Are moms penalized in the workforce?

I was listening to the Man Enough Podcast and they brought up how women are penalized in the workforce. As I always do, I headed over to research to see what I could find. I didn’t like what I saw. I wasn’t surprised but it was still sad to read.

A study (Correlle et al. 2017) found that women are penalized in the workforce for being mothers, while men can be benefited at work for being dads. They call it the “Motherhood Penalty“. Why am I posting about this on Curious Neuron? Because this trickles down to the children. If a mom is penalized with less pay, with more stress if she can’t get time off to take care of her child. This leads to less time with their child or losing control of their emotions and yelling more often because they are overwhelmed and tired.

As I always do, I took this conversation to this community. I know that there are moms and dads following Curious Neuron and I wanted this to be a respectful conversation about any experiences you might of had or perhaps witnessed. It was an important conversation on Instagram.

Here are a few highlights of the conversation:

“I have experienced this penalty from my professional college. I took time off after having my third. Covid hit and my youngest could not attend school full time as expected. I applied later this spring only to be told by my college that the years off required me to complete recertification. The barriers to return to work after taking time off are large and not fair to women. Especially when many were forced to choose between work and childcare. I am no less what I was prior to taking time off. If anything I am more.”
“I was told at one interview to leave my 3 years old unattended in the employee break room if I couldn’t find after-hours childcare during the pandemic. I noped out of the Zoom interview. There’s unrealistic expectations, low pay (even with a degree), and a lack of understanding on child safety and neglect.”
“ From a father’s perspective, I know how it works. When a woman gets pregnant…. “Hmmm. She’s going to be on maternity leave soon and may quit after. Let’s take her off important jobs”. When a husband announces his wife is pregnant, “oh crap. You’re going to have bills to pay. Let’s get you some important roles!” The thought process is human nature and not always malicious. But 💯% unfair. I’m glad you’re posting on this topic. We get better by having conversations like this. I’m building a business and having seen the struggles my wife had in a WFH with our infant, I want to make sure our culture supports mothers. I know how hard (impossible) it is.”
“I worked at home for years without issue. Then I had a child and managed to work for a while still. Then the pandemic hit and had to work at home with a toddler and that’s when it all hit the fan. The employer started requiring more and things were changing. Mothers were home with their kids of all ages and quantities. We were all struggling horribly, and all we were told was we needed childcare IN A PANDEMIC!!! We were told to do our best but our employee reviews were tanking due to having to meet quotas at home while teaching and raising children and the work kept being piled on. I finally had to resign and was really bitter about it, as I felt this was their unofficial way of weeding out the moms. They knew we couldn’t keep up. It’s really sad we still live in a society where women are treated less for having children, something we’ve been doing since the dawn of man. It really is a shame.”
“In an interview, (for an HR role, by a HR director!!) I was flat out asked how many/how old my kids were and though, I didn’t want to answer, I felt cornered and did, (they were 1&3) and she told me it would be too hard for me to manage this job and a young family. I was gobsmacked and told her point-blank “that it’s really up to me to decide what I can handle in my personal life, not you” and walked out.”
“I want to share a little light on the topic. I have worked very difficult positions in the past; fighting for equality every step of the way as I work my way as a nurse up the healthcare administration chain (very male-dominated at the time). I now work for a very large insurance company who not only has understood that I am a mother and a military spouse, but that motherhood takes precedence. I work from home as a nurse and have since pre-COVID. When life got really heavy in May, they granted me 16 weeks of leave without pay to prioritize my family. I have a 4 and 2-year-old and just felt I was most needed in my home to be their mommy. I do realize how fortunate I am for this position and am so very grateful. But wanted to share that there are some (large) corporations that see the value in putting family first. I returned to work last week feeling like I can better focus and am happy to be back with less ‘mom-guilt’.”