‘You have to be around for the moment they speak to you’: how teens affect working parents

Maternal responsibilities have compelled Katy Hewin to take a step back in her career with asset manager Janus Henderson. The single mother has not been juggling bath-time and weaning with her job as business manager but supporting her son through his recent A-levels and her teenage daughter.

“I always think, ‘bigger kids, bigger problems,’” she says. “Adolescence is really hard. You’re wanted and you’re not . . . You have to be around for the moment they might speak to you.”

Hewin feels supported by her employer and has flexibility around her schedule and location. “I know I’m working very hard — [I just] do it at different times.” Nonetheless, she has curbed international travel, and not sought big supervisory roles because she feels she lacks the bandwidth to take on extra responsibility. “When you manage you get enmeshed in [staff’s] lives.” Her children are on the cusp of independence but she is paradoxically tethered to the home more than when they were younger and she was helped by an au pair and wraparound school care.

Working parents of teens are grappling with different challenges to those deep in nappies and fatigued by broken sleep. Miranda Perry, co-founder of Abrial, which advises schools and parents, says: “It’s normal to be a working parent and stressed with a teenager. They need reassurance. The networks parents had before in school were different, you had more reassurance through WhatsApp groups.” While the challenges are still demanding, many working parents feel unsupported by employers.

Since the pandemic, Daisy Dowling, an executive coach for parents who also advises employers, observes greater stresses, including mental health problems, among children. In the US, Vivek Murthy, the surgeon general, recently warned the mental health crisis among young people was “an emergency.” In the UK, almost one in five children aged 7-17 has a probable mental disorder, a 50 per cent increase from 2017, according to the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health. While there is also anxiety over teens’ use of technology and greater demands on parents. “Home used to be a refuge,” says Dowling. “[Now] work follows you home.”

Few employer initiatives and employee resource groups for parents include those with older children. “The parents of teenagers are almost invisible,” says Dowling. “Ninety-eight per cent of resources are targeted at people who are going out on parental leave and returning.”

Beyond that, statutory benefits vary across the world. In the UK, employees are entitled to up to four weeks unpaid leave a year for each child, up to 18 weeks.

Some parents identify less tolerance of family duties from employers when their children are older. “Once your child has got to a certain age, it’s expected that you will increase your hours,” says one mother who works in law. “There’s less understanding of the demands of [older] children.”

However, Anita Cleare, author of a forthcoming book How to Get Your Teenager Out of Their Bedroom, observes a recent shift — one of her most requested sessions for employers this year has been on how to persuade teenagers to open up. “I do think firms are cottoning on to the potential impacts the teen years can have on working parents.”

Cleare says the “tendency for parents to be more interventionist and hands on these days which, alongside a teen who might have a bit of a gaming or phone habit or just not be very motivated to study, can make parents want to be around a bit more so they can supervise and galvanise.”

A study last year by Essex University found that in the UK “in 1961, mothers spent an average of 96 minutes per day on childcare, which increased to 162 minutes per day in 2015. Fathers did 18 minutes of childcare per day in 1961, which increased to 71 minutes per day in 2015.”

This is also a time in their lives, Dowling observes, when parents are anticipating regret. “Where somebody has a 15 or 14-year-old and they realise, oh, my gosh, I’ve got two years left — when my child is gone am I going to realise I’ve misused my time with them. There’s a reckoning point when they realise how much time they’ve got left.”

Michael Whitworth, a former headteacher and co-founder of Abrial, says an additional pressure has been the “rapidly growing diagnoses of neurodivergence, which require . . . a lot of time spent with medical practitioners and schools and a lot of knock on stress.”

In some cases, parents are opting to take time out of work, dubbed “teen-ternity”, to support their children during exams or through a crisis.

One example is Suzanne Alderson who stepped back from the business she ran with her husband when her daughter suffered an acute mental health crisis. “When you are in this situation, you are in fight or flight.”

Her experience led her to set up charity Parenting Mental Health to help others feel less alone. She says returning to work after such crises can be a challenge. “Your brain is offline. You’re unable to take information in. But we see loads of parents go back [finding] it affirming. Parents say work can be the thing that keeps you going.”

However a recent survey by her charity found that 13 per cent of parents who were dealing with their child’s mental health had to give up their job completely. Many others have to take unpaid leave, which “can add another layer of financial and career stress”.

Molly Walsh took six months off from her job in financial services after her teenage son started to struggle. It could take up to an hour for her together with teachers to coax him into school. “I was late for work all the time.”

Now her son is happier, following an autism diagnosis and mental health support. “If you’d told me five years ago that he would be sitting his GCSEs I would not have believed you,” Walsh says.

The experience made her determined to create a “positive” outcome for others. “I thought I can’t be the only person going through this. There’s so much parent shaming and vilification.” After setting up a company employee resource group for parenting, she held a session on her own experience. “I was gobsmacked to find how many parents were going through it.” Her group now advises colleagues who are dealing with prosecution for their child’s poor school attendance and helps parents navigate mental health services.

Dowling stresses that employee resource groups should be inclusive. “Make sure it’s for parents of older children. Newer parents tend to cluster, whereas working parents [of teens] don’t tend to do that.”

They should also include fathers. Jeremy Davies, deputy chief executive of the Fatherhood Institute, says “fathers do seem to take more of a step back from the full-on breadwinner role when they have older children. It may be that this happens when fathers reach a level of seniority that enables them to take the foot off the pedal a bit.”

Informal flexibility is also important to allow parents to go to school or health appointments. Alderson says that post-pandemic, employers have become more sympathetic to what she calls the “juggle struggle”, but return to office mandates may see this reverse. “The more open we can be about the demands we face outside of the office and what would help both employers and employees, the more committed and loyal we will become.” 

Internal communications can support this message, says Dowling. “Imagine at the next town hall, some senior person gets up and says they were at home yesterday as their 14-year-old was ill, it makes it easier for others to do.”

Robbie Green, an executive coach at Talking Talent, says “companies need to be respectfully responsive when parents set boundary lines”. 

Alderson says that should continue beyond the early years. “It’s an error in our thinking that the harder times are when our child is younger.”