By Rachel Minkin, Luona Lin, Dana Braga and Kiley Hurst
Pew Research Center

For many U.S. parents who work full time, the line between work and family is not well defined:

  •  70% say they take care of parenting-related tasks while they’re working.
  •  59% say they take care of work-related tasks when they’re with their children.
  •  54% say it’s difficult for them to balance their work and family responsibilities.

Parents – especially moms – often carry the mental load that comes with trying to balance what their families need with what their work demands. And with so many obligations, it’s not surprising that working parents sometimes feel like they can’t give 100% at home or at work.

As one mom in a Pew Research Center survey said about the difficulty balancing work and family: “I’m supposed to work like I don’t have kids and supposed to parent like I don’t have a job.”

Pew surveyed 2,242 working parents from March 2-15 to understand how they navigate these spheres of their lives.

Key takeaways:

  • About half of full-time working parents (52%) say their job makes it harder to be a good parent. On the flip side, 45% say being a parent makes it harder to advance at work.
  • Compared with dads, working moms take on more at home and have a harder time finding balance: 62% of full-time working moms say it’s difficult for them to balance work and family responsibilities, compared with 47% of dads. In different-sex couples where both parents work full time, 52% say the mom takes on more parenting tasks, while smaller shares say the dad does more (10%) or that these tasks are shared equally (39%). Read more about the division of labor among working parents.
  • Access to workplace benefits that help working parents differs widely by income level. Full-time working parents with lower family incomes are consistently the least likely to say they have access to benefits such as paid time off, paid leave separate from PTO and health insurance through work (among those who aren’t self-employed). This group is also the most likely to worry about losing pay – or losing their job – if they miss work because their child is sick or child care falls through. Read more about how workplace policies impact working parents.
  • Most full-time working parents say having flexibility to work from home when needed would be extremely or very helpful (among those who aren’t self-employed). But only 24% of these parents report that they have a lot of flexibility to telework. Those who regularly work from home see some advantages to this arrangement, like being able to attend their children’s activities when they overlap with work hours. Still, they’re no more likely than those who work from home less often to say balancing their job and family life is easy. Read more about the experiences of parents working from home.
  • Across income levels, parents say cost is the biggest hurdle in finding child care. Lower- and middle-income parents are more likely than those with higher family incomes to rely on family, friends or neighbors for child care. Most upper-income parents use paid care, such as day care or preschool. Read more about working parents’ child care arrangements.

The analysis focuses primarily on the experiences of full-time working parents, who account for 73% of U.S. parents with children younger than 18 – including 89% of dads and 59% of moms as of 2025, according to Pew Research Center analysis of data from the U.S. Census Bureau.

The Blurred Lines Between Work and Home

Working parents don’t always see a clear separation between their work and family life. As one father in the survey wrote: “My work responsibilities feel never ending, thus making it difficult to set them down in the evening to focus on my family.”

For majorities of full-time working parents, work tasks come home and parenting tasks end up at work. This overlap is especially notable among moms. About 8 in 10 full-time working moms (81%) say they take care of parenting tasks while at work at least sometimes. This includes 38% of moms who say they do this extremely or very often – about double the share of dads who say the same (17%).

Still, many dads also feel this tension. Majorities of full-time working dads say they take care of parenting tasks while at work (62%) and work tasks while with their children (57%) at least sometimes.

When Work Gets in the Way of Parenting

A majority of full-time working parents (60%) think they spend too little time with their children – and far more say this is because of work obligations than other reasons.

In addition, nearly half (47%) say their work responsibilities at least sometimes cause them to miss activities their children are involved in, such as school concerts or sporting events.

Moms are particularly likely to say they feel upset when they miss their kids’ activities because of work: 65% feel extremely or very upset, compared with 45% of dads. Still, most dads say they feel at least somewhat upset when this happens.

The full report can be viewed HERE.