How Managers Can Ease the Strain of Summer Childcare on Parents

You’re probably hearing a lot about “Maycember” especially if you or your colleagues have school aged children. Performances, year-end parties, classroom visits and of course, those bring-a-stuffie-wear-pajamas-and-sports-memorabilia days, all blend together. This is during what is often a busy professional season too.

This strain for parents with school aged kids isn’t new but Maycember is only the beginning. Moms tend to have a love/hate relationship to summer. Like the holidays, we feel pressure to make memories AND relax, while managing to be productive. Basically, an impossible-thon we try to untangle between Zoom calls and camp pick ups.

Summer Conflicts Can be Emotional

You may remember how carefree it was not to have summer commitments from your own childhood. Whether you enjoyed hours outdoors, fun-filled camps or peace to explore interests, some part of that longing lives on in our adult selves. Many people want more freedom during this short season of warm, bright evenings so, how can leaders accommodate the reality?

And the State of US Childcare is Fragile

Whether parents can afford childcare or not, it’s hard to find. Especially if it’s only for the summer. The US childcare system broke years before Covid and now buckles under the added weight of rising costs and worker shortages. Even your most committed colleagues with kids will face spotty childcare coverage. During the summer, school-aged kids often bounce between ad hoc solutions. Like camps, family vacations, Professor iPad and for the lucky ones, grandparent care.

Pressure Within Organizations Transfers to Workers

Every organization is navigating the economic slowdown and the stress from it ripples through the workforce. This pressure has led to more reorganizations, layoffs, pivots and mandates. Many parents worry about staying employed and their financial wellbeing. Not to mention, changing expectations at work and childcare.

But You Can Ease the Strain

Parent stress was elevated to a public health hazard last year. And studies show most workers have burned out, regardless of caregiving status. Caring for children or adults, just adds an extra layer of financial, physical and emotional stakes to daily decisions. Despite the joy and fulfillment it brings.

Women continue to burnout and exit, downshift or pause their careers at higher rates. Largely because women are responsible for childcare and housework in most families. Everyone needs breaks from constant deadlines, to care for themselves. Access to support systems through benefits, including mental healthcare, can shift how quickly people get help and recover. The good news? Leaders can make this season more successful for caregiving colleagues and themselves.

It starts with intentional strategies to provide flexibility, psychological safety, access to childcare, eldercare and/or mental healthcare.

Start with Awareness

Make sure managers are sensitive to busy seasons for parents and understand how to avoid added deadlines or events. People are already dealing with end of school year commitments for their kids, vacations, or the loss of childcare. This means providing more autonomy. Including for your people managers so they can reassign work, pause a project or revisit priorities for their teams. As an alternative, mangers need clear escalation paths to address the inevitable friction between deadlines and capacity.

Not All Work Time is Equal

Being in back-to-back meetings feels quite different (for most people) than having asynchronous time for self-directed projects, catch up or deep work. It’s also easier to pick up a child from camp, or work poolside when there’s enough space in the day to do so.

Provide Summer Childcare Workarounds

Many managers are unaware of how complicated childcare is in the summer. Even if they’re parents themselves, they may not have been through the process recently or in charge of managing it. If your organization offers back up childcare, childcare subsidies, flexible schedules, summer hours, internships for teens, or other useful ways to help parents offset costs or complexity, send out a reminder. Or better still, add an update to a mandatory meeting so that everyone hears about it.

People are also drowning in email so that reminder you may have sent in January is probably not sufficient. Ensure that your workforce is aware of the supports you offer and invest in.

Remain Sensitive to Inclusive Meeting Times

Early mornings, evenings, mealtimes or weekends (if you’re in an industry where those time frames are not normal work hours) often present added childcare or life conflicts. Encourage people leaders to avoid these windows when setting up synchronous activities. If you work in a 24/7 environment, like a hospital, hotel, or government agency, give caregivers and parents predictable shifts. And consider lining up local childcare resources for your teams during nonstandard hours.

Give Plenty of Lead Time for Required Travel

Start by asking, versus ‘telling’ parents about conferences or other mandatory travel. Make sure it’s possible for them. Especially for the single parents who may have to spend even more time aligning coverage. If someone already works in a role with frequent travel, like sales for example, they might be prepared for the regular travel rhythm. However, parents who are often on the road may have new constraints over the summer. Open up the conversation. Ideally during one-on-one meetings where people generally have more psychological safety and privacy to express concerns.

Encourage Summer PTO

As a reminder, a large percentage of the workforce are burned out and/or suffering from mental health conditions. We also know stress-related illness and the decline in self-care continues to rise as the economic and social conditions become more volatile. Encourage people to declare their summer PTO and use that precious time for vacations, long weekends or meaningful resets.

The reality is, replacing people who burnout, suffer from stress-induced illness or lose their patience with an inability to set healthy work/life boundaries is expensive and disruptive. Help people feel excited about this fleeting time of year instead of panicked about their schedules.

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Enjoy the gift of more time for you. Self-care support plans for Moms.