Having children isn't the only biological timing that's problematic for women. The prime years for education are also at the same time that women (according to the media and in the opinions of many men) are most physically attractive, 18-26 or so including grad school. It leads to some tough choices and situations. Spend time on dating, or focus on education? And you also get situations with disgraced professors like Florian Jaeger of Rochester, the subject of much recent news, who see (and treat) their undergrad and grad students as sex objects rather than primarily learners because their educational phase intersects with a phase when they are especially physically attractive to the men around them.
2
Should employers pretend that moms are exactly the same as non-moms? Or is it that we should make special allowances for them? (private areas for breast pumping; special days off for school activities, additional insurance premiums, etc.) Help me out cause it seems they want both!
So if they're the same, then we can count on them the same, right? Like when the teacher calls, is mom going to say, "sorry, I have a deadline at work" or is she going to go pick up her child & miss the deadline? My non-mom employees don't miss their deadlines.
And what about all that extra time off? Maternity leave, school plays, teacher conferences, soccer practice - everyone gets that time off, right? Oh, wait, that's just for moms (& some dads). And the non-Moms can make up the work in their absence, that's fair, right?
We assume that an employee is the same, mom or not. Unfortunately, it's just not true. When mom can't focus cause she was up all night with the baby or can't meet her deadline, her work suffers. Someone else has to pick up the slack.
Non-moms don't have these issues. We're the ones picking up the slack & still getting paid less! Thanks working moms! (sarcasm)
4
That "someone else" to pick up the slack needs to be FATHERS much more than they do now.
7
Perhaps we need to stop thinking of the time and the actions needed to take care of children not as some kind of indulgence for women but rather as a societal necessity in order to create the next generation of citizens. Why, exactly, should just a percentage of the population--almost exclusively women who have children when they are between 25 and 35 years of age, shoulder the responsibility and the loss of income that accompanies it--for making sure we have a supply of educated, healthy people who will take us into the future?
Do you want doctors and nurses and lawyers and, yeah, retail clerks and cashiers and plumbers and cops and teachers and IT workers and, well, just every kind of job that makes our modern society run to be carried out by healthy, educated, well-adjusted fellow citizens? Just where are all these employees of the future going to come from if women stop having kids? Just who is going to take responsibility for bringing them up if not women (and some men)? Where did this idea ever come from that parenthood is just fun and games for self-indulgent women who then burden their employers and their non-parent co-workers with all their outrageous demands?
And, oh yeah, I'm childless and I celebrate the work done by the parents in our society. My contribution to the future lies in the support I can provide to them, rather than whining about how "it's not fair".
21
But all my friends who have advanced degrees and had babies after 35 already earn more than our husbands.
5
The discussions of mandatory paid leave are helpful...but we need to keep in mind a lot of people of both sexes work for small employers. Often these organizations are are exempted from some labor laws. If you have 10 employees doing specialized jobs it is much harder to "save" a job for someone for 3-6 months than if you have 50 people with some cross training or duplication. If leave is mandated by law without some sort of financial compensation for the employer I predict we will still find employees reluctant to use it becasue it would stifle the organization and burden their fellow employees. Also, many employers would probably avoid hiring persons who have a high chance of taking leave. Not saying this ok, just realistic. Mandatory leave needs to have some government compensation for employers, especially small ones.
4
A lot of these comments miss the mark.
If I take unpaid leave, switch to part-time hours or stay home altogether, I know I will take a hit in pay. The problem is, when I retire, I get less social security. Women who leave the workforce to have/raise children get double-whammied.
A solution would be to NOT average in years of $0 income. Another solution would be paid maternity leave of, say, 3 months for the mother with an additional paid 3 months of parental leave to be split between the parents as they choose.
My nephew in Canada has a stay-at-home wife. He was still eligible, and took 3 months of paid parental leave when his daughter was born two years ago.
Other countries realize that providing for its citizens means the citizens put back into the system. Here we are taxed every which way, get penalized in retirement for raising children (daycare providers get paid to raise children but their parents don't),and everything is about money. MAGA = yeah right.
@Sam Russell commented that the divorce rate was lower in the 50's when men were the sole breadwinners and women stayed home. Um yeah, because women couldn't afford to divorce their husbands and No Fault Divorce wasn't a "thing" back then meaning there were only 3-5 reasons for a divorce.
15
Gender pay gap in the media used to imply differences in pay for the exact same job with the same experience and credentials. This is obviously illegal, if it can be proven.
These days however, the question of gender pay gap seems to be across the entire male+female genders, without regard to experience or time off. I've read articles where a man and women in the same role were paid uneven, foul was called, and it was anecdotally mentioned that he had 5 years more experience and was a highly valuable hire from a previous role. The article implied they should earn the same based on gender pay gap. In all my years working, someone with less experience doesn't command a higher salary because of gender comparisons. If a male has 5 years less work experience, has taken time off for family, he's in for the same difficulties.
It often seems with these stats that everyone is actually doing exactly what they'd prefer to do (staying home, working full time, whatever), and then complaining because of the obvious consequences. Then demanding they be allowed to do whatever they want to do, but still have all the benefits of the more lucrative choice.
4
"I've read articles where a man and women in the same role were paid uneven, foul was called, and it was anecdotally mentioned that he had 5 years more experience and was a highly valuable hire from a previous role."
Sorry, but I doubt you've ever read any such thing. All the studies control for experience and seniority, so your convenient anecdote is meaningless.
And, you, like the employer above, are treating child rearing as equivalent in terms of a choice but ignoring the fact that, as a society, we do not consider having and raising children as a valuable contribution to our country, certainly not when compared to going to work at a "real" job on a daily basis.
10
Thank you Annie. The way this country undervalued and outright abuses mothers who work astounds me. I’m currently in the thick of it, and this conflict has been a continuous source of frustration for me. Why do people now think that parenting is a luxury, that working women at all socioeconomic strata want the “benefit” of flexible schedules that allow for child rearing? Indeed misogyny, like racism, in this country has just gone underground.
4
Thank you for this fascinating article. I’m a 33 year old parent of a 2 year old working full time with a husband now earning $30G more than me and has been promoted twice. I took a year off because of postpartum depression and have found the rigidity of returning to work very difficult.
Why are women financially and professionally penalized when society assumes we will be the one to leave early when our child is sick anyway? Why can’t we get old gender norms to benefit us?
I can only imagine how hard it must be for single parents along the economic spectrum, especially for moms.
Many thanks for your reporting!
8
What do you mean by "old gender norms"? Women were even more disadvantaged by many, if not most, ways by the old norms than they are by the current norms.
3
@Juliana:
I was raised from age 5 yrs to 21 yrs by a widowed single father. His work shift lasted until midnight or later. He was up early in the morning to make breakfast and lunches for us. No one gave him any lee-way because he had to raise two children on his own. When we were sick, or had a school meeting to attend he could not be there. Even single fathers didn't get a break. He was an amazing man. People always assume that women are the only workers who have issues with needing time off from work. I was a latchkey kid before this became a popular phrase. The point: women are not the only ones who have issues with employers when their children need them. By the way, he never missed a day of work, and we were a one parent working class family without a car. Very unusual for 1960. I wonder how it is handled now.
3
I'm thinking that we need a society like the Dutch model, where one person works full time and one works pull time.
It would look like this: https://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/03/magazine/03european-t.html?pagewanted...
It just isn't possible to have a sane lifestyle with two working parents and kids.
In some cases, it may even be the man that works part time, particularly when the woman works in a high powered career. This would allow some women to advance as well as men. It would involve separating benefits from work.
Dutch women are happier:
https://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/06/arts/06iht-happy.1.6024209.html
Furthermore, the Dutch have done very well in terms quality of life rankings in the OECD:
http://www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org/countries/netherlands/
A big issue is giving workers high enough salaries to allow for one person to work part-time in a family.
This would allow the women who have high powered careers to advance, at least in families where the man works part time. In other families, I think that the woman will work part time due to a preference or for practical reasons.
Also, it's interesting that the pay gap is closed more effectively for women that earn more. Considering Generation Y women go to university at higher rates and graduate than men by about a 3:2 ratio, the pay gap may resolve itself.
4
This theory doesn't hold when looking at female physicians, the majority of whom take little maternity leave. The average pay gap for specialists, per the Medscape study published yesterday, is 95k, for Primary Care, 36k.
3
Physicians also have their children later in life...but they can afford quality childcare, and may have shift options.
3
Regardless of how able they are to take the pay hit, I bet most female physicians would still rather have that extra 35-95k back.
4
I would not care about the pay gap if the principal earner commits to make it up in case of divorce or death. Either insuring the person who stays at home or paying for life insurance or any other solution. It is not about the numbers as many people are mentioning here but about the uncertainty of being left without economic resources when the stay at home parent gets older or divorced.
12
This article chose to frame the gap as between spouses, so I can understand why you are viewing it this way. By when your equal male coworkers is paid more than you year after year until retirement, do you careful about wage gap then? I know I didn't commit to my career to end up second-class. As stated in other recent NYT articles, men who work flex hours to tend to family needs are not penalized financially.
12
There are couples now who arrange prenups with exactly that in mind.
1
There have certainly been enough men caring for children in the last decade to include them in this article. The results for men who stay home to care for children or the elderly are similar. What the NYT needs are more articles pressing for changes in how HR handles anyone with a gap in their career. The low labor-force participation rate for men indicates that many men never return to the workforce after a period of unemployment.
Too many people, female and male, end up in the zone where they have too much experience to get hired for a near entry-level position, yet their experience is too stale to get hired in a more experienced capacity.
14
The simple and effective solution is higher taxes on men coupled with cash payments to women. Simple concept.
1
According to the article that's more less what is done in Sweden and the same sort of long-term wage gap exists there also.
1
Perhaps more women than men are enjoying the opportunity and privilege of bringing up their own children.
7
Twenty five and under gives women time to make up salary and promotions lost when time is taken to have children. Closer to 40 they're more financially secure (can afford more reliable child care) and are much higher up the ladder for easier re-entry. Makes sense and is consistent with I've seen and experienced.
6
From another perspective on women's equality,
"Now" that women have made A Job an essential reality of feminine identity:
Back in the bad old sexist pre-60's, in the iconic nuclear family: Father, Mother plus Children: one Earner (most likely the Male partner) could support a family.
Now in the modern, post Reagan America, the typical nuclear family requires that both Parents
work full time. In short, two full time salaries (at a minimum of average 80+ hours) are necessary to pay the bills, not the 40+ hours average of pre-FEMINIST EMPOWERMENT. That is, in reality, the FAMILY Pay gap in our new 21st Century of Inequality for all families:
The middle class, the working class & of course, the empoverished lower class are all encumbered and exploited by this absurd increase in the COST of Just GETTING BY, subsidized by the illusion of the Credit Card Economy of too big to fail LOAN SHARK Banks. Making America Greater???
3
Yes, G-D Forbid a mother actually takes care of and raises her child instead of competing with her husband for the same job.
Young men, MGTOW
5
That child has a father, too! MGTOW = deadbeat dads?
5
Why would a woman be competing for the same job with her husband? I know exactly one couple where both people have the same job.
Thankfully, like the Shakers, MGTOW is a self-solving problem. Hopefully we at least get some decent furniture out of it again.
4
This gap is also the key to women's lower Social Security qualification. Other countries do not count the years that women/parents take off to raise children as part of their salary average that determines social security benefits. That alone would help reduce poverty of elderly women, even with the current pay gap.
14
Child care is so expensive that many women cannot afford to work -- especially if they have a second child -- they don't make enough to cover the expense of daycare.
16
Ding ding ding! After an 8-year gap in employment to raise my kids, when I look at the wage available to me and do the math for expenses.....I’m looking at taking home less than $1,000.00 a month. When I take in to account the lifestyle/family sacrifices that come with working full-time I always conclude it just isn’t worth it.
For the right amount of money it might be worth increased stress levels, losing a weekend day to accomplish deferred errands and meal preparations, and a loss of family time and togetherness.....but that amount of money is a LOT more than what I would pocket by going back to work while the kids still require childcare.
It does get very demoralizing when it settles into you how very little motherhood is valued. And then you are chastised for not simply being beatifically grateful for having the privilege to stay at home. But as someone else already mentioned, it’s not that simple. As the non-working parent my financial situation becomes dangerously precarious if anything happens to my husband or to our marriage. So, guess what, it is also a privilege to work within the system that recognizes your work as valuable and compensates you for it and sees you as an asset rather than a risk.
3
Lester Thurow made this exact point in the New York Times in 1981. Thurow, who died in 2016, was often criticized by quantitatively-focused economists and would probably have felt vindicated by this latest research.
https://www.nytimes.com/1981/03/08/business/why-women-are-paid-less-than...
4
Who is forcing women to do most of the child rearing? Employers? Their husbands? "Society?"
Perhaps the reason many men don't cut down their working hours to help with child rearing is that he will make more money for the family if he continues to work full-time. If the new mother cuts down work hours to part-time, and "widens the pay gap" with her husband, the family as a whole has one full-time income + one half-time income. If both parents take time off, they will have two half-time incomes. The former will equate to more net income.
It is irrational to expect a family to bring in less net income in the name of statistical equality. Women are perfectly free to insist that their husbands do half the rearing. They often don't, because it wouldn't benefit them or their children. What good is "closing the pay gap" when it results in less money for the family?
An underlying assumption in my take here is that women, for cultural and biological reasons and in conjunction with their husbands, often choose to be the primary child rearer in the early years of a child's development. This has been the case throughout history, and will not change. Nor should it in the name of simple statistical equality. Individual families are of course free to choose how to divide the labor, and it is no accident that many choose to divide it the normative way.
8
I think this is true. It reflects my own family and choices. But there are structural elements of our work culture that make it harder for women to re-enter, compared to other countries, and also make it less likely for men to take some time off even if they want to (and even if it benefits the family). It will benefit everyone and our economy if this is examined and addressed. I probably would have taken less time out, for example, if my maternity leave had been sufficient in the first place or if childcare were more affordable. And then women take a double whammy when their social security benefits are calculated using those years of zero or little salary as part of the average. Totally horrible and not what other countries do. Our economy can't function without families growing new workers, so why do we throw most of the economic burden of that on young parents and women?
10
Thanks for your thoughtful comment!
How exactly is it harder for women to re-enter the workforce, except to say that their new position and salary might reflect a gap in their work experience, and thus they might then be a few steps behind those who have worked continually during that time? And would this not also be the case for men who take time off?
In general, my solution is this: have as many babies as you can afford when you can afford to have them. If one chooses not to do this, then he/she is putting upon others to support his/her children in one way or another.
One question you have to ask when discussing this issue is, "at what cost?"
Who is going to compel child care providers to do so at a reduced price? If government steps in, what evidence do you have that it will be able to administer such services more efficiently and cost effectively than the marketplace? Is it the government's place to compel companies to sacrifice efficiency to subsidize people's personal choices?
I agree that the way social security is administered is a disgrace, but that's a discussion for another time. :)
3
If you look at it within your own marriage or relationship I can understand your view. I’m thinking of it differently. My peers-all men have stay at home wives. I do not and further my husband works. I have never worked part time but I still don’t think my pay has kept up with my peers even though I have remained as committed and engaged as before Children. This is what is hard to swallow. In fact when I tell people my husband works I feel it provides an incentive to pay me less-he’s making money too! If I said he was out of work I think I would get higher raises.
14
A survey conducted by three political scientists at Yale offers one explanation of why “the group of women who had the biggest post baby pay gap … was, paradoxically, women who earned more than their husbands before having children.” The results of the survey, of alumni and students of 28 business schools around the world with work experience in 109 countries, suggested that many employees in the corporate world feel that senior management in their workplaces view childcare as primarily a mother’s responsibility, even if they themselves would be interested in sharing the responsibility more equally.
Companies can counter this perception by supporting fathers who may want to be more involved in childcare, and creating a culture that supports all employees seeking a more positive work-life balance.
8
Link to the survey is here: http://advancedmanagement.net/about/women-global-workforce
1
As a society we should ensure that equal work (including quality, quantity, efficiency, etc.) is rewarded equally, regardless of gender.
However, once that issue is solved I don't see why we need top down solutions to the issue discussed in this article. Namely, it is each couple's responsibility to choose how many children to have, when to have them, who is the primary caregiver, etc. Out of 100 couples there are probably 100 different approaches to those decisions, as it should be. Every couple should make the best decision for their family based on their particular circumstances. The rest of us should mind our own business. The fact that in the majority of families the woman is the caregiver, and therefore takes a hit in her career earnings, should not be viewed as some suboptimal outcome, but as a rational choice that the two best-informed people on the matter make.
Furthermore, it is the responsibility of the two people looking to make a commitment to each other and to any children they plan to raise, to make sure they have chosen a life partner in whom they trust to make those decisions with. If they don't have that, there is no amount of engineering that society can do to help them anyway.
9
Much of this comes down to gender roles, which as little as many would like to admit it, are nearly universal across human cultures and at least partly innate. My fiancé and I are both 25-35 making our way up in our careers and are just starting to talk about children. She currently makes more than I do, though I will soon surpass her.
One of the first topics she brought up was “asking me” if she could quit her lucrative job and be a stay at home mom. She is one of the most productive members at her company and has risen through the ranks. I was not just surprised but almost offended as I would then have to work more hours and spend less time at home. She just had an urge to stay home and raise her kids, whatever the consequences. To me making that same offer would be unimaginable: I worked hard to get where I am so I could provide a good life for my family.
We must strive to obtain greater equality in the workplace and end discriminatory practices. I suspect, however, that progress will eventually be stymied by human nature. Women have performed the bulk of child-rearing and Home-making for hundreds of thousands of years: that is not a ship easily turned.
15
The problem isn’t having children or having them at a particular age or time in one’s career. The problem is that the husbands or male partners don’t help out equally in caring for the children. If they did, we would either see an equal pay hit across genders after having a child or no pay hit for either gender after having a child. Don’t forget that for almost every woman in the workplace who had a child there likely also a man in the workplace who also had a child.
14
And another problem is the lack of help from anyone else with the kids, be it extended family members or high quality and affordable childcare from a non family member.
3
Readers who think working mothers would prefer to be at work rather than home with their kids are utterly wrong. Of course we would rather be with our kids. We just don’t have that option.
We work because we need to make money to take care of the kids. Some of us are the primary breadwinners. Some of us are the sole breadwinners. We’re not doing this to feed our radical feminist egos. It’s sad that some people are so cynical that they think otherwise.
What galls us precisely the fact that we KNOW exactly what we are sacrificing and that we are not being fairly compensated for it.
16
Please don’t make blanket assumptions and statements about working mothers. Your experience is yours. I’m a working mother who would prefer to be working so I could demonstrate to my children now I achieve my dreams and contribute to society and their life opportunities. I also love spending time with them. Many of my female colleagues also love working and parenting.
18
Yes you are being fairly compensate4d for it. You are getting time with your children, which is part of the whole point of having children.
3
I hear you. However it is not the responsibility of the employer to pay to raise children. That belongs to those who made choice to have children and I especially refer to men who father children and many times are guilty of placing women in unwinnable positions.
4
Only in NYC does it take an article that Midwestern common sense already understands. While you all are discussing the obvious, we are making America great again.
6
I don't think so!!
5
This is a joke, right?
6
Oh please don't bring that up again. I come from the Midwest too. You don't speak for me.
4
Women bail on their careers after children because it is too difficult to have 2 full-time jobs that both operate as though the other did not exist. Most highly educated, intelligent women do NOT want to be stay-at-home moms. They just say they do because it is more socially acceptable than saying I can't handle a demanding job and kids (which is entirely reasonable). If women could acknowledge the truth that serving two masters is impossible in our current culture, we could probably get some things to change. But instead they smile and lie, "Oh I wanted to be at home with my kids. I can't get this time back...blah, blah, blah"...all lies....their brains are rotting and they know it. But they need to convince themselves their sacrifice is worthwhile. I hope it is.
17
I’m educated and intelligent, and I love being home with my toddler daughter.
3
I'm happy for you.
Just please don't expect job parity if you return to the workplace. The rest of us stayed and earned it.
4
I certainly wanted to stay home with my kids, at least until they were in school. There are hard parts to being a stay at home mom as in any job but I never felt my brain was rotting! I had time to read books, which I love, and I found caring for my kids more interesting than answering client after client call.
My children encountered some problems further on and that is doubly difficult. It’s hard to stay home with a chronically sick child because often I could literally not leave the house! I did chafe at that but yet I think helping my children through those bad years is the most meaningful and valuable thing I have ever done.
1
Most of what this article states is probably true. My question: Why is it a problem?
I think I am (and have been) quite fairly compensated for the work I do, in line with similarly skilled colleagues of either gender. That's the important
point for me.
The fact that I may have had less career ambition when we had kids at home is not at all a problem in my view.
Sharing child rearing and household responsibilities is important, but striving for a pure 50-50 balance in everything really isn't the goal. Optimizing overall outcomes for our family is.
13
I had my first child after age 35,when I was already established in my career. The pay gap b/t me and my husband was in reverse. I made more. But the reason my pay (and our household income) never suffered had nothing to do with parental leave but with childcare. I could afford high quality, home-based alternate care for my children. They have not suffered and I was not impoverished because I had to stop working. That is the crux of the issue and the dirty little secret that these studies ALL prove out but never address head on. Women who pay someone else to provide childcare so they can work are stigmatized by a society that walls off nuclear families from the rest of the world and accords the pinnacle of virtue to mothers who do NOTHING but care for their offspring. Why do we need studies to prove this has a negative impact on a family's economic status? Child care gurus who shame those of us who maintain financial equilibrium while also providing income for childcare workers (a career that deserves higher social status and better pay, by the way) are guilty of perpetuating the myth that ONLY biological mothers are fit to give loving care to their children. Absolutely untrue. Mothers who work are still mothers and still raise their children and do not miss their development because they pay someone else to feed, diaper, potty, nap, dress, and provide child-centered, age-appropriate activities for babies and little children.
30
Amen!!
3
I wish the study had used same sex female couple as a control in this study. What happens to the pay of the two same sex female partners in relation to one another and in comparison to mixed gender couple parents. I realize that the data pool is very small to use same sex female couple but it would help in understanding if the pay differential is gender based or based on being our of the labor force to raise children.
5
It’s sexism plain and simple, not just from men, but also from women who do the promoting. It would also be interesting to include with this article some data on the pay gap for women that don’t have children.
https://nwlc.org/resources/the-wage-gap-the-who-how-why-and-what-to-do/
3
This article should be titled “People who are out of the labor force for a long period of time earn less than people who are not.”
This has nothing to do with sexism, and there is no reason this “gap” should be closed. If women spend more time at home with kids, of course they will earn less. Why is that a bad thing? Shouldn’t parenting be celebrated? Why are we measuring income, when parenting—the most important job in society—is unpaid?
14
The trouble is that women are suffering financially, and therefore so are families. One other solution would be to reimburse parents for this childcare (or indeed care of any family member who needs it) through, say, a tax credit or outright cash, and counting this towards Social Security.
1
It’s bad because it leaves women financially vulnerable (which can trigger or exacerbate other vulnerabilities) despite the fact that they are doing socially necessary work.
Bravo to women who choose to be with, nurture, give security, and show love to their children, even if it means the cogs of society, into which they are supposed to mesh, will turn ever so slightly slower. There is nothing more important than family, and the love a child learns from its mother the most important thing of all. It is no shame for a woman to be in a partnership with a man who earns more - it is a partnership after all. A big thankyou to mothers who choose, full time or temporarily, to give their time, energy and love to their children. in the end, nothing counts as much. It is a shame on our so-called "civilised" society that we try to monetise it. It is maybe time to relook at the "benefits" that extreme feminism has pressurised modern women to accept as the norm
6
Bottom line - the so-called gender pay gap is NOT due to discrimination! So where is the retraction of all of those prior articles to the contrary?
11
This is an interesting though not surprising article, given that many of us are spending less time at work during those childhood years. I was concerned with some flawed thinking, that mothers should reduce the amount of time they spend with their children (as in Scandinavia) in order to decrease the salary gap. I guess I don't see it as an either/or and am saddened to think that a parent would spend less time with their child (or a country would legislate for less time away) so that salaries could increase. This doesn't seem the right answer.
2
The wiring of men and of women are so very different in regards to childbearing and child rearing. Most men have no clue about the tremendous amount of work, attention, joy, satisfaction, and persistence involved in either endeavor until after a child is a real presence in their lives. Most women have at least some sense of the possibility that a new life would be formed within them - and that this baby could be a marvelous little one to nurture and to protect. Yes, some parts of being a father and being a mother can be learned, interchanged or transferred. However, the fundamentals of who we are as people have a limited malleability.
3
" It analyzed earnings for opposite-sex, married couples who had their first child between 1978 and 2011,".
The time period analyzed here is very important. Gender norms have changes a lot between 1978 and now.
Jobs have also changed a lot. Being present in the office used to matter. Now it does not. At my work both men and women go get their kids from day care or to take them to appointments. No one cares as long as the work is done on time when you do it.
8
I simply do not see any sort of penalty in pay among married couple my age where both spouses are educated professionals.
I am 35. I have always out-earned my husband as have many of my friends, whether they have kids or not (I do not). Most people in my social circle started having kids in their early 30s and all the women went back to work, since they earn a substantial amount of the family income and no one wants to stay home anyway.
8
Our competitive capitalism, with stock prices dependent on ever increasing profits every quarter-year, means that all workers are overworked. This will end badly with many many more jobs being changed from human workers to robotic workers. It's incredibly difficult now to have a family and a home life and still have a good job. Both men and women suffer from this. Soon there will be very few jobs except for slaving for the oligarchs.
7
"It's incredibly difficult now to have a family and a home life and still have a good job"
The only way to make it work is to get excellent qualifications, wait until mid-late 30s and have only 1-2 kids.
10
One common reaction to this article is that it is the mother's choice to decide to focus on parenting, and parenting is more rewarding than any career ever could be. While this might be true for some women, this is not always the case. Some women might be obligated to take on more parenting responsibility because their husband or family expects it. Also, while this might work out if the husband earns enough, I have seen cases where the women then loses much of her decision - making power, or loses her standards of living upon a divorce or death of the husband. The key is to make a mutual decision with eye towards contingencies in case unexpected happens.
Finally, the fact that there is a larger wage gap if a woman has a child between 25-35 than otherwise probably shouldn't be taken as a go ahead for having children much younger or older. Rather, women (or men) having children then should be aware they are going to face long term income disparity if they decide to take time off, especially if they take a long leave. I feel that some career minded women, especially ones that are doing well in their career, believe that they can pause their career and continue where they left off because they had been doing well.
7
Very misleading headline that smacks of blaming the victim. In my experience, women's childbearing and commitment to their families are often used by employers as an excuse to advance the men they already prefer and value more. And there's a cycle at work too -- when talented, hardworking women realize that the deck is stacked against them at work no matter what they do, they may invest more of themselves in family than career, and their male partners may feel more compelled to strive toward higher pay.
At the end of the day, why do articles like this seem to assume that work and pay are the highest goals in life? Some day, maybe American employers will treat men and women equitably. But the years go by, and if one wants a family, one deals with the situation as it is today. I only get one chance to be a parent and cherish my children. If I dropped dead tomorrow, as one colleague has said, the job posting to replace me would be published before my obituary.
29
I had my children after 35 and found this article to be somewhat true for my family, but there are variables in the research that can’t be accounted for. In my family, a developmentally disabled child and another with generalized anxiety derailed my career temporarily because my husband’s brought in so much more money and because we knew I was better suited to be the primary handler of our childrens’ issues. Each family has its own challenges, needs and rhythms, and makes its choices accordingly. It’s a difficult thing to generalize.
7
I never had children and experienced the same pay discrimination and gender-related career limitations that other women do.
28
This is absolutely true. Many employers just use motherhood as another excuse in their arsenal of excuses not to value and pay women equally with men. Gender bias is pervasive in the American workplace.
11
Babies need a person to catch their eyes and blow on their stomachs and show them things and talk to them. Such people are more essential than most careers. Like clean water, clean air, and other essential undervalued things.
24
This article states the biological obvious. Having children is really, really, really hard. It is a life changing experience. Being pregnant is physically taxing, along with many Dr. appts., and for most women reduces productivity. Then after birth of the child there is the physical and emotional recharge. Compound this with having two-three children. At the same time parents may be getting old and need help, and seem to demand the daughter's help.
So it is not surprising that many women put their career on the B-track. Hence, after all this I make more than my wife even though she has more professional acumen.
15
this article raises some interesting questions about life. most of us would love to spend time with our children rather than climbing up some meaningless professional ladder. in the end family is what matters, not doing some tedious and ultimately more trivial job. if a family is financially lucky enough that they can have a parent at home that person, man or woman, should remember how lucky they are to have that privilege.
20
What seems obvious, especially if you look at the success of children whose parents are supportive, is that child rearing is a job and those doing it should be paid. Society reaps the benefits, so society ought to cough up enough to cover the pay gap (I might add some metrics to this; ensure the kid is being fed, clothed, kept healthy and see if the school agrees the child is being supported at home for educational goals). Good parenting is hard work. Hard work should be compensated.
20
I see many commentators recommending that men become the stay at home parent. From what I have seen this is not a panacea. Mothers often want to be the primary parent and derive a lot of gratification from doing so. Fathers often do things very differently, including maybe not providing as much support to their partners as traditional wives often do.
A lot of this article and the comments focus on how much women lose out of their career, but they neglect the relationship and loyalty we gain from our children. Sure I may not have the security of a huge career but I know that two very competent wonderful people will be around to help me in my old age (my kids). I think that is the ultimate old age security program!
And, although I personally may have lost earning power, as a team I know my husband and I have gained together. We trust each other and work together. Many of the comments here talk of women’s vulnerability in the face of divorce. I would like to note that the divorce rate for college educated individuals stands at something like 15% now. Even if a woman is abandoned or forced into divorce, generally she will get assets in a divorce. Also husbands know that children tend to be very loyal to the mothers they spend their days with (see ‘parental alienation’). I don’t think most men are in a hurry to get divorced!
4
I’ve been thinking about this for a while as I'm in this age bracket and aware that I both want to have children and still have a meaningful career. The article only touched on it but perhaps the more important solution rather than adjusting leave for women is a greater effort to enable men to spend more time in the domestic sphere. If it was more socially acceptable for men to also be working flexible hours to take care of kids then the playing field could be more even. Otherwise I see no way women are going to win this game.
26
Ah, Steph -- you are very young. I am not. I was a young woman during the feminist era of the 70s. This sort of thing was proposed THEN -- that men contribute equally to child rearing, including taking UNPAID leaves and working part time. That never happened. It is not as easy as liberals think to change age-old customs and habits.
2
This article rings true! I had my children at 29 and 31. Up until that point, my husband and I made the same amount of money. I continue to work full time with the same employer but my last promotion was TEN years ago (I was 31 and hiding my second pregnancy so it wouldn’t affect my chance at the promotion). While my income has stayed the same over the past decade, my husband’s has climbed significantly - he has almost doubled his annual salary. Because I took extra unpaid time off when the kids were babies, we fell into the routine of me being in charge of medical appointments, school liaison, etc. If a child gets sick or the school calls, it’s almost always me who leaves work to attend to them. My work hours are framed entirely on the school day and getting kids fed after school, overseeing homework and playing taxi driver for evening sports practices. My husband can work whenever he wants or stay as late as he needs to. It makes sense because he makes more $$ and receives an annual performance bonus. I guess I’m fine with it, and I do believe you need one parent around after school engaging with the kids and keeping an eye on things. But if you had told me 10 years ago that my career would stagnate (it has), I never would have believed you because I was raised in the “you can do anything” era. My kids are thriving and my marriage is happy, but I feel stuck and unsatisfied in my job. Reality = women can’t do/have everything all at once, and that’s okay. Great article!
44
Ditto.
2
And I noticed -- and you should have mentioned -- you LIVE IN CANADA, which has a mandatory one year paid maternity leave for all women. Yet your outcome is identical to that of an American woman. Why is that?
4
My Ivy-educated attorney wife got married at 35, had her first baby at 37, and still makes 30% less than her male coworkers.
Women just get paid less for the same work.
Her female coworker pointed this out, and was immediately fired. They did give my wife a 10k raise, see just to prove it doesn't exist. The men are still working less and earning $30k more.
62
Why is she still there? Find another law firm. If a professional does not leave over blatant inequities, why not? Isn’t that what lawyers do for clients? If she cannot find a better salary at another firm, is she in fact getting the market rate for her performance and potential?
11
I'm a female attorney mom from a T4 law school, and it's not so simple. I've read several, detailed reports by Harvard statisticians about law firm pay, and there are disparities nearly everywhere. In a nutshell, male and female associates receive the same base salary, but men tend to get higher discretionary bonuses than women. For partners, there are typically few (or zero) women on firm compensation committees (which decide partner comp), and male partners are given more money than female partners who bill the same amount of hours. The reports also discuss disparities between men and women in law firm succession planning (determining who gets to inherit clients from retiring partners), as well as disparities in who is given plumb assignments, client contact, and training/mentoring. I've practiced law for 12 years at 2 different law firms, and these reports reflect my lived experiences and my personal observations. So, like everything else, the law is not a perfectly efficient marketplace, wherein leaving would solve the problem.
5
If she is working same amount of billable hours and brings as much revenue to law firm as her male colleagues, she should be earning the same as the men there. With all the salary information more transparent now days, women can negotiate better; equal pay needs to be demanded!
I love the idea of working and having a husband at home to be the primary caregiver for our children. However, I don't often see men give small children the close attention, eye-to-eye interaction, and developmental activities that women do.
Girls are trained from a young age to babysit and help with sibling and infant care. They see childcare and child education modeled by their preschool and school teachers, most of whom are women, and by their own babysitters and caregivers, also women. Boys don't get that kind of education or modeling when they are young.
If we want men to give quality childcare, they need to receive training and practice from childhood like girls do.
10
This is a terrible generalization and couldn't be farther from the truth.
3
It’s no paradox at all. Any woman who earns more than her husband envisions that if he is left in charge of childrearing, she’d come home from work to find the kid playing a game of Find Papa’s Cigarette Lighter while he and his unemployed friend are sharing a bottle of scotch.
10
It is not children, but rather being out of the work force that is the real determiner. And of course having children is a choice in today's world, not a requirement. More evidence that there is little gender bias in employment especially in those areas that require a lot of education and experience.
3
Wake up America, Suporting those who raise the next generation has insurmountable economic advantages. This unpaid labour if done correctly should be compensated, like in all good companies, women and men who raise children are benefitting All Americans. It takes a lot of work to raise well adjusted citizens.
10
It is compensated, by a spouse who supports you, the benefits of your children's love, and many other ways that are not easily valued in money. And yes don't have children if you won't or can't raise them properly, simple solution in a world that is over populated already.
17
Health gaps matter too. Pregnancy, childbirth, sleep deprivation, and then catching illnesses from your small children can all add up in terms of workplace effectiveness.
Soldiering on to the office while treating post-partum depression and experiencing illnesses that might have led one to use a sick day in the past but now one doesn't because precious leave has to be saved for major illnesses or when the kids are sick...it all adds up.
Women need more time to recuperate and adjust, plain and simple.
25
The problem is this: When my husband told his boss he wanted to take 8 weeks from for leave (using his sick/vacation time), she said she’d never had a “man” ask for leave for a new baby. Because the only day care we could find (even after looking extremely early) wouldn’t take our baby until she was 6 months old, that pushed the responsibility of taking more time off on me, the woman. I am glad he pushed back and took most of that time anyway. Until men are considered equal caregivers of children, and our workplaces allow and encourage that, we will continue to have this problem.
57
Absolutely! And we have to remember what it is we are really working for. Your job is there to provide the means to raise a family and do the other things you want in life, it's not an end in itself for which all else should be sacrificed.
13
So true! My husband also ran into similar resistance. He dug in and found out that his employer had been giving fathers advice that was not compliant with the FMLA and took that time off. He also took two months off after I went back to work after our first. He also had more sick leave so in the first few years he usually took off when the kiddo was sick. His early involvement kept me from falling into the trap I see in some comments here. Men are capable of caring for babies, eye contact and comfort. Sharing responsibility from the get go sets up a healthier family dynamic.
15
Maybe that’s how you feel about your job. But I work for a mission-driven non-profit, and I love it. So to be even clearer, the problem was sexist expectations at my husband’s workplace that shifted the childcare burden disproportionately to me.
5
I've read a lot about this wage gap "issue". I put it in quotes, not because I debate whether it exists, but whether it's an issue. To me, children have always been the root cause of it. Many, many women still view spending time with their children as more important than careers. My own wife was adamant about being a stay-at-home mom, against my personal wishes. I have numerous male friends whose wives have better educations than them, who made more money than their husbands did before children, who nevertheless CHOSE to give up career tracks to raise their kids. If women who don't want children (a minority) find themselves unfairly stigmatized because so many of their peers choose to scale back their hours or exit the work force entirely after kids, can you really blame their employers? One female poster listed a common female point when dropping out, "why should I give all my salary to a day care?" and suggested that those continued hours would pay off later (as they do for men) after years of uninterrupted work. She has a point. But who can criticize a woman for choosing to spend more time with her kids? It is a trade-off, but it is a choice, one that's largely made by the women themselves.
6
So she just quit even though you did not want her to? Imagine if that went the opposite direction.
I have male friends who are extremely unhappy in their marriages because their wives quit working after having a kid and this is not want they wanted. They feel stressed from being the only provider and do not like that risk. They don't find it rewarding to have to slog at the office all day while wife gets to stay home and enjoy the children.
5
In all this, no mention is made of the fact that while equality of income is desirable, the level of the combined income is far more relevant to the quality of life.
Husbands giving up a third of their working time to look after house and kids may lose more than what the wife will make extra by having more professional time available
6
My 22 year old soon to be college graduate/law student self reads this and wonders if I should be freezing my eggs, if I should be pursuing jobs in the private sector or the public, and how to explain to my father that he probably won't have a grandchild by the time I'm 30.
I know that I want both a successful career and the opportunity to have children, and my decision making now and in the coming few years will greatly impact my ability to do both.
I also know that none of my 22 year old male peers have to make these calculations. It's a given for them that they can have both.
56
And try to remember that statistics like these have almost no applicability to persons, you are unique and your circumstances are different than those in this "study". And yes males make similar decisions, just not with the same issues. Fathers usually give up those activities with other single males, like sports or partys.
4
Good point. Young fathers are frequently amazed about everything they have to give up. Think of King Leontes and how it made him crazy! I'm watching my son-in-law grow through this now. And I remember how I felt--that I'd been tricked by evolution and biology! That my freedom and my greatest pleasures were now denied me. That my wife did not, could not, understand. That I was a remote planet in an outer orbit in our family.
By this time in my life, I've realized that sacrifice is part of transformation and growth, that life is necessarily suffering as well as joy. That below the obvious pleasures or wealth and income are deeper fulfillments, hard to describe but more fully real.
Not all values are economically calculable, and not all satisfactions are pleasures. Life looks different on the downslope side. Love is the path, but it doesn't pay in cash and it is not necessarily fair. But it is love, and I would follow it a hundred lifetimes over.
3
Is it a given that men can have both? There is the stereotype of the father who misses all his son's little league games because of work. That stereotype is played out in reality as well. According to Pew, men and women tend to spend about the same number of hours per week doing some combination of child care, housework, and paid work. However, men on average worked 43 hours a week, but spent a mere 7 hours with their kid. An hour a day with one's kid (assuming most parents would rather spend time with their child than go to work), seems like very little work/life balance to me. For reference, women work an average of 25 hours/week and care for children 15 hours/week.
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/06/15/fathers-day-facts/
4
Very interesting article. It appears I'm one of the few women who was able to have children between the ages of 25 and 35, continue working and not have my pay affected in comparison to my husband's. However, I am unique because I was in the United States Army, as was my husband, which only offered 6 weeks of maternity leave. Once that time was up, I went back to work full-time and was fortunate to have a wonderful network of care providers and family members who assisted with childcare.
I think there is some validity to the author's argument that reducing the amount of time a woman takes off after having children can certainly contribute to more income equality. Also, I was in a career field (military) that publishes its pay scale, which is tied to rank and time in service. There are no bonuses, and aside from a few opportunities to be promoted earlier than one's peers (typically 2-3 in an average career), promotions are fairly predicable and happen within an entire cohort of one's peers, all based on when one joined the military.
22
Few??? I bet there are a large number of them, this is statistics and without the distribution means almost nothing. Not to mention the raw data and how it was obtained.
1
I am a woman in my early 30s and I had both my kids in my late twenties. I actively chose to drop down to 25 to 30 hours per week (rarely up to 40 depending on business need). I work at a family-friendly company, but I had to write a business case and start part time on a trial basis. Five years later it still works great. I am very fortunate I got into a professional career in my early twenties right after college and worked extremely hard to get where I was before I had kids. My husband will always make more than me due to his career choice, but I would NEVER trade the moments I have had with my kids. My husband works 60 hrs/wk and can't work less, so relies on me a lot. I know many parents who are not as fortunate as us though. We need more support for working moms and dads and more options for professionals to drop down to part time regardless of the reason (taking care of parent, writing a book, pursuing outside hobby). I am so devoted to my company and work so hard because I am so thankful they have worked with me.
9
I made the same choice you did, and it did work for me. Where it goes south is if/when the marriage blows up and the woman does not get a settlement that compensates for the career sacrifice or the unpaid labor. I know several women who put their careers on a back burner, as I did, but were impoverished by divorce while their husbands maintained their pre-divorce income and lifestyle.
23
Do men who take time off between 25 and 35 also suffer a decrease in earnings?
5
I bet few men do that, some are forced to due to unemployment and I bet they do suffer similar if not worse.
2
If we want no disparities in pay and genuine equality of income, then we have to stop letting people make choices. They will inevitably make choices on the basis of the different values they have that lead to different life outcomes.
To get what we apparently want would take a massive amount of social control, a history-changing loss of liberty, and radical redefinitions of justice and fairness--to allow us to discriminate effectively enough to achieve equality. The managerial revolution and the social engineering bureaucracy that has now taken power in many of our institutions is heading us away from liberty (including freedom of speech) and toward stricter equality, and even sameness.
We need to think clearly about what levels and kinds of equality we want to control for and how much liberty and justice we are willing to give up to get that kind of equality. Getting agreement on basic income and health care for everyone could go a long way in slowing down the steady erosion of liberty that threatens us.
15
Again with the assumption that salary = worth as a human being, and its corollary tenet that the work of a homemaker is valueless. Along with the assumption that daycare is better at raising my children than I am.
50
Parents who work also take care of their children and domestic life!
10
There is absolutely no evidence of any negative outcomes for children who go to daycare.
5
To many women who waited “too long”to have a baby and then found out it indeed was “too late” - my deepest condolences. Just when we think we’re doing the right thing sometimes, Mother Nature becomes cruel.
14
The pay gap stat commonly cited aggregates all jobs in the US. It's not a job-by-job statistic. It does not state, for example, that female attorneys make less than male attorneys. The oft cited statistic instead states that women earn less than men when you pool all jobs. More women are nurses than are doctors in the USA; more women are teachers; and otherwise choose lower paying jobs in disproportionate numbers. In countries with the least sexism this still holds true, suggesting these job selections are largely by free choice.
And if you rule out the outliers at the very very high and low ends, the gap nearly vanishes. This is bcs a handful of men earn billions, the Zuckerbergs and Gates of the world, and this throws things off. If you want to study the gap study it in that very top niche; that's where it exists meaningfully. If you eliminate it there you may help 10 or 12 women because that world is extremely elite and comprised of only a handful of people.
And of course, yes, if you want a child, biology presents pressure for women that men do not face.
Any discussion of the 'pay gap' and what to do about it, can't offer meaningful steps forward unless it is an honest discussion based on verified data rather than misleading narratives. Almost no one I have met realizes this 'gap' stat aggregates all jobs. That appears to be by design (design of those pressing the inequity of the gap). I followed the stat upstream to its governmental source and discovered this. Try it.
11
It is good for us to understand the entire parameters of this issue. Even if we decide that it is a reasonable tradeoff that a salary hit accrues to whichever parent takes time off mid-career to raise kids, it is better to know exactly what and why.
That way, every parent goes into this with eyes open. There should be no hidden trip-wires or barriers, such as not applying the same opportunities ( i.e., career benefits and penalties) equally to dads and moms, based on the choices they make.
I will say, however, it is a short-sighted decision for any society not to do everything it can to support the optimum health and development of a strong next generation. People who somehow think they don't personally have a big stake riding on the quality of every kid growing up in America right now are very wrong.
13
The child wage loss issue is just the tip of the iceberg. Our entire capitalist economy has little to no value for human life or human wellbeing. We're constantly forced to choose between doing the right thing and doing the financially rewarding thing. Even just trying to eat well is expensive, because the profits of fast food companies are valued more than public health. Schools suffer because low taxes are valued more than smart children. Ad revenue is valued more than quality TV programming. And on and on it goes.
16
I'm sorry, but did I miss the part that explains that the United States is the only country in the developed world that doesn't provide paid maternity leave to women? How would that help women's earnings? Having it guaranteed that they can return to their jobs without penalty in pay, and that they would receive their pay while on family leave?
Did I miss that critical piece? Or did The Upshot just conveniently leave that out? Or is it that important polices like this one advocated by Democrats just somehow wind up getting ignored by this conservative column?
The Times should answer those questions.
25
Yes, you did miss that.
"One surprise about the recent round of research is that the findings have been so similar in the United States and family-friendly Scandinavia. The two have very different economies and family policies, yet in both places, women’s pay plummets after they have children. Scandinavian nations have generous paid parental leave as part of federal policy, while the United States government offers none.
It might be because both types of policies — no paid leave and very long paid leave — lead women to stop working. Economists have found that moderate-length leaves of several months are ideal for women to continue working."
11
I would really like to know what happens with same-sex couples who have children. Do both salaries drop? Just one? Neither?
I realize there's not a lot of data, but even a little is better than none.
9
I have 3 young kids, 2 of them born when I was in this age range ( #3 was born when I was 38). You know what? I would MUCH RATHER have my 3 kids, born at that time in my life, than my old career in NYC back. Yes, I quit to stay home. Yes, if I ever do go back, it will be part time and at my leisure (I have a professional license with which I can have a private practice.)
Just this morning I was chatting with two other moms (one with two kids, the other with three, like myself) about this. We all have advanced degrees and dropped out of the workforce in our early 30s to be home. We are very active in our kids' school and in the community.
Every one of us said that IF we go back eventually, it will be something low key or part time.
We're all HAPPY with this. This is what we WANT.
Stop framing this as just a problem. For women who do want to balance a strong career and family, we need strong social supports. But for a lot of women, the ability to cut back on work and be home with their kids is a PRIVILEGE, not a problem.
48
Yes, there are those of us who have done just what you have done: advanced degree, left workforce to raise kids... but we have spouses who can carry the household expenses with their income and support our choice to do just that. We have choices... until we don't.
Sacrifice or no sacrifice, we are privileged and clearly not the majority.
What remains to be considered is the majority and what their reality looks like. Further, we must consider that our lives can change at any moment where our choices become very limited.
Consider the affect of death/disability of the working male spouse and/or divorce on household income. The odds of the remaining female spouse becoming impoverished greatly increases based on time off from career, lack of parity in pay, pressures and demands of single parenting, and chronic illness. This is by no means a comprehensive list.
Buying life insurance, disability insurance, and being awarded alimony are of paramount importance. However, these instruments may only blunt the economic impact of lost income. Based on these studies, I would surmise affording this coverage is not the reality for most families/women.
14
So basically you wasted your education and that slot could have been taken by someone serious about the field, a career and contributing to the world.
6
I'm glad you're happy. I was happy too making another choice (I worked).
But here's the difference - I'm not vulnerable to the unhappy realities of life, notably the death or disability of my husband, and/or the dissolution of my marriage. And another thing - when my kids head off to college in only three precious years, I won't suddenly have an empty nest and no career.
Believe me, things look a little different when you're in your 50's.
5
It's a parent tax and in our culture, women tend to be the primary parent. At my last job, I was paid significantly more than my male counterpart because he was very involved in his kids' lives and I didn't have kids. There is nothing wrong with this tax. Everything in life is a trade off. We all make choices in our lives, choices that have consequences.
9
It's having babies between 25 and 35 that is 'problematic' ? That is exactly the period when most women are most likely to want to have babies, for health, education and financial reasons. In other words, if you want to be paid what your education, experience and abilities should bring you, don't have babies. And the rest of us should not expect to receive an old age pension.
8
What's problematic is needing two incomes just to make ends meet, when one parent working was sufficient in the 1950's. Decades of special interest corporate capitalism and Reaganomics have destroyed our standard of living and created this problem out of thin air. Where's the outrage about that?
27
Unfortunately, our expectations are different than they were in the 50's. The "normal" house is far bigger. Everyone in the family now expects their own car. I could go on... The fact is that we have fallen into the bigger/more is better trap, and have had to work more to try and keep up.
3
Somehow this article loses sight of the fact that life is not a predictable event. There are no guaranties. There are no rules that dictate we all have a high powered “Career”. I am livin very comfortably, though neither my husband or I ever had “high level positions”. We preferred to remain well paid workers - steady work, steady income, live within that salary until retirement. Yes, there was a gap. I also had the sincere enjoyment of raising our children (which like any job can sometimes be unpleasant or boring).
So long as one can provide for a pleasant (not necessarily rich) lifestyle, maybe high powered jobs are not even desirable. We once had comparable salaries, no serious pay gap and no children. We also had no appreciable time together or to enjoy our money. When I became pregnant the first time, it was like getting off a treadmill. Sure, in terms of life income, “stuff happened”, but I wouldn’t have things any other way.
17
I have been professionally successful. I had two kids in my early thirties. I wish I'd have been in a position to drop out and stay home with the kids at the time, but I wasn't. If I had to do it over, I'd pick a career like nursing or engineering where re-entry after a couple years off would be possible. We can't have it all without taking a toll somewhere, either on ourselves, our kids, or our careers. It's just reality. My kids are grown and turned out fine, but I missed precious time with them. Our professional lives are not that important in the grand scheme of things.
56
I had my daughter when I was 42 -- I don't recommend this as a path but we struggled with infertility. I have always made more money than my husband -- even when I worked half-time. We both have advanced degrees but my profession is just paid way more than his. This allowed me to work less for about 5-6 years. Our baby is now 18 and away at college and I'm still making a lot more...
8
No surprises here. As the article states "Women are more likely to reduce their work hours, take time off, turn down a promotion or quit their jobs to care for family." If you do that in your prime career building years, of course it will reduce your earnings significantly. I don't see this as a problem in itself. Lots of life choices are supobtimal for one's career, but there's so much more to life than money. Having a child is a choice among others that will cost you earnings, such as majoring in English instead of Engineering, or working on environmental advocacy instead of at Goldman Sachs, but it's a joyous choice that is worth more than anything money can buy. Focusing on fulfillment in life, instead of sacrificing everything for your career, does cost you earnings; nobody ever claimed otherwise.
26
The problem is that men aren’t stepping up equally to do the same.
4
This possible only if you have a husband who provides!
1
The problem isn’t that working mothers choose to spend more time with their children than working men do and that this causes them not to spend enough time/effort at work.
The problem that the decision makers at their employers believe this, no matter the evidence.
At the heart of it, the decision makers believe mothers belong at home with their children and are punishing them for not being there.
36
a few points, if i may. first, I would like to see this data compared to pay of women who never have children vs similar men (which in my mind would be the correct way to measure unfairness in our economies distribution of pay. then i would like to see the salaries
of women who have children , versus men who also have children , and look at those numbers.
However, most families are a single economic unit, so it would also be nice to see family income those with children vs those without. All these comparisons will help us to understand if this is purely gender bias , or the simple nature of leaving the work force for significant lengths. I am sure there will be disparities between the 2 as clearly we are still not treating women as equals to men.
Finally, the solutions need not be based on forcing income equality, but rather by providing services to provide for needs to adjust the floor for such
income equality.
10
"I would like to see this data compared to pay of women who never have children vs similar men" -- Me too, all too often "women" are conflated with "mothers" when it comes to examining the pay gap (or just about anything).
2
I had my children in my low thirties. My pay eventually caught up with my husband's because I worked for an equality minded company. However, the amount of overtime we each had to work, at various times, was sure a struggle for both of us. Why can't we get to the point where all jobs are 40 hours a week (or less)? Even when overtime is not officially mandatory, it is detrimental to your career to not work it. Yes, there are times when extra work is required, but it should not be nearly as often.
31
Waiting until one's career is well-established to have children is not a panacea, as pregnancy is biologically more challenging and riskier after age 35.
43
Needs a follow up study on the pay and opportunity gaps experienced by all women, not just mothers, not just white collar workers, during this period(25-35). Admittedly this my circle of female friends and acquaintances, but all women are fighting against the assumption their entire childbearing years that they are going to quit for babies. Lower starting positions, lower salaries/wages, lower promotions. No number of babies before the new job or big promotion is protection. While it is illegal to ask, it's always implied in job interviews. One friend blurted out her tubes were tied, no more babies.
Then you hit 40 and you're too old.
19
Are you asking the correct question?
If women choose to spend more time in child rearing, and biology means they will necessarily be more impacted by having children due to pregnancy related issues, isn't that a value choice? You can't have your cake and eat it to, so to speak.
I think you should be asking these questions:
1. Are women being fairly compensated based on having the same level of experience (fewer hours to concentrate more on child-rearing means they may have less time)? However, there should be no wage disparity for actual experience.
2. Do women want to have the lesser responsibility that permits them to concentrate more on family or their own personal interests? This is a quality of life issue as long as it is not imposed on them.
3. What do women and their families want? There is no reason a man can't stay home or take on greater child-rearing responsibilities, but that is a family decision.
While the article is interesting, it also presumes that there should always be an equality that is not supported or fair based on individual family choices.
23
Inequities in remuneration last a lot longer than the job, i.e., pensions and retirement. Women generally live longer than men and many are poorer due to reduced contributions for retirement during working/family life.
19
Women start out making less than men. Then women give birth and are more likely to take parental leave, and/or go back to work part time. So, their raises do not keep pace with men's and they fall further behind. At this point men make the argument that they earn more so their job is more important for the household income, and thus women should do more of the childcare and housework. Women get even farther behind at work. It's a vicious cycle, or perhaps a snowball with women going one way (towards home) and men going the other (towards work and higher pay). Resentment builds, and you end up with a 50% divorce rate.
46
"It's a vicious cycle, or perhaps a snowball with women going one way (towards home) and men going the other (towards work and higher pay). Resentment builds, and you end up with a 50% divorce rate."
Interesting theory. So why is it that when women stayed home all the time and men did nearly all the work, the divorce rate was so much lower?
7
To answer your question. The divorce rate was lower due to (1) social stigma, and (2) the wife's complete inability to support herself post-divorce due to zero work history.
5
Samuel, maybe because the women really didn't want to end up impoverished with no way to support themselves and their children? After all, even in this day and age, the data is pretty clear that women are more likely to be impoverished after divorce than men, and that's with much higher rates of education and workforce participation. Don't confuse lack of choice with happiness.
4
This is interesting to me, because it supports the anecdotal advice I've been giving to younger female professionals. Work your butt off in your 20s, I tell them, so that when you're in your 30s and having kids you have the income to pay for help and the professional clout to demand flexibility. Kids are awesome, but the biological timing of them for women is a real challenge, and I wish more professionals would openly discuss this.
109
This is good advice but it again underlines the different options for men and women - men can take their 20s to find themselves, change their mind about their careers, travel etc but women must “work their butts off “ to earn the right to family friendly conditions in their 30s.
5
Apples to oranges. Men don't "find themselves" to earn family friendly conditions.
Thats just not how it works
I see the same misogynistic nonsense here that has always been presented. How about this guys. For every child 10% of your lifetime earnings become your wife's property. That is about what it takes to make up the difference.
24
It's already 50%
3
It's closer to 40% in my state. Child support and alimony settlements are very biased.
2
Nobody forces anyone to have a child -- or to stay home with that child -- nobody says men CANNOT take off from careers to stay home with their kids. There is no LAW forcing women to do this. It has always been a CHOICE. It is a choice between the two parents of that child, who takes off and who stays home, or if the family chooses day care or a nanny or a grandparent to watch the baby. Why are you against CHOICE?
2
There is a bill in the works that focuses on the social security gaps women experience due to time off for child care. Where is that bill now?
12
This almost makes children sound like an annoyance, or something that has befallen you. People choose to have kids and presumably get much joy from them. If you are not in the workforce, then your advancement will likely be impacted. That's a surprise?
30
Many of the comments cry fowl on the female employee’s “choice” to have children. As if that choice were unilateral.
Why not the same level of vitriol for the male employees who also presumably chose to have children? Using the same logic, shouldn’t they also bear the same adverse consequences on their careers?
So why aren’t they?
Because women are still viewed as the primary caregivers, whether or not they work full time. Not until employment laws, and employers, treat men and women equally in that respect will anything change. Judging by some of the comments to this article, I doubt that’s happening any time soon.
83
I think most families are weighing out who should take a step back (if necessary) when they have kids. More men are deciding to be stay-at-home dads, the paradigm is shifting. It may be a slow transition but it is happening. I agree it would be very interesting to look at the incomes of men who chose to cut back on work, or become stay at home dads and then returned to work at some point and compare them with men who didn't--if we see the same kind of pay disparity then it's not a gender thing, it's just a timing and how much you work thing.
6
There's also the fact that the woman has the ultimate choice in the matter, whether that is a morning after pill or something later.
2
There is NOTHING on god's green earth preventing men from taking off of work and staying home with children for a few years. So why don't they do so?
7
This stat. fact probably is true but don't use it as part of a social engineering identity obsession like Hillary did to win an election.
If you do you will end up with somebody like Trump.
Make sure women have every opportunity (ie no discrimination, encouragement to get ahead) but don't obsess over the fact that women are not equal to men in pay and other areas to the nearest penny.
They are many reasons other than discrimination for differences in outcome between races, genders, national origins etc.
The may be biological, they may be preference, etc. etc.
If you start to obsess about it, you get what we had in the inner cities app. 1970 ie while most minorities were participating in the miracle of ending discrimination and finding equality, liberal pols. like Wagner and Lindsay in NY set up a class of we are damaged, oppressed people and must be coddled and put on welfare rolls forever in order to get equality.
Blacks excel in sports, Asian and Jews are excellent in education, Italian are great builders with stone and marble, French are great cooks. We don't social engineer to make sure every race, gender, ethic background are exactly equal to each other.
Learn from history or forever be condemned to its worst outcome on other extreme.
4
Nothing very surprising or disturbing here. The pay gap reflects choices women and their husbands make. Why interfere with their decisions?
18
Your money or your life , with a gun to your head. Anyone who things women have a free choice is probably a guy.
33
A little of childless bachelors are unleashing their tirades against the same old targets — blaming mothers for being lazy, slacking off at work, prioritizing little Timmy’s soccer practice over a looming deadline. They ignore the actual research in favor of their hatred. The science shows that even when mothers work just as long, and take on just as many complex assignments, they get paid less for the simple status of being a mother.
74
Oh! It’s because of ALL those promotions I was offered but refused! I did that because of all the laundry I had to do. Duh. Thanks for enlightening me.
31
The most important fact of this article is that women tend to leave the workforce when their wages are lower (age 25-35). For these women, their income and daycare bills are equivalent. Hoe many times have I heard a woman say a version of "why should I give all my salary over to the dayvare people"?
The answer is more than clear: because your dayvare bills last only a few years, but your decline in earning will last forever. It is a costly choice even if you have a lasting marriage. It is a devastating choice if your marriage does not last.
And here's another thing: staying home decreases your daughter's future earnings. There have been lots of studies that show that girls take cues from their mother's work status. And boys raised by stay-at-home mothers choose spouses that stay at home too. Something to think about...
125
That's a sad argument for outsourcing your children.
9
You are not "outsourcing your children" you are outsourcing changing poo poo diapers. If you think your kid needs you more in the first 5 years of childhood (0-5) than the last 5 (13-18) you are mistaken. Ask some young adults.
2
Agree! Now that my kids are 15 and 17, I feel they need me more!
1
Having a child at 38 did not derail my career as much (notice I say as much, not that it did not impact) - as younger women because as a partner, I had much more control over my work than woman who were younger and thus being managed by (usually) male partners who wanted things done on THEIR schedule.
25
I have doubts about the Goldilocks theory of leave time policy here, i.e., the long and short leaves are bad but medium sized leaves will be better. What if we just want to be with our kids? Could it be that many women enjoy and want to pursue child-rearing at the expense of income? Faced with a once-in-a-lifetime chance, we make a rational choice to choose time with our children over money doing a job, esp. one of questionable purpose.
19
Good to learn that sexism has largely been eliminated as the root cause of pay disparity... The challenge now is to find ways to address the other causes.
5
1 - Do we want more people in our society? Someone has to give birth and care for the kiddos. Maybe men should do this.
2 - The pay gap is even more of an issue when the two income household becomes one due to the death of the husband. The kids need more parenting and the mom's job still pays less.
7
Men should give birth? I am very interested in how this would work.
If a man dies while he has small children...SS Survivor benefits pays more than his ENTIRE maximum SS check to his wife and each of his children, until the kids are 18. EVERYONE gets this benefit regardless of income. You do not have to be married to get this benefit. Combined with good life insurance, this is often enough that a stay-at-home mother can remain at home for her children.
2
This article makes no mention about the difference in pay gap by the race or ethnicity of the mother. It talks about women as if they are all the same when we know that racism compounds the gender issues women experience.
6
I have an associated degree and took up various clerical jobs supporting professionals before retirement. I had to work because I needed to, and all the useful things I did were unpaid volunteer work. Different women live by different philosophies.
Actions have consequences.
Sometimes you have to live with them and do the best you can.
5
It's worth noting that women who marry before age 25 are 50% more likely to get divorced than women who marry later and single mothers have some of the biggest pay gaps.
22
Getting divorced before 25 means a much higher chance of getting remarried.
1
The "pay gap" is a joke, a myth. See http://content.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,2015274,00.html :
in 147 out of 150 of the biggest cities in the U.S., the median full-time salaries of young women are 8% higher than those of the guys in their peer group. In two cities, Atlanta and Memphis, those women are making about 20% more. This squares with earlier research from Queens College, New York, that had suggested that this was happening in major metropolises. But the new study suggests that the gap is bigger than previously thought, with young women in New York City, Los Angeles and San Diego making 17%, 12% and 15% more than their male peers, respectively. And it also holds true even in reasonably small areas like the Raleigh-Durham region and Charlotte in North Carolina (both 14% more), and Jacksonville, Fla. (6%).
It is almost entirely (90%+) due to choices that women make in both what fields they enter, the hours they choose to work, and taking leave for children. The above research shows what our promotion of women (at the expense of men) has led to - colleges that are 60-65% female and women outearning men after graduation.
9
So women who work much harder than men eventually get paid the same...nice, I guess, certainly better than the alternative.
It would be nicer if rather INSISTING that women have children, no matter how life threatening or life destroying (rabid anti-abortion pro misogyny political stances), we would SUPPORT women having children, crying with them when a pregnancy is not viable and making it less life destructive to have and raise a child. Maybe even teaching men and women in high school that they both need to make sacrifices to have a child....
3
There is nobody who tells women to have or not have children. But if you CHOOSE to have sex without using contraception (99% cause of unwanted pregnancy and abortion)....then you HAVE made a choice. Your choice was to risk pregnancy and you LOST.
1
Wow. Men who have sex without contraception also made a choice but they're wages don't show it and social security don't show it.
every other developed country has paid maternity leave. someone has to care for the children. this shows how little this country cares about children and cares about women. the assumption that it will always be women and they will go on sacrificing careers and incomes is the problem.
7
Paid maternity leave will not solve this problem at all. In Germany, they have very long paid maternity leave -- with the result that few women are in high paid jobs, because companies won't hire them, knowing they could potentially take six to nine years off!!! Women are not quitting their jobs in the US because they don't have paid maternity leave -- they quit because they want to stay home full-time with their kids for YEARS and YEARS -- 5-10 years or MORE. Nobody is going to pay your maternity leave for 10 years.
4
Nobody is asking for 5-10 years. How about 6 months at 100% of pay? Most daycares won't take a baby before 6 months anyway and 40-60% of pay doesn't pay 100% of bills. Especially with a newborn.
Very interesting findings. A great follow-up study would be to compare women (with similar educational backgrounds) who chose to have kids with women who didn't. If the pay gap is indeed because of kids, then women who don't have kids should have similar pay to men.
It certainly makes sense why having kids and the choices that come afterwards would cause a decrease in one's pay. Women, as the article stated, are more likely to take time off to take care of the family, may say no to promotions that would require longer hours or time away from the family, etc. These are choices that they make and I think it's great that they have the choice to make these decisions. There's nothing wrong with choosing more time with one's family. It just might come at a financial cost though. I don't think anyone would argue that women who choose to work a little less or not take promotions should still be making the same as people (men and women) who don't take that time off or say yes to promotions. Make a little less money for more time with your family. This seems like a good trade-off--as long as women who don't have kids get paid similarly to men.
25
I am a highly educated professional woman in my early thirties who recently had a child, so I am living this reality as we speak. I am currently not pushing for promotion, even though I have had a sparkling career thus far, because I want to make sure I can spend time with my son in the evenings and on weekends. I agree I should earn less right now than the similarly-aged men I see right now taking the positions I want someday to have. The problem is, I have noticed that respect from others for my potential is rapidly declining BECAUSE I am not pushing for promotion (still doing the same good work, by the way) and suspect that even though in a few years when my son is in school I will be able to put in the work and effort again to advance, those doors will be closed to me forever. Society invested a lot in my training, so why is it wasting my potential, forever, by locking me into my current position?
17
There are MEN who also choose this -- who don't go for the promotion or refuse to the job offered to them out of town -- because they do not want the high pressure lifestyle of such jobs. Somehow this is never studied. This kind of biased article ASSUMES all men are white, upper class and in high paying professional jobs -- never are laid off or displaced or obsoleted out of their careers -- while women are put upon and forced to be 1950s homemakers. This is a false, biased narrative.
2
Hi Concerned Citizen, if you are working fewer hours than other people (or than before you had a child) in order to spend evenings and weekends with your child, at what point do you think that will change? Don’t you think you will always want to spend weekends and evenings with him? While breastfeeding and sleep deprivation are taxing now, when he is older he will be a little person who wants to be with you. At some point, too, whether as a school age child or a teen he may go through a difficult period when he needs you in particular — illness, learning disabilities, social pain, mental health challenges — most kids will eventually have a “hard” period.
Your child will always need you and I suspect your peers know that. But being with him while also probably be a joy for much of his childhood, like getting to see your best imaginable friend every day. Paid work — even the security it provides — is only one facet of our lives.
1
What this article (and many of the anti-feminist comments) illustrates to me is yet another way our collective turning away from the notion of a common good is hurting us all - women, men, and children. Today's children are the doctors, trash collectors, police officers, novelists, and politicians of tomorrow. They are the ones who will be taking care of us, advancing discovery, and paying taxes to support us as we age, so it benefits all of us (childless and parents alike) to make sure they are well-cared for and well educated. It benefits all of us when the vast numbers of women who have children are able to balance the essential work of child birth and child rearing with the essential business of paid work (for their personal and economic health, and for economic growth as a society). It benefits the vast numbers of men who are parents to be able to fully participate in raising their children and not see themselves (and be seen) as simple paycheck factories - while also giving boys and girls good models of masculine care-giving. Patriarchy harms us all: men and women; children and adults; parents and the child-free. The fact that so many commenters here are unable or unwilling to see the systemic harms and challenges of these issues, and instead want to blame everything on "personal choice" is a clinic on how effective this ultra-right-wing propaganda has been and continues to be.
195
What a clear and cogently expressed comment. Best I’ve read on this topic!
8
Thank you
3
We have a huge population -- 330 million -- our nation is overpopulated, as is the WHOLE PLANET. Clearly we need no more incentives to get women to have babies! we have too man babies -- not too few babies! Where there are problems, it is because poor uneducated women and illegal aliens pump out dozens of babies they cannot care for. The problem is not and never was upper-class professional women not being able to stay home long enough.
6
"But it fits with previous research showing just how entrenched our gender roles are at home, even as women play a bigger role in the economy." The "entrenched gender roles" are dominant in the workplace, where management is generally male. This workplace stereotyping is the explanation for gender discrimination in promotion and pay, not the interactions between husbands and wives. Just sit in a management meeting or boardroom with only one or two women and see how they interact.
17
Here's the joke of this article and its activist author: It shows the pay gap is a myth. It is not the result of sexism, but biology and women's choices. Please also note that having children after 35, choosing career over being a parent, increases the risk of birth defects and developmental disorders. Ms. Miller does not care about such things due to her political agenda. Once again, the NYT is demonstrating their desire to become the HuffPo. David Carr is rolling over in his grave.
35
Read the article, please.
"The study found that over all, women earn $12,600 less than men before children are born"
25
Women make less before giving birth. That wage gap is a proven fact. But, then, if you read the article, the author calls out childbirth and years off work as a significant contributor to the wage gap. The author doesn't call out sexism. But you would know that if you read the article.
And, Mr. Carr would have read the article. He's safe and secure in that grave of his. RIP.
3
My stepdaughter postponed having a baby until she was almost 40. The result was she was infertile and required IVF, which was crazy expensive. The procedure harvested only 5 eggs, a very low number (indicating she is well on her way to peri menopause) and of the five, 3 were "clunkers" that could not be fertilized. Two were fertilized and implanted. One of those was absorbed (defective). The other began our new grandson! we are thrilled, but this was like winning the lottery -- against all odds. The reality is that she was probably optimally fertile in her 20s, and a bit less up to 35, but she WAITED TOO LONG. Another year, and she would be childless. Do you like those odds?
@Kate: that has to be bogus. Do you claim that a female software engineer is hired for $12,600 less than a male? or a female neurosurgeon is paid $12,600 less than a male? I do not believe that.
3
I took ten years off to raise two kids, born when I was 32 and 36. Even if I had had a career instead of a series of jobs, that 10 years now means that my retirement savings are a tenth of what my husband saved. It's worse than a pay gap.
171
Hopefully your husband brought home a salary intended for both of you and those savings were for both of you, as partners in life.Without you would he have been able to do so, or bothered? if he is anything like met, the answer would be no.
4
But this assumes that the marriage lasts. If it does not, then the stay-at-home parent suffers more. Both parents gain the benefit of having a well-raised (presumably) child, but only one has the benefit of an uninterrupted career and the ability to be financially self-sufficient at short notice.
5
Buried deep in the article are the actual reasons - it is not simply childbirth - it the behavior that follows. Not coming back to work in a timely fashion; working part-time; refusing promotions; not working the expected hours to be successful; refusing transfers for promotions and career development. It is not kids - it is the deliberate career choices made.
49
What about the women who don’t make any of those choices, who outwork their colleagues, and still make less? They’re missing from your argument.
50
Multiple studies from multiple sources indicate that when you correct for these self-made choices that the 'pay gap' virtually disappears. See this by way of example: https://www.economist.com/news/international/21729993-women-still-earn-l...
2
Changing jobs to one that requires less education, fewer skills, fewer responsibilities, less time in the office, less travel - I don’t dispute that those choices would cause a woman to earn less. Probably no one disputes that.
As I mentioned above, I’m talking about women who did *not* make those choices. There are lots of us out there. We don’t all reduce our hours, change jobs, abstain from pursuing graduate degrees or decide not to obtain professional credentials. And we still make less and get fewer promotions.
1
I spent 13 years working full time and going to school at night. Met my husband just before I graduated and we married a year later, had a baby a year after that - I was 34. I took 4 months off and went right back to keep my job, Had another baby 3 years later and did the same thing. Finishing the degree first helped me get a job with benefits and maternity leave which is why my pay has maintained and I am still with the same company. We spend or save $25,000 per year every year for 19 years for day care, after care, summer camp or college savings to have this family. Daycare costs were a shock but the real point is that is never goes away until college is paid for.
I used to see those women that just didn’t understand why I worked or why I didn’t just go part time and it never seemed like an option to me. There was no way we could pay for the camp or the college or any of that if I didn’t work - so I did. Today both kids will go to college without loans and I am so proud that we did this - thrilled for them - but I don’t know too many people that made these decisions. They all bought nicer houses or vacation homes or better cars etc, etc. and their kids all have loans.
106
With more men taking on the primary caregiver role, it would be interesting if this article also explored potential pay gaps for men re-entering the workforce after raising kids full-time.
44
Is it the decision to have children or is it gender discrimination? I know a few men who suspended their own careers and stayed home with the kids while their wives pursued lucrative careers. It was a rational choice for each of them - the wives had greater income potential so the couples decided that the husbands would stay home with the kids. In every case, the wives’ careers have flourished, while the men either dropped out completely or re-entered the workforce at substantially lower compensation.
42
I absolutely know a number of such cases, where the man earned less -- or nothing -- stayed home and was more or less the "stay at home spouse" -- but in most of those cases, there were no children or the children were already grown.
3
1. There is a pay gap even if you never marry, and married women have economic advantages (health insurance etc) that single women don't have
2. There is some social support for childcare but NONE for eldercare, which is extremely expensive and more often leads to job loss than pregnancy.
116
True-elder care probably hits total wealth/net worth more than most beleieve, BUT it hits vast majority of (overwhelmingly) women much later than 35-45 so doesnt show up in a study of current annual wages- good point you raised here.
13
I agree. Plus, by the time elder care of a loved one is needed, usually women are making more money by then as they would be approaching or already in middle age and at a high point in the career. I know men who’ve needed to care for one or two aging parents or in laws but I know that more women are typically called upon to do it since their salaries are typically less than a man’s at that point in time
Folks - no choice is easy and I don’t know what the answers are but a question I have is why it’s women who are mostly the primary caregivers of children and then aging parents? Because people in general are living longer it’s becoming a situation where you are caring for children til they reach adulthood and then on the heels of that aging parents start to need more help. When does a person get a chance to relax and live their own lives without the need to continually care for others just about their entire lives?
21
symptomatic of the same trend -- it is expected that women will perform eldercare, the unmarried daughter, the only daughter, the oldest daughter, the youngest daughter, any daughter.
10
The data reinforce what most professional women have always known: that they will take on the majority of childcare and that there will be negative consequences to their professional lives if they have children. Those consequences come in the form of not only reduced compensation but also in the quality of work offered to them. As a woman who never had children, I used to be one of the office group who stayed late to finish projects--along with the rest of the guys. Even so, my ability to earn as much or get as much recognition as my male peers was still negatively affected. Sort of a lose/lose situation.
133
You could have done two things Alice.
1-Married a man who wanted to be a house mom or lobby for better gov't childcare help.
2-Start a discrimination suit if you feel you were truly doing as good a job as a man and did not get promoted.
It is human nature for all of us to carp, ax grind, finger point, cherry pick, rationalize, intellectualize etc. instead of doing something about it.
10
Professional women are required to work long hours, but working-class women struggle to get enough workers from their employers that turn full-time jobs into part-time ones. Media feminism speaks for all women nevertheless.
3