--- title: What Employers Can—and Can't—Fix for Working Parents description: Breaking news and analysis from time.com. Politics, world news, photos, video, tech reviews, health, science, and entertainment news. canonical: https://time.com/partner-content/charter/7383569/what-employers-can-and-cant-fix-for-working-parents/ author: Jena McGregor article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2026-03-29T10:30:43.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-04-28T07:03:29.757Z article:section: Charter og:title: What Employers Can—and Can't—Fix for Working Parents og:description: Breaking news and analysis from time.com. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. by [Jena McGregor](https://time.com/author/jena-mcgregor/) Managing Editor, Charter Mar 29, 2026 10:30 AM UTC by [Jena McGregor](https://time.com/author/jena-mcgregor/) Managing Editor, Charter Mar 29, 2026 10:30 AM UTC This week marked [Equal Pay Day](https://www.charterworks.com/what-the-gender-pay-gap-looks-like-on-this-years-equal-pay-day/), the symbolic date representing how far into the new year women must work on average to earn what men made the year before. It moved a day later than in 2025 as the gender pay gap widened from the year prior, and this year, data from [Payscale](https://www.payscale.com/featured-content/gender-pay-gap) showed the gap between men and women who are parents or primary caregivers also grew slightly. To mark the end of Women’s History Month, and to discuss factors that effect inequality for women at work, we spoke earlier this month with [Claudia Goldin](https://www.linkedin.com/search/results/all/?keywords=claudia+goldin&origin=GLOBAL%5FSEARCH%5FHEADER), the Harvard economist and Nobel laureate who has studied the structural forces that shape women's earnings and careers across a lifetime. Charter spoke with Goldin about what employers can realistically do to help with caregiving, why no one should be indispensable on teams, and how she uses AI. (“One of my best friends is ChatGPT,” she told us.) Here are excerpts from the conversation, edited for length and clarity: Sign up for Charter's newsletter to get the handbook for the future of work delivered to your inbox. Email Address You can unsubscribe at any time. By signing up you are agreeing to our [Terms of Service](https://www.charterworks.com/terms-of-service/) and [Privacy Policy](https://www.charterworks.com/privacy-policy/). **A recent** [**working paper**](https://www.nber.org/system/files/working%5Fpapers/w34963/w34963.pdf) **found that couples where both partners work from home at least once a week have higher fertility rates. How does that fit into the work you’ve done on** [**couple equity**](https://www.charterworks.com/book-briefing-career-family-by-claudia-goldin/)**?** It's pretty clear that children take time and that even the wealthiest individuals do not have the ability to contract it all out. And, if they did, there's a good question as to why they had kids in the first place. For many families, it doesn't get easier. It's not just the zero-to-six months \[age\] that we know is a very time-intensive moment \[of parenthood\]. It's also this rat race I see among friends of mine having to do with positional goods and getting your kids on the right soccer team and into the right preparatory schools so that they get into the right college. There's a lot of burden placed on parents and of course that parents place on their children. Having the ability to have both parents involved generally releases the enormous weight on one individual, which is generally the mother. The New York Times ran an amazing article during Covid called ‘[The Primal Scream](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/02/04/parenting/covid-pandemic-mothers-primal-scream.html)’ in which some photographers and amazingly good journalists went into people's homes. One of my favorite \[photographs\] is of an office with a dad, and then right next to the office is a bathroom and a mom taking care of her child \[going to the bathroom\] while holding the phone. They're both working from home. **Right, but doing it with much different demands…** It may be that now that we're five years out, work from home is more equitable than that picture of one family demonstrated. **We've seen more companies require a return to office. Does that concern you?** We keep on hearing ‘back to the office, back to the office,’ and certainly the [federal government is](https://www.charterworks.com/five-years-flexible/), but \[the [data](https://wfhresearch.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/WFHResearch%5Fupdates%5FMarch2026.pdf) are\] not showing us that there's that much \[of a shift\]. My view of the world—from my bubble that I live in, in Cambridge, Mass.—is certainly not that \[everyone’s going back to the office\]. We have lots of students who go out and get jobs, and many of them are in positions that are full-time at home. They are desirous of coming in and having more of a community. The challenge for your HR readers—and they know this—is to put together something so there's enough of a group in the office and people want to come in. **What could HR leaders be doing more of to help resolve the issue of ‘couple equity’ at home? Is it a workplace problem, a culture problem, or a societal issue?** It's all three, for sure. What HR people have to ask themselves is whether it's really the case that people are more effective putting in more hours. Can you \[manage\] things so that you have teams of substitutes? If the nurse calls you and says the kid is vomiting or there's a broken bone, you have to leave. If there's a client, you give the client to your \[colleague\]. The idea is to make certain that there are as few people as possible who are utterly indispensable. **What could employers be doing more of at the benefit level to address child care?** Get their states to figure out what [New Mexico has figured out](https://www.theatlantic.com/family/2025/10/new-mexico-free-universal-child-care-gamble/684722/). New Mexico is, on average, a relatively lower income population. About three years ago, the state started a child-care system so all individuals below a certain income level—it was not that low, about 400% of the federal poverty level—had free child care. In November of 2025, the governor signed a bill that made it even more comprehensive. There is no income \[limit\]. There's really no reason for employers to be providing \[child care\]. Employers don't provide public school. **A lot of the conversation happening in workplaces right now is about AI transforming jobs. From where you sit…** From where I sit, one of my best friends is ChatGPT. ChatGPT helps me so that I don't have to spend a lot of time looking things up. But I never accept what ChatGPT tells me. I will click and go back and read the Congressional Record, read the Federal Register, read a Supreme Court case, read a District Court case. I'm writing a book that has an immense amount of material that underlies it. In the old days, I would be in the library, and I'd be sitting around with three undergraduates asking them, ‘What is the case in Montana that I should be reading about?’ I don't have to do that now. **When it comes to the economic picture for women right now, what concerns you?** What concerns me is trying to understand how to come together. Women have always been divided. The socially liberal group made very, very large gains \[in the 1960s\]. We started out with everyone being \[more\] socially conservative. We greatly changed as a nation. The great challenge is being able to give the social conservatives something at the same time we enable the more liberal group. To have these constantly at a battle is not going to do anything. \[We need to\] find ways to bridge these differences economically. --- ## Read more from Charter [READ MORE](https://time.com/partner-content/charter/) [Open article: Women in AI: Why speed and hustle culture aren't the same thing](https://time.com/partner-content/charter/7331680/women-in-ai-why-speed-and-hustle-culture-arent-the-same-thing/)  ### Women in AI: Why speed and hustle culture aren't the same thing [READ MORE](https://time.com/partner-content/charter/7331680/women-in-ai-why-speed-and-hustle-culture-arent-the-same-thing/) [Open article: AI Won’t Wait for Your Ethics](https://time.com/partner-content/charter/7282720/ai-wont-wait-for-your-ethics/)  ### AI Won’t Wait for Your Ethics [READ MORE](https://time.com/partner-content/charter/7282720/ai-wont-wait-for-your-ethics/) [Open article: My Daughter Will Be Nearly 50 Before Corporate America Reaches Gender Parity For All Women. Here’s How We Get There Faster.](https://time.com/partner-content/charter/7049519/my-daughter-will-be-nearly-50-before-corporate-america-reaches-gender-parity-heres-how-we-get-there-faster/)  ### My Daughter Will Be Nearly 50 Before Corporate America Reaches Gender Parity For All Women. Here’s How We Get There Faster. [READ MORE](https://time.com/partner-content/charter/7049519/my-daughter-will-be-nearly-50-before-corporate-america-reaches-gender-parity-heres-how-we-get-there-faster/) --- ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/partner-content/charter/7383569/what-employers-can-and-cant-fix-for-working-parents/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/partner-content/charter/7383569/what-employers-can-and-cant-fix-for-working-parents/"},"headline":"What Employers Can—and Can't—Fix for Working Parents","datePublished":"2026-03-29T10:30:43.000Z","dateModified":"2026-04-28T07:03:29.757Z","description":"Harvard economist Claudia Goldin spoke with Charter about child care, how remote work can affect ‘couple equity,’ and how she uses ChatGPT.","url":"https://time.com/partner-content/charter/7383569/what-employers-can-and-cant-fix-for-working-parents/","keywords":[],"thumbnailUrl":"","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Jena McGregor","jobTitle":"Managing Editor, Charter","url":"https://time.com/author/jena-mcgregor/"}],"articleSection":"Charter","image":[],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/partner-content/charter/7383569/what-employers-can-and-cant-fix-for-working-parents/","name":"What Employers Can—and Can't—Fix for Working Parents"}}]}] ```