ABSTRACT Work and family responsibilities permeate many aspects of everyday life and this is particularly true for working mothers. The aim of our research is to analyze the role of the state and the employer in supporting work – family balance (WFB) through the lived experiences of working mothers in Lithuania, thereby shedding empirical light on the implementation of WFB policies in a post-Soviet context. Working mothers in Lithuania are unsatisfied with the idiosyncratic adoption of legal state support at the organizational level, with the domestic geographical challenges regarding childcare availability, and with the additional challenges to combine work and family facing single mothers.