Mental distress diverges by gender across the transition to first parenthood and is not consistently buffered by working from home

This study asks whether working from home cushions mental distress across the transition to first parenthood in the United Kingdom. Drawing on nationally representative panel data from the UK (2010–2024), this study uses person fixed-effects event-study models to follow employed women and men who are observed childless before a child appears in the household and who are aged 18–45 at that transition. Post-transition distress trajectories differ by gender: fathers’ distress rises and remains higher, whereas employed mothers’ distress is lower at the interview when a child is first observed, a pattern that cannot be separated from selection into continued employment.

Working from home before that interview does not jointly distinguish these trajectories. Among mothers who remain employed, contemporaneous working from home is associated with lower distress two even waves earlier and with a less favourable gap at later waves; that timing pattern is descriptive, and working from home after the birth can itself respond to care or distress. Neither the distress trajectories nor this remote-work pattern reappear around subsequent births among existing parents.

Understanding Society is an initiative funded by the Economic and Social Research Council and various Government Departments, with scientific leadership by the Institute for Social and Economic Research, University of Essex, and survey delivery by NatCen Social Research and Kantar Public. The research data are distributed by the UK Data Service. We thank two anonymous reviewers and the editorial team for their comments.

Tohoku University FY2026 Open Access Article Processing Charge (APC) Support Program. Department of Sociology, University of Oxford, 42-43 Park End Street, Oxford, OX1 1JD, England, UK Department of Sociology, University of Macau, Av. Padre Tomás Pereira, Taipa, Macau, China Department of Political Science, University College London, Gower Street, London, WC1E 6AE, England, UK Department of Economics and Management, Tohoku University, 27-1 Kawauchi, Aoba-ku, Sendai, 980-8576, Miyagi, Japan The authors declare no competing interests.

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If your intended use exceeds what is permitted by the license or if you are unable to locate the licence and re-use information, please contact the Rights and Permissions team. Cui, S., Guo, Y., Chen, L. et al. Mental distress diverges by gender across the transition to first parenthood and is not consistently buffered by working from home.