On the Wednesday, September 2, 2026, episode of The Excerpt podcast: USA TODAY Government Accountability Reporter Erin Mansfield examines why mothers have spent less time as White House press secretary, the family toll of the job’s relentless demands and what their experiences reveal about the pressures facing working moms.
Hit play on the player below to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript beneath it.
This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.
Podcasts: True crime, in-depth interviews and more USA TODAY podcasts right here
Dana Taylor:
The White House Press Secretary is one of the most visible and demanding jobs in American
politics. Long hours and constant scrutiny, along with little separation between work and home can take a toll, especially for parents of young children. What can their experiences tell us about the demands of high pressure careers while also raising a family?
Hello and welcome to USA TODAY's The Excerpt. I'm Dana Taylor. Today is Wednesday, September 2, 2026. Karoline Leavitt is now leaving the role months after having her second child, saying she wants more time with her family. As USA TODAY Government Accountability Reporter Erin Mansfield found, other recent press secretaries who were mothers have described many of the same pressures. Erin, thank you so much for joining me.
Erin Mansfield:
Thank you for having me.
Dana Taylor:
Erin, what did Karoline Leavitt say about why she's leaving, and what did you find when you looked at her decision alongside other recent White House press secretaries?
Erin Mansfield:
So Karoline was very clear that she wanted more time with her very young children. And for context, her most recent child is about four months old and then she has a toddler at age two. And she was very clear. She said she just didn't think she could keep doing the job and be the mom she wanted to be. So it was essentially, some people will call this kind of a downshift, some women call it that, but she really spoke very clearly about how much she loves her kids and she was very, very clear that she wanted more time with her kids. And she also told NewsNation that Donald Trump deserves a press secretary who can be on 24/7, and that wasn't her, and also that he was supportive of her decision.
She actually made that decision, but she wasn't the first one to say something like that. In fact, she was the fourth in about seven years. Most recently, Jen Psaki, who worked under President Joe Biden, she had told Fox News in 2022, she had a 4-year-old and a 6-year-old at the time, she didn't want to miss soccer practice or ballet recitals. Before that, Stephanie Grisham held the role for a short period of time. She was a single mom, at the time had a 9-year-old. She said she didn't want to work 15-hour days. And then before that, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who was actually the very first mother to serve in the role, she left to move back to Arkansas and was very clear she's a mother first, and even though she loves her job, she needed to go.
So what prompted me to write this story was that I've been covering these White Houses for quite some time, and I was noticing this trend and I felt like it was something we could write about and that readers could relate to.
Dana Taylor:
Your analysis found that the mothers who served as press secretary stayed in the job for an average of 18 months, about a year less than everyone else. What stood out to you when you looked at those numbers?
Erin Mansfield:
What stood out to me really was the difference. It was a pretty simple average. Sean Spicer, who I'm not sure if you remember, but he had a pretty short tenure. There was an SNL parody about it, kind of unforgettable if you were keeping up with the news at that time. I went back in time. The position's been around for roughly a century. The people who served before Sarah Huckabee Sanders served a little under three years. But what surprised me was just the really big difference. I thought I was going to find something that maybe was a couple months difference or something like that, but it's over a year on average. But what stood out to me was just the gap, the number of it. I really thought I was going to see a month or two. I just like looking in Excel and do the equals average, maybe I won't find anything. And then it started getting, "Whoa, this might be a thing."
Dana Taylor:
Economist Claudia Goldin uses the term "greedy jobs" for careers that demand extraordinary amounts of time and availability. What does the day-to-day reality of the press secretary job look like?
Erin Mansfield:
So it does seem to be something where you're on for 15 hours a day, even if you're able to do some of that work remotely. They tend to talk about getting up at 5:00 AM. For example, I spoke to Ari Fleischer, who served under George W. Bush. He actually hadn't had children yet, but he said he needed to get in, in order to go to a 7:00 AM meeting. A lot of administrations do that, a senior staff meeting at 7:00 AM. Of course, a lot of parents are already up by then. They're getting their kids ready for school, but that's a pretty early first meeting of the day for a lot of people, especially if they have a 9:00 to 5:00 schedule.
Also, being available in evening hours. I spoke to Jay Carney. He had young children when he took the White House Press Secretary job under Obama, and his big boundary, it seemed like, was to try to get home by 8:00 so that he could put his kids to bed. He said they probably went to bed around 8:30. And that's a very special time for a lot of parents, but that's late. School gets out for a lot of kids around 3:00. A lot of parents deal with working till 5:00 even find that difficult. They also travel with the president, which means if he's going to a NATO conference or some big negotiation on a nuclear treaty or some kind of defense issue, they're going to be gone for probably days at a time.
Dana Taylor:
Sticking with that, several of the press secretaries you spoke with talked about missing bedtimes, school drop-off, sports, ordinary moments with their children. What did you hear about the effect, the toll that that had on them?
Erin Mansfield:
What stood out to me was ... There were a couple things. Kayleigh McEnany, who was a press secretary at the end of Trump's first term, she really wanted to emphasize for other mothers that you can do it even though it's hard, and she gave a really specific rundown. She talked about crying on top of her baby, but then her baby smiled and she said it was essentially like a sign from God saying, "Go do this." Jay Carney made a comment that it could make you not feel like a decent parent, and a lot of parents deal with that, dealing with the guilt and wanting to be there for more.
But what seemed to be the biggest solution for these women was to just leave the job. Jen Psaki works for MSNBC now, our lovely competitors. Kayleigh McEnany, she only left because the term was over, but she's at Fox News. And Karoline Leavitt is going to Trump's super PAC. So it's not like they're not working, they're just working in a job that doesn't have quite the same pressures and constant availability that their old job did.
Dana Taylor:
Erin, as you mentioned, fathers with young children have held this job too. Were their experiences similar? And if not, why is that, or in what ways were they dissimilar?
Erin Mansfield:
It was very similar in the idea that as parents they wanted to be home. Jay Carney did make a comment that he could imagine it'd be more difficult for a mother. I will say one of the things that they did that ... Whether it was a man or a woman, they talked about these gestures that their bosses made for them to really try to make their family more involved in their job and make it less hard. Jay Carney told me both his kids have ridden on Air Force One and Air Force Two. They've been to Camp David. Kayleigh talked about how she was very stressed out in the White House watching a clock tick down and Mark Meadows literally said, "Go. Go see your family." Or Donald Trump saying something to the effect of, "Why did you come on this trip? Send one of your assistants. You can go be with your family."
So I thought that was really interesting is no one was saying bad things about their boss. It was more just the structure of the job, and they appreciated these gestures from presidents and chiefs of staff.
Dana Taylor:
The scrutiny didn't end when these press secretaries left the White House for the day. What did you learn about how the visibility of the job affected their lives outside of work?
Erin Mansfield:
Sarah Huckabee Sanders had a very interesting speech at the Republican National Convention in 2024, where she spoke about being the third woman and the first mom in the role. She got kicked out of a restaurant in Lexington, Virginia when she was in that role. She also made a comment about having a parent at her son's preschool spit on her car. And then Karine Jean-Pierre, total other end of the political spectrum, talked about how she was in a box when she was at the grocery store, when she was anywhere. And that's another piece of this, is that they are the face that you see on TV, that you see for the administration. If you don't like what the president is doing, they're the biggest face you can associate with it, and that seemed to be part of this too, in addition to the long hours.
Dana Taylor:
Your story also points to a much larger workforce trend. Researchers found about 341,000 mothers left the workforce between July of 2025 and July of 2026, and caregiving was cited as an important factor. How does the experience of these White House mothers fit into what's happening to working moms more broadly?
Erin Mansfield:
It was interesting because when I talked to economists or I talked to a workplace expert who trains businesses on how to make sure when people come back from parental leave they're still supported, it was almost like, "Yeah, that's what happens." It's more of an example of a trend rather than something brand new. And it's something that when you talk about this greedy work or these greedy jobs that take a lot of time, you might know someone who's an investment banker or they're in corporate law or just something really, really time-consuming where the more hours you work, the more money you make and you're incentivized to work a lot more time. And then a lot of mothers will say, "I have young kids," or teenagers with a lot of stuff going on, and they decide to step back from those roles. And this is really common, and whether you have a mother or a grandmother or an aunt or a friend who stepped back from the workforce to take care of their children, it's really common. It's really, really common.
Dana Taylor:
One of the workplace experts you interviewed said that there is a way to do it. So Erin, is there a truly sustainable way to do it?
Erin Mansfield:
Well, that would be the decision of a president, of a chief of staff who runs the White House, or if you're talking in the private sector, really of any manager or executive who is managing these people. But if you're talking about what the expert said to me or what the women who left this job ended up using, some things like remote work, some things like Claudia Goldin talks about replaceability. If you need task X done, do you need person A who has to get out or can you use person B? So it's ultimately going to come down to every individual firm, every individual employer, every manager, but there are economists who have come up with ways to at least soften the greediness or the demanding nature of these jobs.
Dana Taylor:
Erin Mansfield is a government accountability reporter for USA TODAY. Really interesting story. Thank you so much for coming on, Erin.
Erin Mansfield:
Thank you for having me.
Dana Taylor:
If you enjoyed today's episode, be sure to like, subscribe and share USA TODAY's The Excerpt. I'm Dana Taylor. Thanks for listening.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Why mothers are leaving one of Washington’s toughest jobs | The Excerpt
