--- title: How to Address the Crisis for Working Moms 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/7316973/how-to-address-the-crisis-for-working-moms/ author: Michelle Peng article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2025-09-16T10:30:07.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-04-28T07:07:32.170Z og:title: How to Address the Crisis for Working Moms og:description: Breaking news and analysis from time.com. Politics, world news, photos, video, tech reviews, health, science, and entertainment news. og:url: https://time.com/partner-content/charter/7316973/how-to-address-the-crisis-for-working-moms/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltbf3d565719f13893/6998c9c6e1ba00665498de74/charter-working-parents.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: charter-working-parents og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: How to Address the Crisis for Working Moms twitter:description: Breaking news and analysis from time.com. Politics, world news, photos, video, tech reviews, health, science, and entertainment news. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltbf3d565719f13893/6998c9c6e1ba00665498de74/charter-working-parents.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 --- The information presented here is created by Charter, independently from the TIME editorial staff.  Time charter * [Inclusivity](/partner-content/charter/tag/inclusivity/) ## Inclusivity # How to Address the Crisis for Working Moms  by [Michelle Peng](https://time.com/author/michelle-peng/) Sep 16, 2025 10:30 AM UTC  Illustration by Charter · Photo by Manu Vega, Getty  by [Michelle Peng](https://time.com/author/michelle-peng/) Sep 16, 2025 10:30 AM UTC Today is National Working Parents Day and this year the holiday comes as a [record number](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/women-leaving-us-workforce-steepest-rate-40-years/) of mothers with young children are leaving the workforce. Among women with children under five, the labor force participation rate fell 2.8 percentage points in the first six months of 2025, the largest six-month drop in the past 40 years, according to a University of Kentucky [analysis](https://thecareboard.ku.edu/blogs/labor-force-participation-tracker-parents-children-under-5). To understand what leaders should do to support working moms, we sought the advice of six leaders, advocates, and researchers—many of whom are working parents themselves. Here are their responses, 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/). ## **Want to keep moms at work** **_and_** **better work? Focus on flexibility and output.** [**Brigid Schulte**](https://www.linkedin.com/in/brigidschulte/)**Director, Better Life Lab at New America and author of** [**_Over Work_**](https://amzn.to/3KhZltr) Start to shift your focus on the _what_ of work, not the where or when. Define excellence by the _output_ workers produce, not the _input_ of long hours and presence in an office somewhere. Engage your teams in interrogating the _how_ of work and exploring if there’s a better way. What meetings can be cut, what outdated processes can you let go of so you can all focus on the outcome that matters most, not the input? Don't be lulled into equating the _appearance_ of being productive with actual productivity. Judging merit by what I call this ‘performance of work’ fosters a culture of busyness and low-value stupid work, and disadvantages those with care responsibilities, like mothers, fathers and, increasingly, workers who care for aging parents. It’s unnecessary and, truly, a waste of precious resources, potential, innovation, and growth. In my own journalism career, what helped me most was staying focused on the outcome I was producing and flexibility. To be clear, my employers didn’t offer flexibility when my two kids were small in the early 2000s. Many leaders, as today, valued long hours of presence in the office. But I created flexibility in when, where and how I worked, often stealthily and guiltily. It wasn’t perfect and it could be exhausting. But I was able to produce high-quality work _and_ be the kind of present parent I wanted to be. And my role models were…men. I saw my male colleagues leave the office without a word of apology or guilt and spend afternoons at their children’s soccer games and confidently proclaim that, in print journalism, we traded salary for flexibility. (Why didn’t I get that memo?!) That gave me courage. To the disbelievers, who couldn’t fathom how I wrote an award-winning series while working a four-day work week to better manage work and care responsibilities, or who refused to compute that I wrote a Pulitzer Prize-winning story at my kitchen table, I would say, look at the work, and judge me on that, not on the hours I sit at a desk in an office. ## **Double down on diversity, equity, and inclusion.** [**Fatima Goss Graves**](https://www.linkedin.com/in/fatima-goss-graves-a586735/)**President and CEO, National Women’s Law Center** Working women take on the vast majority of caregiving responsibilities and study after study shows they suffer a penalty at work as a result. They are typically paid less, promoted less, experience other forms of discrimination and even are pushed out of the workforce entirely because of inflexible policies. The backlash to diversity, equity, and inclusion policies and the administration’s unlawful executive orders will only increase the ‘motherhood penalty.’ If leaders are serious about supporting and engaging working mothers—and they have every business and legal reason to do so—they can start by embedding caregiver-conscious practices into their workforce retention efforts. By explicitly addressing these challenges—not as a nice-to-have but rather as core to a company’s profitability—leaders can drive systemic change that not only ensures compliance with anti-discrimination laws but also promotes real equity. Rather than running away from diversity and inclusion policies, employers can double down on the practices that they know will retain working caregivers. This can look like conducting pay equity audits to identify and correct disparities driven by caregiver bias, adopting robust parental leave policies, and institutionalizing flexible work arrangements that acknowledge the realities of parenting. ## **Protect time for deep work.** [**Alison Fragale**](https://www.linkedin.com/in/alisonfragale/)**Associate professor emerita, Kenan-Flagler Business School at UNC Chapel-Hill and author of** [**_Likeable Badass_**](https://amzn.to/45Zc10Y) Protect time for deep work. The reason moms are working at 4am and 10pm is because it’s the only time they have to think. Women are saddled with more non-promotable work than men and it eats into their time for focused work. Schedule days without meetings, set policies that allow people to skip meetings where they aren’t essential, or cancel meetings and send update emails. I went remote before it was cool—back in 2015\. I had three young kids and was moving from North Carolina to Chicago for my husband’s job. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to stay at UNC as a tenured faculty member and commute or search for a new job. Before I had told my UNC colleagues of the move, my dean got wind of it. His instant response to his leadership team was, ‘We can’t be a global business school if everyone needs to live in the same zip code.’ Although he never spoke to me directly, knowing that he was supportive of my work/family situation made me feel supported and I stayed at UNC for the next 10 years. ## **Give working moms grace.** [**Kim Chappell**](https://www.linkedin.com/in/kim-chappell-3599415/)**Chief brand officer, Bobbie** Give a sh\*t ton of grace. A mom or parent should never feel nervous to tell a leader about something that is totally normal and happens to all of us—be it a sick kid, a school play that coincides with working hours, a day without child care, etc. So the action item is: how can you build trust and establish a line of communication that’s so strong that the moms on your team can be honest with you about what’s going on in their personal lives and you, in turn, can give grace and have empathy rather than making them feel guilty for being a mother who has responsibilities that sometimes intersect with our 9 to 5. When mothers feel like there is no wiggle room or their work and personal life is so rigid, it sets an impossible standard and you will lose your best employees. By giving a little grace along the way, you get a more engaged, loyal, committed employee. There is no such thing as a mom doing it all—and no one should expect her to, at home or at work. Your partner shouldn't expect you to do it all, and your boss shouldn’t either. ## **Loudly advocate for public investments in caregiving.** [**Elliot Haspel** ](https://www.linkedin.com/in/elliot-haspel-7ba57ab?miniProfileUrn=urn%3Ali%3Afs%5FminiProfile%3AACoAAAIKqv4B6PhJ6YqkYWKXxhLjJ%5FUd-du83gg&lipi=urn%3Ali%3Apage%3Asearch%5Fresults%5Fgeneric%5Findex%3B25bee15e-60cc-444d-af53-a357e635ec2e)**Senior fellow, Capita and author of** **_Raising a Nation_** While it may seem like a long game, workplace leaders need to take the time today to loudly advocate with their elected officials for public investments in child care and for a national paid family leave law. Employers will never be able to solve these problems on their own, nor should they be asked to—running child care through the employer-employee relationship, for instance, risks replicating the worst of the American healthcare system. But employers can be enormously important influencers when it comes to getting family-friendly public policy passed—we saw this in Vermont, when business leaders helped secure a transformative child-care law paid for through a small payroll tax by giving elected officials cover to make hard yet necessary decisions. Little is going to change for working mothers if employers don't step up around public policy, and that needs to start here and now. The organization I work for, Capita, has as one of its core values 'deep hospitality,' and that means that we do whatever it takes to ensure working mothers (and all working parents, really) can have the flexibility they need to care for their families. That includes everything from an exceptionally generous paid leave policy to an organizational norm that we will adjust around people's schedules if they need to do a school pick-up or have a sick kid, to the fact that we will provide child care (or pay for people to bring a child-care provider with them) at our events. Family-friendly has to be more than just rhetoric: how organizations show up for the parents in their workforce, and the mothers in particular, says a lot about who they are and what they actually value. ## **Leaders, start by modeling flexibility.** [**Lauren Lopez**](https://www.linkedin.com/in/laurenalopez/)**Chief people and culture officer, National Women’s Soccer League** Leaders should create real flexibility and model it themselves. When leaders show that it’s okay to step away for family without penalty, it sends a powerful message that working mothers don’t have to choose between career and caregiving. I’ve seen the difference when leaders champion parental leave—encouraging moms to take the time fully and come back to opportunities for growth. It shaped my own career too; having leaders who trusted me to balance both family and work gave me the confidence to step into bigger roles without feeling like I had to compromise either part of my life. **Charter Pro members can access “How to support working moms now,” our** [**guide**](http://www.charterworks.com/support-working-moms-now/) **to the most important actions leaders can take now, within the next month, and by the end of 2025 to recruit, engage, and retain working mothers.** --- ## Read more from Charter [READ MORE](https://time.com/partner-content/charter/) [Open article: What Gloria Steinem Says Still Needs to Change for Women at Work](https://time.com/partner-content/charter/7383056/what-gloria-steinem-says-still-needs-to-change-for-women-at-work/)  ### What Gloria Steinem Says Still Needs to Change for Women at Work [READ MORE](https://time.com/partner-content/charter/7383056/what-gloria-steinem-says-still-needs-to-change-for-women-at-work/) [Open article: How Leaders Should Rethink Their Approach to DEI](https://time.com/partner-content/charter/7380209/how-leaders-should-rethink-their-approach-to-dei/)  ### How Leaders Should Rethink Their Approach to DEI [READ MORE](https://time.com/partner-content/charter/7380209/how-leaders-should-rethink-their-approach-to-dei/) [Open article: How DEI Must Change in 2026 to Survive](https://time.com/partner-content/charter/7347036/how-dei-must-change-in-2026-to-survive/)  ### How DEI Must Change in 2026 to Survive [READ MORE](https://time.com/partner-content/charter/7347036/how-dei-must-change-in-2026-to-survive/) --- ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/partner-content/charter/7316973/how-to-address-the-crisis-for-working-moms/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/partner-content/charter/7316973/how-to-address-the-crisis-for-working-moms/"},"headline":"How to Address the Crisis for Working Moms","datePublished":"2025-09-16T10:30:07.000Z","dateModified":"2026-04-28T07:07:32.170Z","description":"Advice from experts for National Working Parents Day.","url":"https://time.com/partner-content/charter/7316973/how-to-address-the-crisis-for-working-moms/","keywords":[],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltbf3d565719f13893/6998c9c6e1ba00665498de74/charter-working-parents.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Michelle Peng","jobTitle":"","url":"https://time.com/author/michelle-peng/"}],"articleSection":"","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltbf3d565719f13893/6998c9c6e1ba00665498de74/charter-working-parents.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"charter-working-parents","caption":"","creditText":"","representativeOfPage":true}],"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/7316973/how-to-address-the-crisis-for-working-moms/","name":"How to Address the Crisis for Working Moms"}}]}] ```