In 1988 New York Times journalist Jennifer A. Kingston introduced “mommy track” to the lexicon: Kingston described a then-new phenomenon where prestigious law firms started offering flexible hours and maternity leave to women.
However, Kingston pointed out there was a catch: women who took these perks were put on the “mommy track” with no potential for promotion.
“Women who choose to put in fewer hours and spend more time with their families say they are considered less than serious by male colleagues,” Kingston wrote.
Nearly three decades later, we’ve moved away from using the term “mommy track” to other terms, like the motherhood penalty, but little seems to have changed besides the language. When women become parents, they are often punished and see their wages and promotion potential drop. As recently as 2023, researchers at Columbia University found that women’s salaries drop by half on average after they have children—and then remain depressed for at least six years afterwards.
Sadly, things haven’t gotten much better in those decades since Kingston’s piece. Even worse, we’re now facing a different workplace crisis: the mommy exodus.
This year, 845,000 women have left the workforce, according to an analysis from The National Women’s Law Center. Women lost 32,000 jobs in the month of July, while men gained 9,000 jobs.
Further, an analysis by KPMG found that between 2023 and 2025, the number of unemployed college-educated women with children under the age of five in the workforce increased. During the same period, employment increased for college-educated men with young children and for women without children. It’s also worth noting, childcare costs have skyrocketed by 29% between 2020 and 2024.
As recently as last week, we’ve seen the mommy track to mommy exodus pipeline play out in politics, when Karoline Leavitt resigned from her position as White House press secretary. “I cannot be the best mom my two young children deserve while devoting the constant time, energy, and attention required” of the job, she posted on X.
Who cares, one commenter wrote in response. It’s her choice.
At some level, the commenter is right: it is Leavitt’s choice. In an environment where both the demands of work and parenting are intensifying, no mother should feel like they have to choose between their sanity and doing everything.
It’s also worth noting that if Leavitt, the youngest press secretary in history, couldn’t do both, in a world where both parenting and work expectations are rising—who can?
But Leavitt’s high-profile departure points to a systemic problem—one that necessitates systemic solutions, not individual ones.
We’re fully capable of implementing systemic solutions in the face of a workforce crisis. Before World War II, childcare centers were not common. However, during the war, when the government needed women in the workforce, it created a system that enabled women to work by subsidizing childcare centers. Roughly 600,000 children were able to go to daycare centers for about 50 to 75 cents a day—or $12 in today’s money.
The centers had hours that matched working hours, provided three meals a day, and some even prepared meals for mothers. However, when the war ended in 1946, the government stopped subsidizing these centers despite numerous pleas for their continuation.
Similarly, during COVID, when it became clear that going to work wasn’t a possibility, companies spun on a dime to make remote work possible. As restaurants closed and large gatherings became verboten, white-collar work found a way to carry on, albeit remotely. In some ways, this was a boon for working parents. The number of women with children under five in the labor force peaked during the pandemic, driven by remote work.
Today, companies have been similarly quick to rethink the workplace to make room for AI. Some laid off scads of employees and eliminated entry level jobs, while others implemented company wide training.
Given this, they could just as easily rethink their workflows to make work more sustainable for mothers. For example, Cakes, which produces silicone nipple covers, pays employees a $3,000 monthly stipend. It also matches its core working hours to school hours in an employee’s time zone.
However, few companies are doing something similar, even though research shows companies with gender diversity in their leadership are 9% more likely to outperform peers; companies in the bottom quartile are 66% less likely to outperform.
The problem isn’t that we don’t know how to build better workplaces. It’s that we’ve decided repeatedly that fixing the issue isn’t our problem.
If childcare is unaffordable and companies are rewarding workers who can survive the infinite workday, is the mommy track (and the mommy exodus) really “her choice”—or a choice that we made for her?
