Being penalized for using flexible working policies—remote work, hybrid work, parental leave, and more—can be subtle, or screamingly obvious.
Nicole Yelland, a communications strategist from Detroit, has experienced both. In one remote role, she was managed by a hostile boss whose explosive “Hulk-out” rages made work miserable. The breaking point came when her 5-year-old daughter was laid out sick in Yelland’s office during a call, and her manager erupted, asking what her “kid is doing in the office” in an expletive-packed rant: “You’re not paying attention! You’re not committed!” He then dismissed remote work as “BS”—as he himself was working from his large house in the country. When Yelland asked what he did when his own child was sick, he replied: “That’s what his mother is for.” She says she hid her daughter from the camera on future videoconference calls, and sent him her resignation notice shortly thereafter.
The same pattern emerged in another job. There, the pressure to stay reachable bled into her time off. Before taking a day of PTO to support a friend, she informed her boss that she wouldn’t be bringing her laptop. But when she returned on Monday, things felt amiss. “Everyone was off in the corners whispering,” she recalls. She later learned the team had struck a new deal with a big brand, but colleagues had been told not to fill her in because she “wasn’t available after hours.” Her boss also demanded that Yelland take all calls within her earshot, and one morning when Yelland’s car battery drained, she was told to use PTO for the hour missed rather than count it as her lunch hour.
Yelland also resigned from this role, and it’s no coincidence that she now runs her own business. “I got sick and tired of having to deal with company policies developed for the right reasons, but interpreted in the wrong way,” she explains.
Her story serves as a depressing snapshot of the motherhood penalty. However, new research shows that when flexible work is treated as something just for mothers, it not only exposes women to bias, but it can also make the policy harder for everyone else to use.
The study, conducted by the King’s College Business School in London and the National University of Singapore, surveyed 473 managers in Singapore, Germany, and the U.K., testing how they judged six different hypothetical employees who worked remotely in a range of different patterns. It found that when policies are geared toward mothers or parents, managers have worse perceptions of remote working in regard to commitments, productivity, team spirit, and promotion opportunities. These managers believe that remote work is simply a work-life balance perk—not something that’s actually good for teams.
Yet framing it as a policy for everyone, not just parents, enables more workers to take it up—regardless of their parenthood status or gender.
Manager bias toward remote-working parents is bad for all remote workers
Heejung Chung, the study’s coauthor and director of King’s Global Institute for Women’s Leadership at King’s Business School, was surprised by the results.
“I expected mothers who remote-worked to be penalized more, but the negative effects of remote working are more pronounced for non-mother groups, especially fathers,” Chung says. With the ‘motherhood penalty’ so deeply entrenched, managers already hold biases against the capacity of mothers to be motivated and productive.
As Chung points out: “They start from such a low position already, so their choice to work remotely confirms biases about them.” However, fathers—typically viewed as highly competent workers (think “top of the food chain”)—face harsher penalties if they deviate from this assumption by choosing to work remotely. “Working from home exposes their caring responsibilities outside work, which all fathers have, or should have,” Chung explains. It makes visible what’s otherwise hidden, and in those circumstances, they’re penalized in the same way as mothers.
The bigger picture, though, is that when flexible work is framed as a mother’s or parent’s policy, it discourages everyone else from asking for it—and leads managers to ration or withhold opportunities to work flexibly.
“Employees decide what flexible working behaviors are acceptable based on how others, particularly leaders, act,” says Dana Rogers, VP of people and great work at the workplace software company O.C. Tanner. “If single or childless employees only see their colleagues with children working from home or adjusting their schedules, or if people leaders are using exclusive language when discussing flexible work, they’re less likely to think those policies are available for them to enjoy.” In the end, everyone loses.
Even openly “flexible” companies fall into the trap
Flexible work in the U.S. is under attack. New RTO mandates land every week, and 23% of American employers changed their remote or hybrid policies in the past year. Since January, companies including Instagram, Paramount Skydance, and Home Depot have pushed staff back to the office full time, while others have raised in-office requirements.
The shift is broader than headline mandates. In what teleconferencing software company Owl Labs calls “hybrid creep,” hybrid workers are increasingly going in four days a week, and Fast Company has found that many Americans are moving back to big cities to comply with policy changes. The pressure is coming from the top, too: President Donald Trump has demanded federal workers return in person and mocked home working as time spent playing tennis or golf. Morale is tanking: Gallup’s 2026 State of the Global Workplace report found job optimism fell among fully remote workers and remote-capable workers who are now deskbound full time, while it remained flat among hybrid staff.
It matters because once flexibility loses favorability, companies feel more comfortable cutting back on it—which is exactly what Deloitte and Zoom have recently done with parental leave and PTO. It’s clear that flexible work is still treated as a perk for a narrow group, not a normal part of work design. When companies frame flexibility as a special benefit, they make it easier to trim, harder to defend, and less likely to feel like a right.
Even companies that loudly tout flexible credentials can fall into the trap of penalizing workers who actually use the policies. London-based journalist Orlando Crowcroft learned the hard way. He has started and been forced to quit jobs at four large tech firms because they were unwilling to accommodate his childcare commitments.
“Me, a father doing childcare, was a bit unexpected,” explains Crowcroft, a dad of two. “What was really egregious was their outward public support for mums, dads, and nontraditional family arrangements—yet I experienced the exact opposite.”
The rhythm was painfully familiar to Yelland’s. Within six weeks of starting each role (two of which were fully remote), a manager would flag that Crowcroft wasn’t online enough, especially during the school run. He’d apologize and try to be more available, while reinforcing his fixed commitments as a dad.
“I started screenshotting my Slack messages to prove I was actually responsive,” he recalls. “When doing it, I just thought: This is madness.”
Now working for himself, he says he’s unlikely to take another in-office role, partly because he enjoys being a freelancer—but also due to the chronic lack of flexibility he’s witnessed.
“When I’ve gone for jobs recently, I’ve been very clear that I have young children, that they might get sick, and that I won’t be available 3 to 5 p.m. five days a week,” he says. “Having been burned so many times before, I’m really conscious of expectations.”
Shooting for equitable flexibility
Even when Crowcroft spelled things out for managers, part of the problem was that the policies were too vague. When expectations aren’t clearly defined or consistently communicated, assumptions rush in to fill the gaps. That could lead to more manager stigma toward remote work in general, whether the policy is aimed at parents or not.
“They get tied to visible needs rather than equitable programs that are designed to support all employers,” O.C. Tanner’s Rogers says. “Others won’t use the policies for fear they seem lazy, that they’re taking advantage, or are less committed to their role.”
Over time, businesses will find that flexibility isn’t equally used, even when it’s equally offered. Some of the imbalance stems from entrenched biases that won’t disappear overnight, but there is plenty that businesses can do to build equitable flexibility. And it starts with reframing flexibility altogether.
“Don’t think about these as family policies. Think of them as global talent recruitment and retention strategies,” King’s College’s Chung says. “It’s become so sought after that people will forgo income to get more flexibility.”
They’re also productivity strategies, and they should be communicated that way. Indeed, Stanford University economist Nick Bloom found that a “2-3” model (two days home, three in office) has no negative impact on productivity, and it reduces quit rates by 33%. When employees are satisfied with their level of flexibility, they’re 384% more likely to stay with the organization another year.
The goal shouldn’t just be to offer flexible work policies, but to normalize using them. That means reinforcing the use, rewarding it, and making it visible across the organization so, as Rogers puts it, “everyone feels like they have governance over their work.”
Employees already understand that their coworkers live different lives and might need to structure their day differently. O.C. Tanner’s research shows that 68% believe flexibility should be available regardless of the role, marital status, or location. And the sooner that happens, the more the playing field can be leveled.
“This is far bigger than just something for parents,” Crowcroft says. “It’s about a mindset that taps into how we work on a deeper level.”
