Recruiting Moms to Senior Care and Assisted Living Facilities in 2026
Working mothers make up a large share of the senior care, assisted living, and broader caregiving workforce. Recruiting these valuable employees means understanding what this group needs and building a culture where they feel welcomed and valued.
A workforce built largely by women
Caregiving has long been a predominantly female profession, and current data confirms it. PHI reports that 85% of home care workers, 84% of residential care aides, and 91% of nursing assistants in nursing homes are women. The American Health Care Association puts the figure at nearly 90% across the roughly 1.5 million people working in nursing homes, and notes that the typical long-term care worker is a woman between 45 and 54.
Many of them are parents with children at home
PHI’s 2024 workforce report found that 31% of direct care workers are parents of children under 18, and 13% have children under five living at home. For a large part of your team, scheduling is not a perk. It decides whether they can take or keep the job at all.
Research on women working in healthcare, senior care included, groups their challenges into three areas: balancing work and family responsibilities, workplace issues such as a lack of supportive policies and gender equality, and stereotyping of working women. Employers cannot solve all three, but they can influence each of them.
Why flexibility is harder here, and why it still matters
Flexibility is a major factor in employment decisions for working moms, who are often juggling several commitments at once. Unlike desk jobs, which can move to hybrid or remote arrangements, most senior care duties happen on site. That can make flexibility feel out of reach, yet it can be the difference between a strong candidate accepting your offer and turning it down.
The stakes of getting this wrong are high. CNAs have the highest turnover of any nursing home role, at 42.34% in 2025, and in Q1 2026 about 88% of nursing homes provided less staffing than their residents’ needs called for. Every caregiver who leaves over a scheduling conflict makes that gap wider.
What flexibility can look like on a care floor
- Staff to reasonable hours. The simplest form of flexibility is enough people on the schedule that no one is routinely pushed into extra shifts or skipped breaks.
- Cross-train where you can. Many caregivers have their own specialties, but a degree of cross-training makes it easier to cover when someone needs to call out or adjust their hours, without scrambling the whole floor.
- Post schedules early and keep them predictable. Parents can plan childcare around a schedule they see weeks ahead. They cannot plan around one that changes the night before.
- Make shift swaps easy. Let team members trade shifts with each other, within clear rules, so a sick child does not automatically become a missed shift or a disciplinary conversation.
- Build a backup coverage pool. A small group of part-time or per-diem staff who can step in gives everyone else more room to breathe.
A culture of care for staff
Flexibility works best inside a broader culture of care that extends to the people doing the caring. Organizations that sit down with staff, including working moms, to understand and meet their needs are far more likely to attract and keep strong talent. Word travels quickly among caregivers about which employers treat people well.
Supporting moms beyond your own walls
Some of the pressures facing working mothers have little to do with any one employer and everything to do with larger societal expectations. A single facility cannot change that, but it can shift the needle a little. When enough organizations do, the whole profession becomes more welcoming.
If you are building out your team, Aspen’s recruiters can help you find candidates who fit your culture. And if you are a caregiver exploring your next role, Aspen works with candidates at no cost to you.
By Tom Zeleny, NHA