Friday is ‘Parent Mental Health Day’ and working parents are more stressed than ever, according to The Modern Families Index 2026. Mothers are especially under the cosh, as “care pressures intensify”, and employers need to be doing more because confidence in them has “stalled”, suggests the report.
Highlights (or, rather lowlights) from the Index are:
- 29% of working parents report very high stress
- 77% of those experiencing high stress say it sometimes makes it hard to function
- only 63% feel able to discuss family pressures openly with their employer
- mothers are 50% more likely than men to say having children harmed their career
- stress levels rise to 39% for mothers juggling childcare and eldercare
- 43% of these ‘sandwich’ carers say they are actively reconsidering their job
- 21% used sick leave last year to cover short-notice childcare or eldercare
Chris Locke, Executive Director of Work + Family Solutions at Bright Horizons, the company behind the research, argues this is no longer an individual issue – it’s systemic and directly affecting employers’ bottom lines:
“It is becoming a structural challenge for employers, with clear implications for productivity, retention and workforce stability. When people are repeatedly forced to cover care breakdowns through sick leave, annual leave or reduced hours, the cost to organisations quickly adds up.”
Why are parents so stressed at work?
So why is pressure intensifying, and what can employers meaningfully do to make employees feel better supported?
Catherine Wheatley, HR professional and EDI specialist, is very familiar with the unsustainable pressure of combining a career with two small children.
“The mental health impact of constantly having to juggle and make decisions on a daily basis about how you’re going to manage the day, and what has to give, is so stressful,” she says.
After being made redundant from her role as D&I Business Partner at a law firm, while on maternity leave, she decided to return to the workforce on a part-time basis for a more flexible employer. This process in itself – of finding interesting work, for a genuinely family friendly organisation, on a part-time basis – was difficult and necessitated a significant pay cut.
Times have changed, employers haven’t
Her children are currently both in nursery, which offers care for the duration of the work day but she remains “incredibly concerned” about how she will manage when they go to school because of the shorter day.
The “fundamental” problem, she says, is that times have changed and most employers haven’t:
“It used to be that if you worked as a mother, that was your choice, so you needed to work out how yourself. Work is no longer a choice for most women. Most people today rely on dual incomes, or you might be a single parent. It’s now a big problem that work is not structured to enable raising children.”
Throw in a cost of living crisis and a much more challenging world to be a parent in, and it’s no wonder so many working parents are overwhelmed. And yes, mothers more so because evidence still categorically shows that even in dual-income households mothers do the lion-share of caring and chores. Similarly, women (particularly daughters) are the primary caregivers for elderly parents.
Employers need to be much more creative
All these trends are down to traditional gender roles and societal expectations and, of course, there are exceptions to the rule (these trends won’t be covered in this feature, except to say that if workplaces were better set up for working parents generally, then it’s likely these norms would have more chance of shifting).
The answer, says Wheatley, is that employers need to be “much more creative in the way they structure work”:
“Employers think in ‘boxes’ but people don’t all fit in boxes. We need to rewrite the landscape to fit the current workforce and have way less focus on gimmicks – like saying you’re ‘family friendly’ because you send flowers to the maternity ward or plant a tree when a baby is born – and focus on fulfilling basic essential needs.”
The ‘return to work’ rigid mandates worry her greatly because she feels they fly in the face of progress made during the pandemic:
“It seems since 2020 workplaces have been going backwards and I fear all the lessons and benefits gained about the value of flexible working will be lost.”
Huge socioeconomic shifts since the 1990s
Deborah Croft, CEO and co-founder of Thriving Talent Solutions, agrees with these reasons for why pressure is reaching boiling point for many working parents:
“There’s been such a huge shift in our social, economic situation since the 1990s. Most households are dual income. There’s more divorce. More single parents. More global mobility. And then an ageing population. The realities of life are not reflected in the traditional, rigid systems and cultures of workplaces.”
In her opinion, Covid “surfaced the impact of navigating this rush hour of life and ironically, it provided a window as to how life and work could be integrated – empowered with more flexibility – in policy and leaders’ mindset”.
On the bright side, she has more confidence, rather than fear, that employers who force employees back into the office and don’t allow flexible working will, ultimately, lose out on the best talent.
Most workers are/will be parents
It’s worth bearing in mind that working parents are by far in the majority, not the minority, of the workforce: it’s estimated that around 82% of women in the UK have children and about 75% of men.
“We’re seeing employees leave companies if they go back on their flexible working promises. People have seen that just a tiny tweak – like working from home for two days a week – enables them to juggle responsibilities without compromising productivity or efficiency at work,” she says.
Locke believes that if employers really want to aim for best practice and truly support working parents in a way they will most value, they have to go beyond just flexibility. They have to understand that the real gamechanger is helping their employees navigate the “unpredictability” of care:
“Care does not fail on a schedule, and without agile practical support in place, stress, absence and disengagement may continue to rise even in hybrid workplaces.”
Good for employees, good for business
He argues that employers that are best placed to retain and get the best out of working parents are those that invest in support that works “in real time”. This means providing solutions when care breaks down unexpectedly, such as children/elders falling ill, care-givers unavailable or last minute medical appointments.
These types of interventions are not only good for employees, they’re good for business because, as he says, they “help employees stay focused and productive and give businesses greater stability in an increasingly unpredictable labour market”.
As always, however, whether these interventions will be taken up or not depends largely on the culture of an employer and whether leaders champion change. As Croft says:
“Leaders themselves need to demonstrate that they make use of these enabling policies – be it carer leave, flex working, global mobility, etc, and be vocal and visible (such as in diary personal commitments), that it helps them navigate a meaningful moment in their life. This gives permission and a loud message to employees that you can still be a leader in our organisation and juggle caring and career.”
Not a PR stunt
She cites Novartis as a good example she’s worked with of best practice. When it increased its secondary care relief package, its CEO took a lot of time to talk about it openly and invested in upskilling managers around it, as well as appointing ambassadors. Take up was measured for two years and relayed back to every country to demonstrate, and encourage, global participation.
“This was an employer who wasn’t just doing it as an isolated gesture or PR stunt, they wanted to maximise take-up,” says Croft.
“The thing that makes the biggest difference when you’re navigating these life changes, as an employee, is feeling that you’re not alone. No one likes to feel like they have special needs, or are being given ‘favours’. It ultimately comes down to managers having conversations with their team and saying ‘ok, how do we navigate this moment?’ Otherwise people suffer in silence.”
