household income; some scholars estimate that child care costs exceed this threshold for most parents—68 percent—across the country,” according to Equitable Growth.

Center for American Progress says more than half of the children in this country live in “child care deserts, meaning that the number of slots in licensed child care facilities is lower than the number of children who need them.”

“@Center4USA: more than 1/2 of children in US live in #childcaredeserts where slots in licensed child care facilities are lower than the number of children who need them. #chicldcarecrisis”

In what is called tri-share models, with state government, employers, and employees sharing the cost of child care, Michigan rolled out the first state tri-share model in 2021.

Another approach in West Virginia would “provide employers with a tax credit for operating a child care center for employees or contracting with a child care center to provide slots for their employees.”

The efforts to solve the child care crisis are urgently needed, according to Moms First report on foundational workers in retail, healthcare, manufacturing, hospitality and more, as “nine in 10 parents said child care disruptions affect their ability to work, yet only 15 per cent of employers currently offer any form of child care support.”

What helps enormously is “flexible scheduling that delivered the strongest returns, estimated at 280 to 300 per cent, as does helping families locate reliable care that returned an estimated 120 to 140 per cent by reducing stress and presenteeism. Child care reimbursements or subsidies produced returns of 70 to 90 per cent,” research shows.

Assuring that employees have stable child care access could generate savings of $35 billion to $45 billion annually for companies.

The Dallas Morning news recently reported, “Gloria Blackwell, CEO of the nonprofit American Association of University Women, shared via email, ‘Caregiving still falls disproportionately on women. And the basic supports that make parenthood manageable — paid leave, affordable childcare, flexible scheduling — are still not guaranteed for most workers.’”

The costs are high, the care is sparse and the career penalties are real. Human Resources Director reports that a recent LiveCareers poll of 1,000 working mothers with children under 18, found that 86% believe that taking maternity leave sets back their advancement or costs them promotions. Another 95% said they felt excluded from networking opportunities, team events, or business trips due to motherhood.

“LiveCareers poll: #Motherhood still seen as a professional liability, with many working moms facing missed opportunities, unfair assumptions about their ambition, and a constant need to prove their value in ways their co-workers often do not.”

"Motherhood is still seen as a professional liability, with many working moms facing missed opportunities, unfair assumptions about their ambition, and a constant need to prove their value in ways their co-workers often do not," the report shows.

Recently the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data reports that 3.6 million babies were born in the U.S. in 2025, about 53 births for every 1,000 women of reproductive age, a decline of 20% since 2005.

Many say the child care crisis is a main factor in the decline.

While addressing the childcare crisis for mothers at work can bring so many benefits for individuals, leaders, organizations and communities, what is also pervasive is the historic and ongoing Motherhood Penalty. That penalty results in lower wages, plus fewer raises and promotions for women who opt to have children and return to work.

Addressing and alleviating the burden of the child care crisis with gender pay equity and fair treatment of parents at work is the answer.

As the recent Moms First report shows what will help solve the problem is availability, affordability, accessibility and flexibility of childcare for millions of families today.

“@MomsFirstUS: What will help solve the #childcare problem is availability, affordability, accessibility and flexibility of childcare for millions of families today. @takeleadwomen #MothersDay”

Schulte writes in her 2024 book, “When workers with care responsibilities do feel supported at work, research reveals that they sleep better, spend more quality time with family, and are more loyal and productive at work.”

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About the Author

Michele Weldon is editorial director of Take The Lead, an award-winning author, journalist, emerita faculty in journalism at Northwestern University and a senior leader with The OpEd Project. @micheleweldon www.micheleweldon.com

Fix Childcare Crisis: Treat Working Moms Fairly For Best Outcomes

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