Policies that make it more difficult for working parents to work flexibly should be reviewed and updated

See The Future of Working Parents by Vanessa Brown Calder of Cato. Excerpt:

"For instance, local labor regulations that make workplaces more rigid to “protect” workers make work less flexible and therefore make work and family life less compatible. Meanwhile, federal labor regulations, like the Fair Labor Standards Act, that require workers be compensated for overtime with payment rather than through future time off also make balancing work and family life more difficult. These rules should be reformed to accommodate families with needs for flexible work.

Additionally, regulations that limit gig economy work make flexible work more difficult to come by for parents, especially since parents are more likely than non‐​parents to take gig economy jobs. The Biden administration has said that it is “committed to ending the abusive practice of misclassifying employees as independent contractors, which deprives these workers of critical protections and benefits,” but this is the wrong approach. The administration should consider that a majority of gig workers in a variety of surveys prefer the independent contractor designation that makes flexible work possible and are happy with their employment arrangement.

Moreover, home based businesses must be legalized. Currently, zoning bans and restricts many types of home based businesses, and additional permitting and licensing requirements create barriers to entrepreneurship. As one example, the cottage food industry took off during the pandemic, but in some states like Rhode Island, moms can be shut down for selling something as benign as home‐​baked cookies. This is unfortunate because selling food online—and working from home more generally—are opportunities for working parents balancing childcare needs, families balancing elderly care needs, and for recent refugees and immigrants.

Occupational licensing laws also need reform to accommodate flexible work. For example, certain states require lawyers to have practiced full‐​time for a series of consecutive years to be licensed, and this penalizes working parents that want to work part time or take time off in order to balance family and career. These rules should be reformed to accommodate working parents and workers of all stripes.

This is only a sample of the many reforms that should be made to increase flexible and remote work opportunities, and as workers and companies are rethinking expectations around work, policymakers should rethink the many policies that prohibit the flexible and remote arrangements that working parents crave.

If what parents say is any indication, flexible work is the future. Policymakers would be wise to clear the way for it."