Posted on 7th July, 2026 in Blog

Are we making parenthood a women’s problem at work?

Something interesting has happened to the language of parental leave. Increasingly, organisations talk about parents, not mothers. And rightly so; parental leave policies have become more inclusive and many organisations now offer equal leave to mothers and fathers. We talk about working parents, rather than working mothers, which is all important progress.

But when we look beyond the language, a more complicated picture emerges. The reality is, of course, that women still take significantly more time away from work after having children. They are more likely to work part-time or flexibly afterwards; according to the ONS, in the UK, fewer than one in five mothers sustain a full-time career after childbirth. And they continue to experience a much greater impact on earnings and career progression – particularly in environments that prioritise high performance and even amongst those working full time[1].

So while our policies are increasingly gender-neutral, the career consequences of parenthood are not. The perennial question is why.

Policy can change faster than behaviour

The answer that emerged in my research lies in the gap between what organisations formally allow and what workplace cultures informally reward. For example, an organisation can offer fathers six months of parental leave, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they will take it. What matters is what they see happening around them. Do senior men take substantial periods of leave? Do they leave loudly and return successfully? Are people who work flexibly still given the biggest clients, deals and leadership opportunities? Does taking leave feel like a normal part of a successful career — or an exception that needs to be carefully managed?

Employees are remarkably good at reading these signals. And when formal policy says one thing but the behaviour of successful people says another, behaviour usually wins.

The choices families make don’t happen in a vacuum

There is also a tendency to treat the division of work and care within families as entirely personal. Of course, much of it is. But it is impossible to ignore the evidence that the choices couples make are shaped by the systems around them.

If one person’s career already pays significantly more, it may make financial sense for the other to take more leave or reduce their hours. If one employer makes flexibility easy while the other subtly penalises it, the path of least resistance becomes obvious. If fathers worry that taking extended leave will damage their career, many families will make what looks like the pragmatic choice.

We need fathers to take leave

This is one reason equal parental leave policies matter. Not simply because fathers should have the opportunity to spend time with their children — important though that is — but because who takes leave affects how organisations understand parenthood.

When maternity leave is long and visible while paternity leave is short (and men treated as indispensable), organisations learn to associate extended absence, flexibility and caring responsibilities primarily with women.

This phenomenon ultimately affects more than mothers. It shapes expectations about who will be available, who will travel, who might reduce their hours and who appears to be the safer long-term investment.

The more normal it becomes for men to take meaningful periods away from work, the harder it becomes to make those assumptions based on gender. Offering equal leave is only the beginning; men have to feel able to take it if it is to have an impact.

Gender-neutral doesn’t mean identical

There is an important caveat here. Pregnancy, birth, physical recovery and, for some, breastfeeding mean that becoming a parent is not an identical experience for mothers and fathers. Pretending otherwise does not advance equality.

Nor should greater support for fathers mean reducing the support available to women. Mothers may need particular forms of support precisely because their experience is different.

The goal should not be to make motherhood invisible. It should be to stop caregiving and career compromise being treated as inherently female. This approach requires us to distinguish between the aspects of becoming a parent that genuinely are gendered and the workplace assumptions that have simply become gendered over time.

Look at what happens, not just what you offer

For organisations, this means moving beyond the policy document. It requires business and HR leaders to interrogate who actually takes the leave on offer, and for how long. For organisations who track date, do not just measure maternity return rates; look at what happens to progression, pay, promotion and attrition several years afterwards. The lens should also be broadened to look at who works flexibly and their progression rates.

Senior men are, as ever, a good barometer of what is culturally acceptable. Are they visibly taking parental leave, doing school pick-ups or adjusting their working patterns? Or does senior success still quietly model a version of working life in which somebody else takes care of everything outside it? Those behaviours tell you far more about your culture than the generosity of the policy itself.

Making parenthood everyone’s issue

We have made considerable progress in recognising that fathers are parents too. As I see it, the next challenge is materially harder. We need workplaces in which men can behave like parents too — without it being seen as unusual, uncommitted or incompatible with ambition.

Until men feel as able as women to step away, work flexibly and visibly accommodate family life, organisations will continue to associate parenthood primarily with women. Consequently, women will continue to absorb more of its career cost.

Perhaps the real measure of a gender-equal workplace is not whether its parental policies use gender-neutral language. It is whether becoming a parent stops telling us quite so much about what will happen to someone’s career next.

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[1] Buchmann, C. and McDaniel, A. (2017), ‘Motherhood and the Wages of Women in Professional Occupations’.