What Jobs Have We Designed That Only Work When Someone Is Endlessly Available?

REST STOP #002 · 🚗 Lane: Relationships & Boundaries · Refocus

There was a season of my life when I could tell you exactly how full my calendar was. What I couldn't always tell you was where I fit inside it.

There was the workday. The meeting before the workday. The thing that ran late after the workday. The email that couldn't wait until tomorrow. The event that happened at night because, of course, that was when everyone else was available.

Then I'd go home. And home had its own schedule. Dinner. Homework. Practice. A child who needed something signed. A conversation that couldn't be squeezed into the seven minutes I had left before I needed to do something else.

Somewhere in there, I was supposed to exercise. Rest. See people I loved. Keep up with appointments. Think about my own future. Maybe even sit down without immediately remembering three things I'd forgotten to do.

I got very good at managing it. That's part of what bothers me now — because sometimes getting good at carrying something makes it harder to notice that you should never have been expected to carry it that way in the first place.

Flexibility Isn't the Same as Control

We talk a lot about flexibility, especially when we talk about women and work. Remote work. Hybrid schedules. Flexible hours. Compressed workweeks. And all of those things can help.

But some of the research I've been reading lately made me think about flexibility differently.

Pew Research Center's 2026 study of more than 2,200 working parents found that 71% said having flexibility over when they work their required hours would be highly helpful. Only 25% said they actually had much access to that kind of flexibility.

And the strain isn't evenly distributed. Pew found that 62% of full-time working mothers said balancing work and family responsibilities was difficult, compared with 47% of fathers. Pew's 2026 research also found that in many households where both parents work full time, mothers are still carrying more of the day-to-day parenting work.

Another 2026 study, led by Sacred Heart University professor Jeanine Andreassi, found something that caught my attention: schedule flexibility explained nearly 30% of mothers' decisions to stay in their jobs, while location flexibility accounted for less than 6%.

That distinction matters. Because where you work and whether you have control over your time are not the same thing.

You can work from home and still be expected to be available from the moment you wake up until the moment somebody decides the workday is finally over. You can work in person and still have a workplace that respects that not every meeting needs to happen at 6:30 in the morning or 7:00 at night. You can have flexibility on paper and very little control over your actual life.

A September report from the North Carolina Early Childhood Foundation highlighted another part of the same problem: many parents are expected to work early mornings, evenings, overnight shifts, or changing schedules at times when childcare simply isn't available.

Maybe the problem isn't always that women need more flexibility. Maybe some jobs need to be redesigned.

The Job That Never Stops Needing You

I think about this a lot when I think about school leadership.

A principal's day can start before students arrive. There are arrival responsibilities. Staffing issues. Parent concerns. Student crises. Meetings. Observations. Data. Instruction. Lunch duty because someone is absent. Dismissal. Athletics. Performances. Board meetings. Family events. Phone calls after hours. Messages on weekends. And underneath all of it is an expectation that the leader will somehow remain available enough to catch whatever the system drops.

I've lived versions of that. And I know there are leaders doing it right now — women who are responsible for hundreds of other people during the day and then go home to children, parents, partners, households, bills, practices, appointments, and another entire set of people who need them.

The problem isn't that they can't handle responsibility. They've already proven that they can.

The question is: why have we designed so many important jobs around the assumption that someone will always be available to absorb more?

We've Made Endless Availability Look Like Commitment

She answers at night? Dedicated. She never misses an event? Committed. She's always reachable? Dependable. She keeps everything moving even when staffing is short? Strong leader. She manages the impossible schedule without complaining? She can handle it.

But what if we're measuring the wrong thing?

What if commitment isn't how much of your life you're willing to surrender to prove that the work matters? What if a strong leader can care deeply about the work and have boundaries around when the work gets access to her? What if the system is supposed to carry some of the load too?

This is bigger than working moms. But women often feel it first.

Sometimes the Accommodation Isn't the Answer

We often respond to information like that with another support for the individual. Better childcare. Time-management strategies. Remote-work days. Productivity tools. Meal planning. More efficient calendars. Those things can absolutely help — I use systems because systems matter.

But there's a point where we have to stop asking how can she organize this better and start asking why does the job require this much of a person's life in the first place?

Childcare can help a woman stay at an evening meeting. That doesn't automatically mean the meeting needed to happen in the evening. A remote-work day can eliminate a commute. That doesn't necessarily reduce the amount of work sitting on her plate. A productivity system can help her get through 14 responsibilities more efficiently. That doesn't answer whether all 14 belonged to her. And AI may save her time on three tasks — but if the organization quietly fills that recovered time with five more things, we haven't solved the problem. We've simply made her more efficient at being endlessly available.

So What Would We Redesign?

I don't think the answer is that leadership should become easy. Some roles carry real responsibility. Some seasons require more. Emergencies happen. There will always be days when the work doesn't fit neatly inside the hours we planned for it.

But there's a difference between an occasional demanding season and a job that's structurally dependent on someone's willingness to have no real stopping point.

What if we looked at the role itself? Which meetings really require the leader? Which evening events need administrative coverage — and can that responsibility rotate? Which decisions have been centralized around one person unnecessarily? What happens when a leader is unavailable — does the system continue functioning, or does everything wait for her? Are there expectations we maintain simply because "that's what leaders do"? How much of the job is leadership, and how much is being the backup plan for every weak part of the system?

Those are uncomfortable questions. But I think they matter — because when talented women leave demanding roles, we often ask what would have helped them stay. Sometimes the answer may be more flexibility. Sometimes it may be better childcare. Sometimes it may be more money. Sometimes it may be better support. And sometimes the answer may be: the job itself had become incompatible with being a whole person.

The Women Who Stayed

I keep thinking about the women who stayed. The ones who figured it out. The ones who became incredibly organized. The ones who built systems. The ones who kept showing up. The ones everybody could depend on.

There's something worth honoring in that. But there's also something worth questioning — because I don't want the evidence that a woman can carry an impossible load to become justification for continuing to hand it to her. I don't want competence to become a trap. And I don't want endless availability to remain one of the quiet requirements for being considered serious, committed, or leadership material.

So maybe the question isn't how do we help women keep up?

Maybe it's: what would we redesign about work if we stopped treating unlimited availability as evidence of commitment?

I think the answer could change a lot more than our calendars.

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