The Economist: Women Having Children Creates a “Child Penalty” For Their Earnings

It is interesting to note that the Economist is willing to admit that pretty much the entire “wage gap” between men and women has to do with women having kids, but that is still such a petty way to look at motherhood:

IT IS well known that parenthood tends to hurts women’s careers but not men’s. Numerous studies have shown that as a group, having children lowers women’s lifetime earnings, an outcome known as the “child penalty”. A wide range of individual decisions account for this effect. Some women work fewer hours, or not at all, when their children are young. Others switch to jobs that are more family-friendly but lower-paid. There is also substantial variation in the size of the earnings decline, ranging from zero all the way up to 100% (in the case of women who stop working altogether).

…From 1980 to 2013, the long-run child penalty was about 20%. Because the overall pay gap between men and women shrank during that period, by 2013 the child penalty accounted for almost the entire remaining difference in the sexes’ incomes. Before becoming mothers, women’s compensation more or less keeps pace with men’s. Only once they have children do their economic trajectories begin to lag.

…As the researchers explored potential causes for this phenomenon, they noticed that women who grew up in families in which the mother worked a lot relative to the father tended to suffer relatively small child penalties. Conversely, those who grew up with stay-at-home mothers were more likely to scale back their careers. This suggests that women are heavily influenced by the examples set by their own mothers when deciding how to balance work and family. Tellingly, the working patterns of a woman’s parents-in-law made no difference to her child penalty, suggesting that women’s decisions are not influenced by preferences that their partners may have formed during childhood.

Trending: He Watched 9 Guys Run a Train On Her & Then Later Married Her

All of which is a lesson to those mothers who want their daughters to bridge the gender pay gap. Their wishes are more likely to come true if they lead by example when their girls are young.

The most amazing thing that women can do isn’t marching around in their bra and panties on a slutwalk, dressing sexy to get men’s attention or working in a soul-crushing corporate job, it’s being a mother. Women have this incredible ability to bring new life into the world. That, more than any other thing, is what makes women amazing. It’s not their shoes or how many likes they get on Instagram or how often they give tedious speeches about empowerment and “girl power,” it’s having kids.

The whole idea that women would forego having children or abandon them as quickly as possible to make a powerpoint presentation in an effort to impress their boss at the 4th meeting they have next week so they can be one of 9 people fighting to get a district manager job that would mean they’ll be working 80 hours a week is nuts. Men do that to impress women or support their families. Meanwhile, men aren’t impressed by women that do that and if you have a guy at home that can support you, why bother? I’m not saying women shouldn’t work or have careers, but I am saying that 99.9% of the time, a woman’s working life is going to be very small in importance to having and taking care of her children.

Previous articleWhy It Matters Whether Your Girl Sees You as an Alpha or a Beta
Next articleA Woman Wants to Know Why So Many Men Find Dating So Difficult
John Hawkins
John Hawkins created Rightwingnews.com in 2001; built it up to a top 10,000 in the world website; created a corporation with more than 20 employees to support it; created a 3.5 million person Facebook page; became one of the most popular conservative columnists in America; was published everywhere from National Review to Human Events, to Townhall, to PJ Media, to the Daily Wire, to The Hill; wrote a book 101 Things All Young Adults Should Know that was at one point top 50 in the self-help section on Amazon; did hundreds of hours as a guest on radio shows, raised $611,000 in a GoFundMe for Brett Kavanaugh’s family and has been talked about everywhere from The New York Times to Buzzfeed, to the Washington Post, to Yahoo News, to the Rush Limbaugh Show, to USA Today. After seeing the unjust way that Brett Kavanaugh was treated during his hearings and how a lifetime worth of good work was put at risk by unprovable allegations, John Hawkins decided to create a men’s website. Welcome to Brass Pills!

 

Join the conversation!

We have no tolerance for comments containing violence, racism, profanity, vulgarity, doxing, or discourteous behavior. If a comment is spam, instead of replying to it please hover over that comment, click the ∨ icon, and mark it as spam. Thank you for partnering with us to maintain fruitful conversation.