Mothers' and Fathers' Desire to Work Remotely Differs

A survey by the Ifo Institute and Stanford University has found that childless men have a bigger desire to work from home than fathers. Among 16,422 college-educated workers surveyed in 2024 and 2025 in 40 countries, fathers on average said they would like to work remotely 2.57 days per week, surpassed by childless males slightly at 2.62 days.

While the difference is only small, mothers - for comparison - have a much higher desire than women without children to be working from home, as it presumably aligns with their higher share of care duties better. Mothers on average said that 2.66 days of working remotely would be ideal for their current situation, while for childless women, this number was 2.53. Another factor influencing the bigger gap could be children still staying mainly with the mother in many cases for separated or never-dating couples.

Overall, the survey also showed that people worked from home less than they actually desire. In 2024, the average person in the study only worked from home 1.27 days per week, down from 1.33 days in 2023 and 1.61 days in 2022 - still far below perceived ideal times working from home. Above-average work-from-home allowances could be found in English-speaking countries at around 1.6 days a week, led by Canada and the United Kingdom. Respondents from a sample of African countries worked around 1.4 days from home, for example in South Africa or Nigeria. In Europe, Finns and Germans worked from home a lot, but the continent on average only gets to log in remotely 1.2 days a week as other Scandinavian countries as well as Greece and Turkey actually worked remotely below the survey average. In Latin America, the gap between women and men working from home was the widest, again hinting at unequal care work splits.