Why working parents are quitting their jobs—and how to get them to stay
One in five parents and caregivers are quitting or plan to quit their jobs to better care for their children’s behavioral needs.
The Great Resignation is in full swing, with 3.9 million American workers leaving their jobs in June alone. Why are so many people calling it quits? News reports say employees are looking for better work — the kind that offers more flexibility, better work-life balance, or higher pay.
But there’s another big reason for the Great Resignation that, so far, has fallen under the radar: Many parents are quitting their jobs because they’re worried about their kids. The 2021 Pediatric Behavioral Health Needs Survey found that one in five (21%) of parents and caregivers have either already quit their jobs in the last year or plan to quit their jobs in the coming year to better care for their children’s behavioral needs.
Related: Delayed health care during pandemic taking a toll on many vulnerable children
That’s not surprising given our kids are in the midst of an unprecedented mental health crisis. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, mental health–related emergency department visits went up 24% for young children and 31% for teens between April and October last year, compared to the same period in 2019. Children’s hospitals across the country, from Colorado to Connecticut, are declaring states of emergency in response to skyrocketing demand for youth mental health services.
While needs are high, help is proving hard to find. A whopping 70% of U.S. counties — most with lower income and education levels — don’t have a single child psychiatrist. For those counties that do, the average wait time for an appointment is 7.5 weeks. Many families simply don’t get help until concerns reach a crisis point — as a result, more kids ending up in emergency rooms and waiting longer to receive care.
For working parents and caregivers, juggling the demands of a full-time job and the complexities of seeking care for their child can feel like balancing on a precarious tightrope. The statistics are shocking. According to the Pediatric Needs Survey, among parents and caregivers who report their children experienced behavioral health issues in the last five years, 36% spend five or more hours a day caring for their children’s behavioral health needs on average. Parents and caregivers themselves are suffering too: 59% say they’ve experienced their own behavioral health challenges due to the stress of managing their children’s behavioral health needs.
All of this is taking a heavy toll on employers. Turnover, after all, doesn’t come cheap. According to Gallup, replacing an employee costs half to two times the employee’s annual salary. Employees who are not engaged or actively disengaged with work also create a financial drain, costing employers 18% of their annual salary. Add to that the medical costs for employees’ increased mental health needs, and the price tag of unmet children’s behavioral health needs can become substantial.
Yet the problems we’re seeing now are just the tip of the iceberg. Experts predict children’s behavioral health needs will only increase in the coming months, with a new surge of kids expected to seek psychiatric care this fall.
There is a silver lining to all this. We can both forestall the Great Resignation and dramatically improve the day-to-day lives of working families by making comprehensive pediatric behavioral health care available to parents and caregivers. By improving access to high-quality pediatric behavioral health support through virtual care as well as coaching and self-guided content, employers can keep parents from leaving the workforce in droves.
After all, working parents and caregivers often hold keystone positions at their employers. At my company, Brightline, the majority of our C-suite executives are also parents to children under the age of 18 — some of whom have significant behavioral health needs. A number of us have had to make tough choices in the past to cut back or even quit our jobs to better care for our kids. Parents simply shouldn’t be forced to decide between their careers and the mental health of their kids.
It’s no coincidence that the children’s mental health crisis and the Great Resignation are hitting us at the same time. Their confluence points to an indisputable fact: the health of our companies is intimately tied to the health of our employees and their families.
Families deserve better. Companies need to take action.
Naomi Allen is the co-founder and CEO of Brightline.
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