Best (and Worst) States to Be a Working Mom

There’s never a dull moment when you’re a working mom. Some days you’ll feel like a multitasking rockstar, and others you’ll want to crawl under the covers and never come out. Even when you’re on top of your game, sometimes the day’s events are largely out of your hands. Like when your babysitter has to cancel at the very last minute, and you now have to figure out a way to pick your kids up from school and be at an important client meeting with your boss at the same time. Point being, juggling work and kids is hard. And depending on where you live, you may be making it easier (or harder!) for yourself.

WalletHub did a deep dive to discover the best and worst states for working moms. The conclusion? Massachusetts mothers have got it the best, while Louisiana leaves a lot to be desired. Here’s a look at some of the other high- and low-ranking contenders:

10 Best States for Working Moms

1. Massachusetts
2. Rhode Island
3. Connecticut
4. Vermont
5. District of Columbia
6. New Jersey
7. Minnesota
8. Wisconsin
9. New Hampshire
10. Wasington

10 Worst States for Working Moms

1. Louisiana
2. Alabama
3. South Carolina
4. Idaho
5. Mississippi
6. Nevada
7. Georgia
8. West Virginia
9. Texas
10. Arizona

To lock in those results, WalletHub compared every state (and the District of Columbia) across three key areas: child care, professional opportunities and work-life balance. To evaluate those dimensions, it used 16 metrics that fell into one of the three categories.
Child Care

• Day care quality
• Child care costs
• Pediatricians per capita
• School systems
• Share of nationally accredited child care centers:
• Number of childcare workers per total number of children

Professional Opportunities

• Gender pay gap
• Ratio of female executives to male executives
• Median women’s salary
• Share of working women living with economic security
• Share of families in poverty
• Female unemployment rate
• Gender-representation gap in different economic sectors

Work-Life Balance

• Parental-leave policy score
• Average length of a woman’s work week
• Women’s average commute time

Click here to see the full results.