Are You Mom Enough to Stay Home?

An August 2025 study conducted by The Care Board’s Labor Force Participation Tracker for the University of Kansas has made headlines recently for its shocking conclusion: Moms of young children are leaving the workforce in record numbers, dropping by 2.8 percentage points from January to June 2025. This is the largest midyear drop in more than 40 years.

The study’s authors had some ideas as to why this decline occurred, noting that “with return-to-office mandates on the rise, these policies may disproportionately affect mothers of young children.” The other issue, perhaps unsurprisingly, is childcare.

“Moms with children under 5 are most likely to report childcare problems as the main reason for being out of the labor force, working part-time rather than full-time, or missing work the previous week compared to fathers of children under 5, fathers of children under 18, and mothers of children under 18,” the study notes.

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