“Florida State University has announced that come early August, it will not continue to allow employees to work from home while simultaneously taking care of their children.“

While this may not be your company’s stance, it is a growing sentiment amongst corporations. The additional stress this puts on the parent is almost insurmountable. With child care options at an all-time low, tighter budgets at home, and parents caring for multiple family members at once, the rise of mental health impacts.

• The number of people looking for help with anxiety and depression has skyrocketed. From January to September 2020, 315,220 people took the anxiety screen, a 93 percent increase over the 2019 total number of anxiety screens. 534,784 people took the depression screen, a 62 percent increase over the 2019 total number of depression screens.
• The number of people screening with moderate to severe symptoms of depression and anxiety has continued to increase throughout 2020 and remains higher than rates prior to COVID-19. In September 2020, the rate of moderate to severe anxiety peaked, with over 8 in 10 people who took an anxiety screen scoring with moderate to severe symptoms. Over 8 in 10 people who took a depression screen have scored with symptoms of moderate to severe depression consistently since the beginning of the pandemic in March 2020.  – Mental Health Association

From panic attacks to full nervous breakdowns, mothers, in particular, are carrying so much more of the load at home that they can’t seem to get a breath. If there is a partner in the home, past parenting agreements have dissolved or abandoned as his career has taken precedence, and even when the mother out earns her male partner, she is still the main source of planning, management, and attention for all household items.