Will Employers Finally Listen to What Mothers Need?

Photo-Illustration: Th Cut; Photos: Getty For years now, we have been bombarded with hand-wringing headlines proclaiming that the pandemic would set working mothers back a generation or drive them out of the labor market in droves, as the infamous second shift metastasized into a third, fourth, and fifth, requiring them to homeschool, cook, clean, and look after their children nonstop.

O’Keefe viewed it as a deal-breaker. In a meeting with her boss, she suggested returning to the office part time instead, pointing to her productivity over the past year. “I could tell a better story about what I am able to do under more flexible conditions and even say that it could empower me in future roles.” She also looked at the booming job market and saw other opportunities. “If this wasn’t going to work out,” O’Keefe told me, “I could leave.

But there’s reason to think that women who can’t work remotely may benefit from some of these changes, too. Brie Weiler Reynolds, who until recently was the career-services manager for FlexJobs, which focuses on remote-work placements, told me that “working mothers are in a stronger position than they realize. People who are staying put are highly valuable because it is so difficult to hire right now — there is such a fight for talent, including in hospitality, nursing, and teaching.

“I used to work so hard my arms would go numb. It is such a relief to be in a place where I do not have so much pressure to perform or so much financial pressure,” she said. For the first year of their new life, Elea stayed home with her daughter and collected unemployment under the CARES Act. As she contemplates her next moves, she’s prioritizing companies with a flexible remote culture that can work for her family.

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