Remote policies helped women work. In-office mandates and child care costs are driving them back out.

When Jackie Gabrielson became pregnant with her fourth child, she planned to take maternity leave and then return to work.

But as she and her husband started envisioning life with four young children, “that’s when the reality of it really started to sink in.”

“Not just financially,” said Gabrielson, 33, of St. Cloud, “but also just the flexibility needed.”

So they made a decision: She will quit her professor job at the end of the year, joining the growing ranks of women opting out of the workforce.

The labor participation rate for women with children younger than 5 had the biggest midyear drop in more than 40 years during the first six months of 2025. June’s rate was 67%, according to U.S. Census data analysis by researchers at the University of Kansas.

That decline, the lead researcher said, largely was caused by return-to-office mandates.

Raising kids requires constant adaptation, particularly for women who tend to bear more duties at home regardless of their employment status. The rising cost of childcare, coupled with a reversal of COVID-era flexibility, has complicated mothers’ ability to juggle work and home.

Return-to-office policies are forcing many to make tough decisions about whether working while raising a family is worth it — or even possible.

“I’m excited to spend more time with my kids and just have that flexibility,” Gabrielson said. “I am scared though, too. I never pictured myself as a stay-at-home mom. I never pictured myself not working.”

While workers have been back to some version of in-person work for a while — and many never left — return-to-office mandates were supercharged when President Donald Trump called federal workers back to the office five days a week. Many private employers quickly followed suit.

Major Minnesota employers including 3M, Medtronic, U.S. Bank, General Mills, UnitedHealth Group and Target are calling at least some workers back to the office.

Mothers of young children are more likely than other adults in their prime working years to report teleworking, according to the Brookings Institution.

Lindsay Whipple of Minneapolis gave notice at her job in higher education administration this summer, after years of working full-time to support a growing family while her husband went back to school.

The job allowed Whipple to do what she needed to balance it all: to leave and nurse her infant son when he wouldn’t take a bottle or to use vacation and sick time when she was patching together multiple sources of child care. But there were strings attached.

“There was a lot of flexibility offered to me ... but there were a lot of restrictions, too, and a lot of guilt,” said the 38-year-old.

Now a mother of four, Whipple recently started a part-time job and doesn’t envision going back to 40 hours a week.

“That’s just a grind that seems impossible,” she said.

She and her husband expected it to ease when their oldest started kindergarten, Engelbrektson said. But while the cost was less, the logistics of having their children in different places were more complicated and generally fell on her to manage.

“This is an uphill battle that, at some point, felt not worth fighting anymore,” she said. “And that was difficult for me, because I loved my work, and I still do.”

While Engelbrektson still works the occasional shift, she said, “my job right now is to get these children grown.”

“I was paying literally every dollar to cover those hours somewhere else,” she said.

The cost of child care often is a key factor when women decide to stay home with their children.

“It’s no longer a child care crisis: It’s a child care collapse,” said WomenVenture CEO LeeAnn Rasachak. “And we, as a community, need to create urgency around it if we care about the workforce, if we care about the economics, if we care about childhood development. All of those are vital to the longer-term success of our whole community and our economy.”

Rasachak is among those calling for government subsidies, for both parents and child care providers, to lower costs and boost availability.

Speaking at a Minnesota Women’s Economic Roundtable event in Minneapolis last week, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis President Neel Kashkari compared subsidies for child care to those for agriculture.

“All around the world, countries subsidize agriculture. Why? Because they want high prices for farmers and low prices for consumers,” Kashkari said. “The only way you can achieve higher wages for quality child care workers and affordability for middle class families is through subsidies.”

Another complication in the child care equation, Kashkari said: Who counts as employed, and who doesn’t.

Emily Wallace, 40, of St. Anthony Village, decided to leave her job at a mental health therapy clinic when she was pregnant with her first child.

Now a mother of two, she said she feels fortunate to be able to stay home with her kids, but it’s been a big shift. Though Wallace’s choice is becoming more common, she doesn’t have a community of other stay-at-home moms to lean on, as her own mother did. And there’s still stigma.

“When I go to social situations, like parties, people almost never talk to me,” Wallace said. “Because if they know I’m a stay-at-home parent, I think they just feel like, ‘Well, what would I have to talk to you about?’”

The idea of returning to work is appealing, she said, but she’s not sure when she’ll do it.

Gabrielson, of St. Cloud, feels the same. It’s brought up some anxiety, she said: As a professor, she’s seen first-hand how quickly the job market is changing for her students.