Here's the lowdown
Fifty-nine percent of surveyed firms said caregiving had definitely or possibly contributed to turnover, while 53% said it was affecting the leadership pipeline.
Weaver offers adoption assistance, fertility support, paid leave for both parents, recharge days and unlimited time off.
Other firms send busy-season gifts to employees' children or host baby showers, but the Accounting MOVE Project says firms also need to track whether career programs lead to advancement.
A baby shower is nice. Backup is better.
Busy season and parenthood compete for the same thing: hours in the day.
A firm can celebrate a new baby, send a gift and say all the right things. None of that changes a deadline when only one person knows the client.
That is the tension inside working-parent benefits. Some support helps people feel seen. Other support changes whether they can keep doing the job.
The firms getting serious about the problem are building both.
Start with the operating model
Accounting is unusually hard on parents because its pressure arrives in predictable waves. Tax deadlines, long hours and an hours-based performance model can turn one sick day into a staffing problem.
Weak cross-training makes it worse. If work cannot move without a scramble, a flexible schedule exists mostly on paper.
The first layer of parent support is operational. More than one person should understand key clients. Managers should know who can cover a deadline. Employees should be able to use leave without returning to a pile of work that nobody touched.
This is not as cheerful as a family picnic. It is also the part that makes the other benefits usable.
Build benefits for different moments
Working parents do not face one single problem.
Some need help becoming parents. Some need income and time after a birth or adoption. Others need a schedule that can absorb school closings, medical appointments or a brutal week.
Weaver's benefit mix shows the range. The firm offers adoption assistance, fertility support and paid leave for both parents. It also offers recharge days and unlimited time off.
Each benefit handles a different piece of the problem. Fertility and adoption support can reduce a major financial burden. Paid leave creates protected time. Recharge days and flexible time off can help after an employee returns.
The catch is access. A generous policy is not generous if employees believe using it will cost them the next promotion or the best client work.
Small gestures still count
Culture is not a substitute for capacity, but it is not meaningless either.
Gallagher, Flynn & Company sends gifts to employees' children during busy season. The gesture recognizes that long hours affect a whole household, not only the person entering time.
Bartlett, Pringle & Wolf hosts company-wide baby showers for expectant mothers and fathers. Coworkers contribute gifts and celebrate together.
Those ideas are inexpensive compared with paid leave or fertility support. They can still tell employees that parenthood is normal and visible inside the firm.
They work best as the top layer, not the foundation.
Measure careers, not program attendance
The 2026 Accounting MOVE Project found that 59% of firms saw caregiving definitely or possibly contribute to turnover in recent years. Another 53% said caregiving was affecting the partner and leadership pipeline.
That makes this more than an employee-perks discussion. It is a succession problem.
Mentoring and career coaching may help, but counting enrollment does not show whether the programs worked. Firms need to look at what happened next.
A practical scorecard can compare promotions, major assignments and retention for employees who use parental leave or flexible schedules. Firms can also track how many return from leave, how workloads change after they return and whether strong performers keep moving toward leadership.
The goal is not to force every parent onto the same timeline. It is to catch an accidental penalty before it becomes a resignation.
The real benefit is a job that still works
The best working-parent package has several layers.
It helps with the cost and time of becoming a parent. It gives people room when family life becomes unpredictable. It makes families visible in the culture. Then it checks whether those employees still get a fair shot at important work and advancement.
Firms can copy a benefit list. The harder job is redesigning work so employees can actually use it.
If busy season depends on parents being unavailable to their families, a gift will not fix the system. Cross-training, real leave and measured career outcomes might.
