Navigating Parenthood and Profession: The Realities of Family Life for K-12 Teachers

• In Event: Is Teaching Family-Friendly? Work-Family Dynamics and Teachers’ Careers

Abstract

Objective
During the COVID-19 pandemic, teachers with young children experienced uniquely demanding working conditions while caring for their own children (Steiner and Woo, 2021; Spadafora et al., 2022). During the pandemic, women with young children disproportionately left the workforce, suggesting that caregiving demands place a unique strain on working women (Edwards, 2020).). In an effort to make teaching more sustainable, some school districts are offering paid parental leave (Will, 2023), but we know little about the teachers who might be most in need of family-supportive benefits, which benefits are available, and whether teachers perceive them to be adequate.

Framework
Workers may feel heightened stress when their work and family demands exceed the resources they can use to reduce those demands and support their overall well-being (Voydanoff, 2005). In this paper, we explore how one family demand— caring for young children—and the work resources that might ameliorate those demands (e.g., paid parental leave and child care assistance) influence teachers’ experiences at work, sense of well-being, and intentions to leave their job.

Method
Data are from a nationally representative survey of K-12 teachers administered in January 2024 (n = 1,479) which asked about household composition, children who require childcare, and access to employer-provided benefits. The survey included measures of well-being, intentions to leave, pay, and hours worked.
We address three research questions:
RQ1: What are the characteristics of teachers who have children requiring childcare?
RQ2: Do teachers with and without children requiring childcare report different pay, hours worked, well-being, and intentions to leave?
RQ3: Do teachers have access to family-supportive benefits, do they perceive them to be adequate, and are perceptions of adequacy related to intentions to leave?

Results
RQ1: About one-quarter of teachers are responsible for children requiring childcare. Over a third of mid-career teachers said they had such children, in comparison to 20 percent of novice teachers and 9 percent of veteran teachers.
RQ2: We did not observe substantive differences between teachers with children requiring childcare and teachers without such children in their well-being, intentions to leave, base pay, or weekly hours worked. We did observe gender differences in teachers’ pay. Female teachers with children, on average, earned $11,726 less than male teachers with children. Female teachers with children earned less than those without children, but male teachers with and without children earned the same amount.

RQ3: Family-supportive benefits were relatively rare. Five percent of teachers reported having childcare assistance, and 32 percent reported having paid parental leave. Only half of teachers who had paid parental leave considered it to be adequate. Teachers who had paid parental leave and considered it adequate were less likely to report intending to leave than teachers who had access and considered it inadequate.

Significance
A significant portion of the K-12 teaching workforce has children requiring childcare. Yet, teachers report that family-supportive benefits are rare, even though such benefits have the potential to reduce the demands teachers face. Moreover, our data suggest female teachers with children requiring childcare may face a salary penalty.

Authors

• Elizabeth D. Steiner, RAND Corporation

• Ashley Woo, RAND Corporation

• Sy Doan, RAND Corporation