How benefits can make the workplace better for single parents

• Key Insight: Discover how universal-design child care can transform talent retention and workforce flexibility.  
• What's at Stake: Failing to address single parent needs increases costly turnover and harms talent pipelines.  
• Supporting Data: 470,000-member parenting community underscores the scale of engaged single parent voices.  
• Source: Bullets generated by AI with editorial review

Raising a child as a single parent is hard. Add in the stress of juggling a full-time job and it becomes even more challenging. 
Author Pat Hankin touches on this subject and more in her new book, "The Field Guide for Single Parents: Practical Tips to Take Control of Your Life." Hankin, herself a single parent, says benefit leaders can play a big role in helping single parents balance their work lives with child care, but they have to overlook certain stereotypes first. 

"The problems companies have in dealing with single parents is these cultural stereotypes that keep coming up, [that single parents are] unreliable," Hankin says. "If companies are really interested in attracting this talent, they have to deal with their own ingrained biases about that." 

Read more: What benefits do your working parents actually need?

Hankin, a business professional and longtime moderator of a 470,000-member parenting community, recently spoke to Employee Benefit News about inclusive child care options, and how single parents can effectively negotiate with HR. 

This interview has been edited for length and clarity. 

What kinds of benefits and programs do you think companies should offer to help single parents?

The concept of universal design [is when] you design something that's accessible to everybody because everybody benefits. In most families, all of the caregivers — the adults in the household — are working. But if the kids get sick, you've got no backup, so you have to take a day off work and it goes against your paid time off. The biggest problem is child care — both the cost of it and from the supply side. So [employers should] create a program for child care that goes all the way up to high school, not just for infants. It must be universal to everyone. You might start small  with vouchers or reimbursements. In your benefits programs, you might also have this bucket of cash that they can use for whatever benefits most suit their needs. 

Read more: KinderCare breaks it down: What working parents want from their child care benefits

The best run solutions I've seen have been where a company engages in a partnership with some sort of established child care company. So it could be Care.com that offers vouchers that you can use to get backup sitters. If you're a big company, you might want to have Bright Horizons and work with them. Nirvana is a company that has full-time on-site child care. 

During COVID, many employers increased flexibility for workers with child care needs. Do you think that experience made companies and benefit leaders more compassionate toward single parents and some of the challenges they face? 

Five years ago, people were more understanding of single parents. And then when back to work started, we went backward. And we've done this all the time. The advent of remote work is here to stay. My message to single parents in this book is it's a two-way street. Nobody owes you this. You have to be able to negotiate with the people you work with. I counsel parents not to tell anybody they're a parent, much less a single parent in an interview because it will very rarely go in your favor. 

Is there one message that you hope companies and benefit leaders take away from this book? 

Understand your workforce's needs, your company's needs as to what you need in a workforce and then be willing to think outside of the box and not view this as a zero-sum game. There is research out there about the benefits of retention. The worst day of my life has been when somebody comes in and says that they're leaving for another company. It's so expensive to replace that person you've trained. It's not that hard to sit down with someone and say, "Let's start with people's needs. Let's start with the company's needs. Let's see how we can put that together."