The Motherhood Penalty.

Photo by Alicia Petres at Unsplash

Some of you may be familiar with the motherhood penalty. Or if not familiar with the term, you may have actually experienced it or are feeling it right now as the pandemic has caused over 3 million women to be pushed out of the workforce.

Simplified, the motherhood penalty, which was discovered after decades of research on working moms by numerous global development organization, states that a working mothers wage decreases for every child born.

Yes, you heard that right. A woman’s wage decreases for every child they have!

According to the International Labor Organization, in all regions of the world, mothers suffer a wage penalty and a decrease in earnings for each child they bear. On average, according to the OECD, the motherhood penalty amounts to about a 7% wage reduction per child in the world. 

In the US, motherhood wages decrease 4% for every child born.

Yes. 4%. For. Every. Child. Born. Its math. You have three children? Your wage then has decreased by 12%.

We know that part of this penalty is due to lost human capital, where some women take off time to have a child, or they choose a more “family-friendly” career. But, we have also come to learn that the “choice” that women make has a lot to do with the existing institutional and organizational frameworks that force that choice (i.e. lack of real flexibility, no childcare infrastructure, burden of unpaid work on women, existing pay gap, etc.)

But also, the motherhood penalty is systemic discrimination and bias both conscious and unconscious. Research has shown that people still see child bearing as an instability, that women are less committed to their careers when they become mothers, and would prefer to stay home with their kids over having a career. The waterfall effect to all of this bias is that women face stereotype threat at work and are regularly overlooked for promotion or given key clients, etc. This bias is termed “confirmation bias” by behavioral economists which means that employers expect that children will affect the work done by women … and therefore they are paid less.

It is also critical to understand the intersectionality of all this. The motherhood penalty is not evenly distributed along race or partnership type. This means that single mothers have a greater penalty than married mothers, and black and Hispanic mothers have a greater penalty than white mothers. So understanding this breakdown is really crucial to moving the needle in a more positive direction.

When you measure the pay gap between mothers and non-mothers (non-mothers are defined as women without dependent children) there is a drop in earnings after children. Which is also referred to as the “CHILD PENALTY”.

Below is a chart put out by the Economist that highlights data from a few countries in the industrialized west. It measures the pay gap between mothers and fathers. This is different from the gender pay gap, which measures the pay gap between ALL women and ALL men in the workforce. This chart below looks at earnings before and after children for mothers as compared to fathers.

You’ll see that even in some of the most family progressive countries such as Denmark and Sweden, there is still an earnings penalty for women who become mothers.

Ultimately, the gender wage gap is mostly a penalty for bearing children.

On the flip side which even widens the motherhood gap further is the fatherhood bonus. According to OECD data there is indeed a fatherhood premium which is a positive relationship between a man’s wage and the number of children he has.

Fathers see an increase in wages with each child they have. In the US, fatherhood increases men’s wages by 6% for every child. That is a gap of 10% in wages between mothers and fathers for the first child born. And (hold your breath) the gap widens for every additional child. 3 children? 18% bonus. 

Deep breaths, deep breaths.

The historical bias is that fatherhood signals to employers a maturity and stability and a greater commitment to the organization. After all, fathers are historically viewed as THE provider of the family. This is quite in contrast to how society views mothers and quite in contrast to the reality of a continued rise in dual working households.

The fatherhood bonus is also not evenly distributed across race, where black men receive less of a bonus than white and latino men. When you dissect the data further to account for education and occupational type, white men overwhelmingly receive the largest fatherhood bonus. So, again, it is critical to look at the intersectionality of the data.

SO, what does all this mean?

It means that while the wage gap globally is decreasing between men and women, the wage gap between parents (mothers and fathers) is INCREASING.

We are way past the time for change and while we need governmental policies to help alter this dynamic, organizations and their leaders have incredible power to shift the paradigm. 

Organizations and their leaders must act now. 3 million women have left the workforce since the pandemic, the gap is widening. Gender equality is at stake and everyone must care.