“The “Future Of Work” Still Sucks. Just Ask Working Parents.”

BuzzFeedNews.com Opinion Article | Author: Venessa Wong | May,10 - 2022

“Millions of women left the workforce during the pandemic. Many of them are back and confront the same problems that drove them out in the first place.

Carrie Borda, a project manager with two young children in Washington, said she was “wrecked” when her employer suddenly laid off her boss in 2021 despite her view that their team was excelling. Within hours of his departure, managers were on the phone with Borda offering a promotion, which she saw as a sugar-coated request to take on additional workload. “In my mind, after that happened, I was like, ‘I don’t have a future here,’” she said. “Why am I putting everything into this, to know that the work really isn’t valued?”

Borda considered all the times she felt the stress of deadlines while her 5- and 3-year-old kids demanded attention and snacks, the many hours of sleep she had missed because her workdays were being stretched out, the pounds she had lost because she was forgetting to eat in the chaos of daily life. “I was in a bad place, and something had to change,” she said. A few weeks later, she resigned after six years with the company. She decided not to jump into another job right away, and take “a pause in life,” as she described it.”