Women’s Earnings Never Really Recover After They Have Children

The time crunch many women experience in their 30s has economic reverberations throughout their lives.

By the time they hit their mid-30s, women raised on the expectation of “having it all” often face a rude reality: There are only so many hours in the day. Juggling full-time jobs, young children and household tasks leaves scores of women burned out and exhausted. Corinne Low, a professor of business economics and public policy at the Wharton School, calls this familiar phenomenon “the squeeze.” It shows up clearly in time use data the US government collects from households, she says: “You see just this mountain in child care and housework time at the same time as women are trying to invest in their careers.” For men, the time use impact of those converging demands looks more like “a little anthill,” she says.

In her forthcoming book, Having It All: What Data Tells Us About Women’s Lives and Getting the Most Out of Yours, Low presents a powerful case that the squeeze reverberates through families’ lives long after kids are out of diapers. For the typical US woman, time expenditure at home peaks before income does. This means women can’t afford to outsource tasks such as housecleaning or food preparation so they can carve out more hours to focus on getting ahead at work. Their careers can suffer: Some move into less taxing, lower-paying jobs or drop out of the workforce entirely. Others keep grinding but get passed over for promotions. Low cites a study of data from Sweden that found companies don’t give as many promotions to women as men—even women who never have children—to avoid the work disruption and cost of a potential maternity leave.

The mid-30s time crunch is partly a side effect of the high expectations of 21st century parenting. Compared with previous generations, women and men now place a higher value on time spent with their children. “They’re reading all these things that say, hey, if you speak 10,000 words to your baby a day, it’s going to raise their IQ points. And if you play these types of games and limit screen time for your toddler, it’s going to raise their educational outcomes in the future,” Low says. “Those things create that sense that, ‘Oh, my time is crucial with my children, and I can’t do the things that potentially our parents did,’” such as relying on microwave dinners or TV as a babysitter. But whereas men rarely face career penalties for the extra hours they devote to child care, women do.

Low calls the era that follows the squeeze “the ironic relief.” That’s because as children get older and parenting becomes less time-intensive, women often struggle to get off the mommy track at work and reach the same level of earnings as men.

Other researchers have mapped the “child penalty” women face around the world. The results might seem surprising at first: In the US, for example, parenthood reduces the employment rate of women by 25%, whereas in Namibia that drop-off is only 11%. Such differences reflect the privilege of women in developed countries, who are more often able to choose time with their children over work, Low says. But there are other parts of the world, such as Sweden and Norway, where generous parental leave policies and other government supports help keep mothers employed.

Yet extended parental leave isn’t a panacea, Low says; after all, the squeeze lasts longer than the first six months of a child’s life. Employers looking to hire and retain women often promote “flexible” schedules, but Low points to data that shows predictability is far more valuable to mothers. In one 2017 study from the US, women with children under 4 were willing to forgo almost 40% of their wages to avoid a job with a schedule set at the whims of their manager, while even women without young kids said they’d take a 30% pay cut. Low argues that companies can keep women around by strengthening work-life boundaries and designating on-call backups to cover work that pops up after hours.

Men could help by taking on a lot more at home: As of 2015, the amount of time they spent on housework was virtually unchanged from 1985. Take it from a 2019 study, which found divorced moms in the US slept more than married ones.