A 2024 survey by HR consulting firm Robert Half Canada found 68 per cent of working mothers feared losing flexibility.AleksandarNakic/iStockPhoto / Getty Images
It’s a phrase often mumbled by working mothers like me, whether it’s at rushed school drop-offs or while stirring the pasta, booking the dentist appointment and answering e-mails from the boss: work-life balance. And it’s usually the punchline, followed by an eye roll, because for most of us balance has always been hilariously elusive.
Pandemic times, scarce in silver linings, gave us the closest thing yet. Remote work didn’t make balance easy, but it certainly gave career-focused primary caregivers a firmer foothold.
For Rebecca Adrian, a tax manager in Lindsay, Ont., that footing crumbled with a single company-wide call. Her firm would be scrapping its flexible work-from-home policy, instead mandating four in-office days a week, five if she wanted a shot at making partner. Six months pregnant with a toddler at home, Adrian realized the choice wasn’t really a choice at all: She had to quit.
“I wasn’t about to make real-life concessions around how I show up for my kids, in order to fit into a mould my employer made for me,” she said. “Do I want to be a very good mom or do I want to be very good at my job? I want both, actually. And for me that can only happen with workplace flexibility.”
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As return-to-office orders increase across Canada – including at Rogers Communications, most major banks and the Ontario public service – Adrian’s frustration is echoed in every mom circle I’m a part of, and the refrain is always the same: Does my work not care about parents’ experiences – or worse, have they not even considered them? Why are employers suddenly changing the rules, dealing such a crushing blow to mothers already stretched thin?
It’s a worthwhile question, as research shows very few Canadian workers want this: A 2023 survey found that 74.6 per cent of fully remote employees reported working from home had a positive impact on job satisfaction, compared with 53.6 per cent among partial commuters. A 2024 survey by HR consulting firm Robert Half Canada found 68 per cent of working mothers feared losing flexibility. And an Angus Reid Institute survey this summer found just 9 per cent of Canadian workers prefer full-time in-office work.
The “cultural and societal landslide of expectations on working mothers” has been decades in the making, said Amanda Watson, assistant professor of sociology at Simon Fraser University and author of The Juggling Mother: Coming Undone in the Age of Anxiety.
“We have historically always been expected to pivot,” she said, pointing to how women’s work changed during and after the Second World War. “We asked them to join the work force, then retreat back into the kitchen when the men came home. Now, we ask them to work from home while also facilitating remote learning for their kids, and then we arbitrarily take working from home away.”
Watson said that, throughout history, women are often the ones to sacrifice career advancement and therefore need remote work more.
“Wives can say they chose to work less or part time, and they may have made that decision with their husbands,” she said. “That can be true – and it can also be true that those choices exist because of patriarchal and capitalistic forces.”
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I have to stop myself from nodding; I made those very choices myself. My husband is the breadwinner in our family, and when we had two children in two years, I stepped back in my career. Long-term remote work was then not an option, and I couldn’t imagine giving up precious time as a mom to be a full-time worker.
It’s a decision I stand by – since our household was lucky enough to forgo my full-time salary, which is not the case for many parents. But even then, was it really a choice? Or was it the only option presented to me, preordained by a system that still expects mothers to sacrifice everything for their kids?
Watson notes remote work isn’t perfect, pointing to what sociologists call the “flexibility paradox”: women working from home are viewed as caretakers first, whereas men working from home must mean they need to focus. “Remote work also won’t erase the motherhood penalty or the unequal share of unpaid work,” she said, “but it certainly does blunt the consequences.”
Andrea DeKeseredy, a sociology doctoral student at the University of Alberta who researches gender inequality and family-work conflict, says remote work has other negative effects, too – such as amplifying who has the “privilege of predictability” and who doesn’t.
In many families, the higher-earning partner – most often a man – heads to the office at the same time each day, while the parent working from home is “sequestered” into unpredictability. She might need to pick up a sick child, run to the doctor, preside over the plumber’s visit and manage other unexpected tasks of the day.
“Still,” DeKeseredy said, “remote work helps women balance their many roles, no doubt. And it’s so frustrating, as a researcher and a mother, to see this changing.”
For Adrian, the story ends on a rare high note. She landed an “even better job” at a national company that allows her to work completely from home. Her husband now works half of the time from home as well, which means they can share house responsibilities and parenting duties, while still getting their respective jobs done. And the arrangement allows Adrian to leave the house for more than just work or kids, but for herself.
“As opposed to feeling like I’m always servicing someone else and failing, like so many working mothers do, the flexibility I found allows me to be an actual person, with a career and kids and also a life that I enjoy,” she said. “What a concept.”
