Why Do School Events Always Assume One Parent Has No Job?

I’ve been a working parent since my kids were babies, so I’m well-versed in having interruptions to my workday with childhood emergencies. Sick days, snow days — they’re all pretty universally accepted at this point as times you’re going to be working a bit more sporadically throughout the day as you wrangle children (and I know I’m lucky enough to have worked at companies that have been understanding about it).

What I have found a little harder to prepare for wasn’t the every-once-in-a-while emergencies, but the requests and timing of school events. A 10 a.m. classroom celebration, a 1:30 p.m. assembly, a request for volunteers who can arrive at 11:45 a.m. on a Tuesday. Oh, and then there’s the fundraiser that needs to be returned this Friday, and a theme day is coming up that gives you about a 24-hour turnaround to dress your child up as their favorite book character.

Individually, none of these things seem particularly outrageous. As parents, we want to be involved in our kids’ school experiences. But when you add them together, you start to wonder: Who, exactly, is the imaginary parent all of this was designed around?

Because whether you have a stay-at-home parent or one working a 9-to-5, you are asking quite a bit of someone who has a meeting at 10 a.m., a commute, maybe a baby at home, a shift they can’t leave, a deadline on a work project.

And let’s be real: More often than not, that imaginary endlessly available parent is Mom.

No, it’s not just the events; it’s everything around them.

When it comes to a midday school event, the obvious problem is that it requires someone to take time off work to attend it. For me, I’m able to work remotely enough that I can attend and then just work later at night. But I’ve spoken to other parents with in-person jobs, like being a paralegal, where attending the event means using a PTO day.

And that’s just the obvious, visible piece of the workload. Because that school event may begin Friday at 12 p.m., but the work started three weeks earlier when the email about it landed in your inbox. That event was read, added to the calendar, then someone had to figure out how to attend, rearrange their work schedule, perhaps make arrangements for the younger sibling. Oh, and probably sign and send back that dreaded form.

“What makes school-related labor so exhausting is that much of it is invisible,” says Margaret Quinlan, professor of communication studies and director of Health & Medical Humanities at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, and co-author of You're Doing it Wrong! Mothering, Media, and Medical Expertise. “It’s not just classroom volunteering. It’s remembering spirit days, monitoring emails, signing forms, arranging childcare, coordinating transportation, fundraising, and managing deadlines. Mothers are often expected to serve as the family’s project manager, and that work is rarely acknowledged as labor.”

The distinction really matters, because it’s all too easy to talk about parental involvement simply as a question of whether a parent wants to participate - not if they actually can. I think back to my daughter’s second Halloween in daycare, when parents were invited to participate in a quick trick-or-treat in the middle of the day. My husband and I both went, along with I’d say ¾ of the other parents in the classroom.

And my heart broke for the kids whose parents didn’t come — not because I didn’t understand why they weren’t there, but because I saw how disappointed they were that other parents were there while they were not. I know there will be a time when my kids will be in that situation, and it’s not easy to see what it looks like.

Schools still are designed around an “ideal parent”

And that’s the thing: Many families simply don’t have an adult who can reliably appear at school or daycare during business hours. They could be a single parent, or a parent with an inflexible job. Perhaps they work in retail, where taking two hours off in the middle of the shift isn’t an option.

Yet the schedule of school life can often seem like it's designed around an entirely different family. “Many schools are still built around the image of an ‘ideal parent’ who has flexible work hours, reliable transportation, internet access, and time to engage throughout the day,” Quinlan says. “That model doesn’t reflect the realities of most families. When schools rely on that assumption, the burden shifts from institutions to parents, particularly mothers.”

That burden isn’t only logistical; it’s emotional. In You’re Doing It Wrong!, Quinlan and Dr. Bethany Johnson examine the ways mothers are increasingly expected to become experts in every aspect of their children’s lives. School is one more place where that pressure shows up. “Schools often assume a highly organized parent can track schedules, monitor communications, and respond immediately to requests,” Quinlan says. “In practice, that expectation falls disproportionately on mothers, whether they work outside the home.”

And when you inevitably miss something, it’s easy to feel like you failed. I still kick myself for the time I missed the deadline on my daughter’s Scholastic Book Fair campaign, despite the fact that it wasn’t even a blip on her radar. You can remember 999 things, but it’s the one miss that seems to stick with you.

So, what are parents supposed to do?

The frustrating answer is that parents can’t individually fix a system that still assumes someone will be available in the middle of the workday. But, personally, I am trying to get a bit more comfortable questioning some expectations. And, perhaps more importantly, I am trying my best to stop treating each and every request that comes home from school as something I need to personally fulfill.

“One reason mothers find it difficult to push back is that school involvement has become tied to ideas of good motherhood,” Quinlan says. “Many women worry that saying no to one more volunteer request or fundraising obligation means they are failing their child, even though they may be setting healthy boundaries around an unsustainable workload.”

I am well aware I won’t make it to everything, especially as my kids get older and more involved in various activities. I know there will be missed deadlines, events, or games I just won’t be able to move my work schedule to make. And, while it’s easier said than done, I’m trying my best to get more comfortable with that.

Quinlan is right that we shouldn’t tie up the idea of being a good mother with always being available... and it’s advice I’m trying to take to heart.