SPOTLIGHT: For the kids, it's summer. For working parents? Not so much.
June 2026
Summer break is 10 to 12 weeks. The average job offers nothing close to that in time off. Here's what that means for working parents and the employers who depend on them. The school year runs about 180 days, and summer break runs 10 to 12 weeks.
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Two-income households didn't used to be the default. Now they are, and summer exposes every crack in a system that was built around a different set of assumptions.
A record 52% of two-parent families now have both parents working full-time, up from 46% a decade ago and 31% in 1975, according to a new Pew Research Center report.
The share of couples where the dad works full-time and the mom is not employed has fallen from 42% in 1975 to 23% today.
College-educated mothers are driving the shift. About 7 in 10 moms with a postgraduate degree are now in dual full-time households, up significantly from 25 years ago. Among moms without a college degree, fewer than half are.
73% of U.S. parents with children under 18 work full-time, including 89% of dads and 59% of moms as of 2025.
Read more via Pew Research Center, Bloomberg
The U.S. school year runs about 180 days. The summer break that follows runs 10 to 12 weeks. Working parents spend months trying to close that gap, and most years they don't fully succeed.
90% of working parents lose sleep over planning summer childcare and schedules, compared with 70% of parents who aren't employed.
67% of working parents say they feel a growing sense of dread as summer approaches.
87% of working parents report work interruptions, distraction, and worry about their children's schedules during the summer months.
76% say their ability to focus at work during summer is directly tied to how reliable their children's summer schedule is.
68% of employed parents of children ages 0-12 say it is extremely difficult to find short-term childcare during the summer.
Registration for the most sought-after summer programs opens in January and many fill within hours.
60% of working parents burn up to two weeks of PTO because of school and childcare closures. 70% of them say they feel less refreshed when they return.
Read more via Pew Research Center, Bright Horizons/Harris Poll, Fast Company
In dual full-time households, both parents are working the same hours. The second shift at home is a different story.
In families where both parents work full-time, 52% say the mom does more of the day-to-day parenting tasks, while only 10% say the dad does more.
43% say the mom does more of the household chores in those same households, while 17% say the dad does more.
Moms and dads see this very differently. 63% of mothers say they handle the lion's share of parenting and household tasks. Among fathers, only 4 in 10 say women do more parenting and only a quarter say women do more household chores.
Even in families where the mother works more hours than the father, 39% still say the mom does more parenting and 38% say she does more household chores.
When unexpected childcare comes up, 48% of dual full-time couples say the mom would be the one to take time off, while just 22% say the dad would.
The primary driver of who takes that time off isn't who's less busy or who's better with the kids. 70% of parents say it comes down to who has more flexibility at work.
81% of full-time working moms say they handle parenting tasks during work hours at least sometimes. 38% say they do this extremely or very often, about double the share of dads.
I'm supposed to work like I don't have kids and supposed to parent like I don't have a job."
Read more via Pew Research Center, Bloomberg, Fast Company
Not every working parent faces summer the same way. For lower-income workers, the same logistics problem comes with far fewer tools to solve it.
Access to paid parental or family leave separate from PTO breaks down sharply by income. 70% of upper-income working parents have it, compared with 51% of middle-income and 33% of lower-income parents.
Upper-income parents are more than three times as likely as lower-income parents to have flexibility to work from home (43% vs. 12%).
52% of lower-income working parents say they would be extremely or very worried about losing pay if they had to take time off for a sick child or childcare emergency, compared with 25% of middle-income and 8% of upper-income parents.
31% of lower-income parents would be highly worried about losing their job in the same situation, versus 12% of middle-income and 5% of upper-income parents.
Single moms are much more likely than married or cohabiting moms to worry about losing pay (50% vs. 32%) or losing their job (26% vs. 15%) when unexpected childcare disrupts work.
Black and Hispanic working parents (42% and 43%) are more likely than White and Asian parents (22% and 26%) to say they would be highly worried about losing pay in these situations.
Read more via Pew Research Center
Even parents who can afford care often can't find it. And when they do, it rarely covers the full workday.
Families pay an average of $13,128 per child annually for care, about 10% of income for dual-income households and 35% for single-income households. Summer care is an additional cost on top of that.
48% of working parents with a child age 5 or younger say it's difficult to find childcare that meets their cost expectations.
For school-age children, summer is the hardest stretch. Among parents who need care for a child age 6 to 12, 47% say it's difficult to find summer care, compared with 43% for before-school care and 42% for after-school care.
About 4 in 10 working parents use more than one care arrangement for the same child. Among parents with unpredictable work schedules, that rises to 45%.
Upper-income parents most commonly use daycare or preschool (72%). Lower- and middle-income parents are more likely to rely on family members, friends, or neighbors.
81% of working parents report that the traditional support network has shrunk compared to prior generations.
Onsite workplace childcare is the starkest gap. 59% of working moms with a child age 5 or younger say it would be extremely or very helpful. Only 7% say it's available to them.
Remote work gives parents more flexibility in some ways. It doesn't make summer easier.
65% of working parents say their job cannot be done from home. Only 17% work from home all or most of the time.
Parents who work from home frequently are no more likely than those who don't to say balancing work and family is easy. Similar shares across all remote work arrangements say the job makes it harder to be a good parent.
Remote work does blur the lines further. 39% of parents who work from home most of the time say they handle parenting tasks during work hours extremely or very often, compared with 25% of those who rarely or never work from home.
Working from home with children in the house is not childcare. Hybrid work helps at the margins but does not close a 10-to-12-week gap.
Read more via Pew Research Center, Fast Company
Most working parents want help from their employer, and the business case for providing it is solid. The interventions that move the needle most don't require a major budget.
79% of working parents say they want their employer to provide or help them navigate care for their children.
88% of employers say childcare benefits boost productivity, and 90% say they boost talent recruitment and retention as much as paid time off and health insurance, according to a 2024 report from Boston Consulting Group and Moms First.
About 20% of workers say they left a job because their employer didn't provide family care benefits, according to a 2024 Care.com survey. 29% said a lack of caregiving benefits was the top reason they looked for another job.
AT&T and The J.M. Smucker Co. have addressed the summer gap directly, providing on-site camps, high-quality childcare, and backup care options for children under 12.
Low-cost interventions include planning major deadlines and offsites around known summer transition weeks, moving standing late-afternoon meetings, and making summer schedule conflicts openly discussable rather than something employees have to hide.
For working parents, a schedule that shifts with 24 hours' notice is more destabilizing than a heavy schedule that holds. In summer, predictability is itself a benefit.
Most summer programs end at 3:00 or 4:00 p.m. A standing 4:30 meeting in July is a recurring crisis for some portion of the workforce. Moving it costs nothing.
When we heard from employees about the challenges of summer child care planning, we looked for a practical way to help. As a parent myself, I know how quickly summer break can turn into a scramble for coverage. That's why we designed our on-site summer camp to give families real flexibility so parents can stay focused at work knowing their kids are safe, engaged, and cared for."
Read more via Pew Research Center, Bright Horizons/Harris Poll, Fast Company, Boston Consulting Group/Moms First, Care.com
