Us vs. them: How working parents are viewed in the workplace

There are certain things that make it obvious that you are a working parent. And I am not talking about the bags under your eyes or the six cups of coffee needed to get through the day. It usually happens at 4:59 p.m. when they start to pack up so they can make it to daycare or a school recital or any number of obligations parents have. As they slip out of the open-plan cubicle maze, a child-free colleague glances over and thinks (or sometimes says out loud), “Must be nice.”

Welcome to the us versus them of modern work life: parents versus nonparents, aka committed versus distracted or the all-in versus the always juggling. In my book How to Have a Kid and a Life, I wrote about the motherhood penalty, the well-documented hit mothers take in pay, promotions, and perceived competence. Decades of research show that when you add kids to a woman’s résumé, hiring managers see her as less committed and less competent than an identical candidate without children. The same studies show fathers are often perceived as more committed.

Before hybrid work was an option, mothers had a clear disadvantage. The question now is: Does flexible work close that empathy gap or widen it?

Many workplaces still worship the “ideal worker.” You know the type—always available and never needs to slip out for a child with a fever. In interviews for my book, women described how the bias shows up in little moments:

• The big project that always gets handed to the single guy and then becomes his fast track to promotion.
• The manager who says, “I just didn’t want to burden you,” a move that quietly sidelines a new mom.
• The performance review that praises a mother’s flexibility but questions her availability.

Parenthood isn’t seen as a strength or a crash course in time management and crises response. It’s treated as a potential liability the company is doing us a favor by accommodating.

Is hybrid work the cure parents need?

On paper, hybrid work should be the great equalizer. Parents gain flexibility, lose the soul-sucking commute, and can occasionally make it to the school play and not worry about annoyed glances from colleagues. Studies show that hybrid arrangements can reduce stress and improve well-being, particularly for caregivers. But the reality is more complicated.

Post-pandemic research on working parents finds that while many value flexibility, they worry it could hurt their careers. In one national survey, parents reported feeling pressure to hide caregiving responsibilities again. Sociologists call this “flexibility stigma,” which is the perception that people who work remotely or adjust their hours for family reasons are less committed and less deserving of moving up. Not surprisingly, this stigma hits mothers the hardest.

So hybrid schedules can actually create a new divide:

• The nonparent who’s in the office four days a week is seen as visible and all-in.
• The parent who’s remote two days a week is seen as harder to reach. Never mind that they are online and answering emails at 9:30 p.m.

Same output, totally different story.

The backup system

Here’s where the us versus them really kicks in. Nonparents sometimes feel like they are the default backup system. They are the ones who stay late, travel on short notice, or cover the late-night launch because “you don’t have kids.”  Meanwhile, parents scramble to log back on after bedtime. In How to Have a Kid and a Life, I talk about this: parents trying to prove they’re as committed as ever while also trying not to miss their entire family life. Many moms told me they felt they had to be better than before and better than everyone else just to be seen as equally talented at work.

The result is a workplace full of exhausted parents and quietly resentful nonparents; each convinced the other group has it easier.

So, is hybrid helping? The honest answer is it depends on how we use it.

Hybrid work can bridge the empathy gap when:

• Leaders model flexibility for everyone, not just parents.
• Promotion and star status are tied to measurable results, not just hours behind the desk.
• Parents don’t feel the need to make their personal lives invisible by muting their kids and hiding school pickups.

It widens the gap when:

• Flexibility is unofficial and negotiated in whispers.
• Remote days become “mommy track” days.
• Teams quietly equate butt-in-seat time with loyalty and ambition.

The real opportunity isn’t to build a special system for parents. It’s to stop treating “not having a busy personal life” as a qualification.

Everyone benefits from a workplace where:

• People can have caregiving responsibilities or a passion or a life outside Slack and still be seen as serious about their careers.
• Nonparents can say, “I can’t stay tonight” without needing a daycare story to justify it.
• Parents don’t have to apologize for being parents or prove their worth with late-night emails.

If there’s one thing my reporting, my book, and, frankly, my own life have taught me it’s this: A workforce full of burned-out, overcompensating people is bad for business and terrible for human beings.

Hybrid work gives us new tools. Whether it becomes a bridge or a black hole depends on how honest we’re willing to be about the biases we still carry and whether we’re finally ready to dump the myth of the ideal worker and replace it with something real: the ideal human.

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