Early education teachers say their young students are arriving at school less prepared than expected for their age. And many of them are blaming parents.
In a 2026 national online survey of more than 1,100 early educators who work with pre-K through 3rd graders, conducted by the EdWeek Research Center, respondents gave their young students poor marks in a number of areas—from social-emotional skills to performance on basic tasks that signal age-appropriate independence. And survey respondents didn’t just check boxes.
They also had the opportunity to expand on their responses, and several did. Many comments, like this one, signal early educators’ frustration with what they perceive as a lack of readiness: “It often seems like our students have things done for them at home on a constant basis and are not taught independence: how to open age-appropriate food items, zipping/unzipping backpack, bathroom independence, etc.”
Remarks like this fuel the perception that “permissive parenting” may play a role, from skill deficits to behavior issues. There’s also some research suggesting associations between parenting styles and child outcomes. For instance, a 2025 report by Hungarian psychologists that examined 57 years (1966 to 2023) of peer-reviewed literature found a positive correlation between permissive parenting style and an increased risk of emotional dysregulation among children.
Early elementary teachers spend countless hours with their students, so their observations deserve attention—but they represent only one side of the story. What teachers don’t see is how families spend the hours outside of the school day. A closer look at the daily realities of many families with young children may reframe teachers’ perceptions of blame.
Families face tight schedules during school days
Like many modern two-parent households with young children, Seattle-based Kristen Thyng and her husband, Rob, both scientists, work full-time and share parenting duties for their two young children.
A typical weekday schedule looks like this: At 6:45 a.m., Thyng wakes up her 7-year-old daughter. By 7:30 a.m., she’s at the school bus with her 1st grader. She then returns home and gets her younger child ready for preschool, which they reach by 8:30 a.m. Thyng then starts her workday remotely.
Between 5:30 and 5:45 p.m., her husband returns home with both kids after picking them up from daycare and after-school care, respectively. Then comes dinner and bedtime routine, winding down around 7:30 p.m.
“Sometimes there’s not even time to read to them because we want to get them to sleep. So it is definitely very tight,” said Thyng, adding that she’s grateful her 1st grader hasn’t yet been assigned any homework. “I just do not understand how that’s going to happen. There’s just no time for that at all.”
How parents’ participation in the labor force influences time at home with kids
The tightly scheduled, time-constrained weekday routine that dominates the workweek for Thyng and her family is increasingly common as dual-earner households with young children have become the norm.
The cost of raising a family today often requires both parents in a household to work full-time. Data from the MIT Living Wage Calculator in 2024 indicate that dual-earning couples raising one child needed a combined wage of $86,459 to cover basic needs such as housing, food, transportation, and childcare—excluding savings for college or retirement.
As a result, dual-income households have become more prevalent. Employment rates among fathers of children under 6 have remained high at about 95%, while employment rates of mothers of young children have risen steadily.
In 1980, just under half of all mothers with children under 6 were employed; by 1990, it was 58%. In 2000, 65%. By 2025, that percentage rose to 68%. And for mothers of children under 3 years of age, labor force participation nearly doubled in recent decades—from 34% in 1975 to 64% in 2021.
In married households where mothers of young children are employed, the time that both parents, cumulatively, spend with children at home each day dips by about an hour, or 20%, according to data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ American Time Use Survey.
These details show why. In households where both parents work full-time, fathers spend an average of 1.54 hours daily at home caring for their children under 6. That drops to 1.13 hours daily among working fathers whose wives aren’t employed. Mothers with children under 6 spend an average of 2.3 hours daily caring for their children at home if they work full-time, and 3.49 hours daily when they are not employed.
Parents and teachers of young children are stressed
Modern technology—emails, text, video calls—has blurred the boundary between work and home, making it harder for parents to fully disconnect when they are at home.
This contributes to stress. Nearly half of all parents regularly feel “overwhelming stress”, according to data from the American Psychological Association. Work-life balance presents one of the most common challenges for millennial-age parents.
So significant are these concerns that the former Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy in 2023 stated: “It is up to us as a society to not only recognize parenting as important, but to make supporting parents a priority... It’s not an issue that can wait for five years—parents are struggling right now.”
Murthy suggested a range of supports, from better family-oriented infrastructures in communities to more flexible work policies for parents. But ultimately, he recognized that parents can’t raise kids alone. “...parenting at its best is a team sport. For thousands of years, people have done parenting together,” he said.
Stress affects teachers, too—even those who appear to be thriving. Katie Collins, a 1st grade teacher in Hoover, Ala., and 2026 National Teacher of the Year finalist, has considered leaving the profession despite her achievements.
“Teachers still feel alone. We are regulating very dysregulated children, and we’re dysregulated ourselves. We’ve got to understand and have real conversations about what is happening,” Collins told EdWeek.
Her perspective highlights a broader issue: Both parents and teachers are operating under sustained stress while caring for young children.
Regular, judgment-free conversations between educators and families could help bridge perception gaps—and better support the young children that both groups are working hard to care for.
