ELIZABETH D. STEINER, ASHLEY WOO, SY DOAN
To Make Teaching
Sustainable, Help
Teachers Balance Work
and Personal Demands
Findings from the 2025 State of the
American Teacher Survey
T
here is a common perception that teaching, with its summer breaks and workdays ending
midafternoon, is a family-friendly job that supports work-life balance. Work-life balance
refers to the idea that a person has adequate resources to meet the demands and obligations
of both work and personal life. A mismatch between resources, such as paid time off, and
work or personal demands can lead to stress, difficulty coping, mental health concerns, and poor
performance of work and personal duties (Voydanoff, 2005).
In this report, we use the 2025 State of the American Teacher (SoT) survey to explore teach-
ers’ perceptions of their work-life balance, personal and work factors that are plausible drivers of
work-life balance, and relationships between work-life balance and well-being. We compare teach-
ers’ responses with those of similar working adults where possible to provide context for teachers’
responses. We focus on female teachers because they are three-quarters of the teaching workforce
and because of the documented, worrying patterns in their reported job stress and burnout.
Some inherent characteristics of teaching might make balancing professional and personal
responsibilities challenging. Teachers’ contracted hours, the in-person nature of most teaching posi-
tions, instructional time requirements, and limited planning time allow for minimal flexibility,
leaving little time for teachers to address occasional personal matters during the workday (National
Center for Education Statistics [NCES], undated; NCES, 2024; Lin, Parker and Horowitz, 2024;
Sheehy, 2025).
1
In addition, teaching, although rewarding, entails unique mental and emotional
demands, which can further strain teachers’ ability to keep healthy boundaries between their work
and personal lives and meet the demands of both (Liu et al., 2000; Smith et al., 2025).
Research Report
