Key Takeaways

• Interviews with 71 parents who work from home revealed that many used their flexible work schedules to help manage the challenges of childcare.
• After-school care is expensive and competitive, leading some parents to watch their school-age children in the afternoons while they work.
•  Parents with younger kids often had complicated childcare arrangements that varied day by day and required them to watch their children at random times.
• These mothers and fathers, who live across the US, said that childcare was a serious challenge, despite having higher-than-average incomes and work flexibility.

Childcare is a Crisis in the United States

For this research, I interviewed 71 parents over Zoom to understand their employment and parenting experiences while working from home. All parents either worked from home full-time or had a hybrid schedule, working several days at home and some days in an office each week. Parents were eligible for this research if they had at least one child under 18 and worked in the nonprofit sector. Although all parents worked in nonprofits, their childcare experiences are likely relevant beyond this sector. 

Most parents in the United States are employed and need their children to be supervised while they are working¹. The US lacks a comprehensive federal childcare system, so most parents must independently find and pay for care. At the federal policy level, most children are not guaranteed any kind of enrollment, free or otherwise, in childcare. Several states have implemented or are developing universal pre-kindergarten programs, and some programs, such as Head Start, are intended to provide low-income parents with free care². However, these programs often have limited availability³. Many parents with school-age children need supplemental care because these hours are shorter than their full-time work hours. 

The childcare crisis, largely driven by the lack of affordable care, makes it difficult for parents to work full-time. The average yearly costs can range from around $6,500 to over $15,000 per child⁴. These costs vary widely based on the age of a child, local availability, and type of care (in-home vs facility)⁵. In this research, most parents had household incomes well above the national median (over $130,000, compared with about $81,000)⁶. Yet many parents in this research still described childcare costs as excessively high. One father said that his family had moved to a lower-cost-of-living city. He explained, “The main driver of our move was childcare costs and access to family help with childcare.” That this family relocated due to the costs of care illustrates that even among parents with work flexibility and relatively high incomes, the childcare crisis is dire. Lack of affordable childcare has widespread economic consequences in the US, estimated at up to $122 billion a year⁷. While these economic impacts ripple across the US, women are especially impacted. Parents are a substantial portion of the US labor force. Childcare costs and availability can more often prevent mothers from maintaining employment. 

These critical challenges have left many US parents desperate for a solution that makes it easier to be a working parent. Since the COVID-19 pandemic, more people than ever before have been able to work remotely⁸. When working at home, parents often have more flexibility in choosing their work hours and, if needed, to watch their children while working. My research sheds light on how working at home intersects with the childcare crisis in the post-COVID-19 era.

Parents are grateful to work at home, but many are still stressed by childcare

Many parents in this study adjusted their work hours to better align with their children's schedules. Working from home made it easier for parents to take their children to and from childcare. They could adapt their workday as needed to easily attend midday school events or quickly pick up a sick child. Many were immensely grateful to have this flexibility because these situations had been stressful when working in person. However, because parents often shifted their work hours, they also frequently worked extremely early or late at night. One mother in this research had one child in preschool, and the other had a part-time nanny. She explained, “We cannot even find a place that has an opening for my youngest. We tried. And we cannot really afford additional childcare; we are already stretched beyond our means.” Because of these care difficulties, this mother began her work very early in the morning so she would finish before her child’s nanny left. Parents working from home regularly stretched their personal capacities to fill gaps left by inadequate childcare.     

Some parents with school-age children multitask in the afternoons

Some parents in this research used their flexibility to reduce the number of hours per week that they paid for childcare. Those with school-age children sometimes find it simpler and more cost-effective to watch their children in the afternoons than to arrange after-school care. These programs were often expensive and competitive, with long wait lists and inconvenient offerings (for example, a spot available for just one day per week). However, this also required parents to split their attention between their children and work. One mother in this situation described her afternoons as “chaotic.” She said, “If I have not been able to finish my work, I will try to finish after the kids go to sleep.” While parents were often thankful to avoid the difficulties of after-school care, the multitasking was draining and stressful.

Parents with young children must balance complicated and costly care arrangements

Parents with children too young for school face a particular bind because there are few publicly available childcare options, and those that exist are more expensive for younger children. As one mother with two young children explained, “We pay as much in daycare as we pay for our mortgage.” In this study, parents who worked from home sometimes navigated these challenges by juggling multiple part-time care arrangements. For example, some families had part-time care at costly childcare facilities. Some supplemented this with free part-time care provided by a family member or other less expensive care. Having multiple arrangements required managing varying daily routines. Parents used their work flexibility to address this variation and to care for their children during gaps in care. Similar to parents with school-age kids, these complicated schedules were strenuous and lessened rather than solved the childcare problems parents faced.

Recommendations

This research has demonstrated that even relatively high-income parents with work flexibility need more affordable, high-quality childcare. This need is likely amplified among parents with lower incomes and less work flexibility. Several scholars have emphasized the importance of establishing a permanent universal US childcare system⁹. Creating such a system requires two major components. The first is to provide federal funding to childcare centers and programs to increase childcare availability. The second component is providing families with larger tax credits to help pay for care. The Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (or CARES) Act, passed during COVID-19 with overwhelming bipartisan support, is a model for the necessary legislation. 

Indeed, the original version of the Biden Administration’s Build Back Better Act would have essentially achieved these goals. But the childcare measures failed to gain congressional support. Childcare is not only a crisis during an emergency such as COVID-19. It is an ongoing disaster faced by parents of all backgrounds and political orientations in the US, and it will become increasingly detrimental the longer that policymakers take to act.

Emily Searl is a PhD candidate in Sociology at UC Davis. She studies family, employment, social stratification, energy-efficient technology, and energy consumer behavior using a variety of research methods. In addition to her research concerning working parents, she is a research assistant at the Western Cooling Efficiency Center, working on the Market Transformation Research Team.

¹ US Bureau of Labor Statistics, "Labor Force Statistics from the Current Population Survey: LNU0201BE23,"  accessed 23 April 23, 2026, https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNU0201BE2; US Census Bureau, “America’s Families and Living Arrangements: 2023,” accessed November 2023, https://www.census.gov/data/tables/2023/demo/families/cps-2023.html.

² Allison Friedman-Krauss et al., “The State of Preschool 2024,” National Institute for Early Education Research, 2025, https://nieer.org/sites/default/files/2025-09/2024%20YB%20ExecSummary.pdf. 

³ Meiyi Lu, “Evaluating Head Start Program for Low-SES Students: Effectiveness, Challenges, and Future Directions.” Lecture Notes in Education Psychology and Public Media, no. 114(2025): 8-13.

⁴ Georgia Poyatzis and Gretchen Livingston, “NEW DATA: Childcare Costs Remain an Almost Prohibitive Expense,” US Department of Labor, November, 2024, https://blog.dol.gov/2024/11/19/new-data-childcare-costs-remain-an-almost-prohibitive-expense.

⁵ Poyatzis and Livingston, “NEW DATA.” 

⁶ Gloria Guzman and Melissa Kollar, “Income in the United States: 2023- Current Population Reports, P60-282,” US Census Bureau, September 2024, https://www.census.gov/library/visualizations/2024/demo/p60-282.html.

⁷ Sandra Bishop et al., “$122 Billion: The Growing, Annual Cost of the Infant- Toddler Child Care Crisis,” Ready Nation, February 2023, https://www.strongnation.org/articles/2038-122-billion-the-growing-annual-cost-of-the-infant-toddler-child-care-crisis.

⁸ US Census Bureau, “The Number of People Primarily Working from Home Tripled between 2019 and 2021,” Press Release Number CB22-155, 2022, https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2022/people-working-from-home.html. 

⁹ Nicole M. Elias and Maria J. D’Agostino, "Care in crisis: COVID-19 as a Catalyst for Universal Child Care in the United States." Administrative Theory & Praxis 43, no. 2 (2021): 217-229; Maya Sabu, "Securing our Tomorrow by Caring for America's Children Today: Implementing an Attainable Universal Child Care Model in the United States." Family Court Review 63, no. 2 (2025): 354-367.