"As I write this, my fourth grader is home on spring break. I work from home full-time and wasn’t able to take the week off this year—so we’re both around the house together most of the day. I’m periodically feeling pangs of guilt from knowing that she’s on a break, she sees that I’m here, too, and yet we still can’t really do much together. Last year, I was able to take the week off, and we took a mother-daughter spring break trip, but this year we’re just hanging around and trying to make the best of the week.
Because your registry isn’t just a checklist, we’re here to help you choose what’s best for you. From moms and experts who have been through it all, these are our winners for The Everymom’s 2025 Baby Registry Awards.
I work remotely at my full-time project management job in edtech and have done so for the five years since the COVID shutdowns started. I spent the previous 10 years working fully from an office, and I love the flexibility and extra time I now have with my current situation. Not getting ready for a whole day out of the house and not commuting back and forth saves me hours each week, which is enough time to be life-changing for the better.
But the work-from-home setup compared to the office doesn’t come without its dose of mom guilt. A few factors contribute to why I feel being a work-from-home parent can be challenging, even though I still think the benefits outweigh the cons.
The Differences in Work-From-Home Mom Guilt
My Attention Can Be So Divided
I have many days, like our spring break days this week, where I feel like I am not fully present for my kids or my job because I’m always being pulled in both directions within the same physical space of my house. It’s hard juggling the two main responsibilities of my life without a clear distinction between the two. Sometimes, I do miss the clear boundary between the office for work and the home for family, with a commute between the two spaces to mentally prepare for the changing roles.
“Sometimes, I do miss the clear boundary between the office for work and the home for family, with a commute between the two spaces to mentally prepare for the changing roles.”
With my family obligations, it’s difficult to manage being home at the same time as my children without being able to be fully involved with them. My preschooler doesn’t understand why Mom’s home but seems busy with something else. My fourth grader understands but usually doesn’t remember the boundaries and will continually engage with me even when I am clearly occupied.
With my work obligations, I feel like I’m drowning and can’t get up for air when there are days off school that occur on a usual workday. I’m constantly a few steps behind in my tasks because I am trying to manage mealtimes and activities in the background. With it being spring break this week, I am managing pick-ups and drop-offs to various camps, and those times are bleeding over into meetings already on my calendar.
I Compare My Situation to Others
I see office-based moms able to maintain a clear separation between their two worlds, allowing for uninterrupted worktime, and I feel a little wistful for what I used to have. While I see stay-at-home moms able to engage in activities with their children during daytime hours, and I feel sad that my kids aren’t able to enjoy that scenario. This work-from-home mom guilt feeling is especially prevalent during this spring break week, when I am seeing parents and kids on vacations or day trips, and I’m just home trying to cobble enough crafts together to keep a 10-year-old occupied.
I’m Always Disappointed in the State of my House
When I started working from home five years ago, I was giddy at the thought of my house always being in perfect shape because I would be there to keep up with it. I was so mistaken. There’s a misconception around working from home that if you’re home, you’re able to easily handle household chores alongside work responsibilities. It also feels like an expectation. I realized quickly that it’s not true at all—just because I am doing my job at a desk in my home instead of a desk in an office building, nothing has changed with the duties of my job and the time it takes to do them. I still don’t have the ability to do two tasks at once.
Also, if anything, my house is even messier now that I am in it most of the day. Before, the house was generally unoccupied for daytime hours, so it could stay fairly clean during the week. Now, I am usually here. I eat most of my meals in my kitchen, and the house overall is basically in a constant state of use. From looking around, you can tell that someone is usually here from the piles of clutter.
How I Manage Working From Home While Parenting
Despite the chaos, over the last five years, I’ve found a few ways to keep the work-from-home while parenting situations more manageable. I always keep some craft kits and other activities already on hand for unexpected days that kids are home. My daughter usually gets a few craft kits as gifts for holidays, and they are the perfect item to store somewhere out of sight until they are needed. I just have to help set them up, and then she stays independently occupied for a bit.
I’ve also come up with a short, manageable daily tidying routine to keep the clutter under control. It just takes me 15 minutes, which I can usually handle between meetings or when the workday wraps up, and I feel so much better about the state of my house. I unload and reload the dishwasher, take out the kitchen trash, put a load of laundry in the wash, and gather the miscellaneous clutter into one spot. Once it’s the weekend, I’ll do a deeper clean to start Monday fresh. In full transparency, I also do have a house cleaner that comes every other Tuesday—but this routine keeps the house reasonably organized on a day-to-day basis.
The Pros of Working from Home Still Outweigh the Cons
With any situation, whether you stay home with your children, work from home, or work from an office, there are pros and cons. None of those scenarios are the most ideal because they all have things that make them great and things that make them difficult. Though I sometimes feel guilty that my kids see my divided attention while I’m working, I wouldn’t trade my work-from-home situation for something else because it’s given me time back in my days. And I don’t feel guilty about being a working mom in general because the hard work that I do is what allows us to have the life that we have. Raising a family is expensive, so it’s definitely not something to feel guilty about!
Brigette Marshall, Contributing Writer
Brigette is a mom of two little girls and works full-time in project management, both at home and in the office. She loves book clubbing, antique shopping, watching documentaries, and convincing her husband to cook gourmet meals for her.