Accounting for the Price of Parenting While Standing on the Precipice of Motherhood

Just over two years ago, I wrote in the Washington Post that the pandemic had disrupted the plans my wife and I had made to have a baby. We’d left our home and community in Washington, D.C., canceled a wedding, and blown through our savings to buy a house, so we could both work from home without losing our minds. And we were watching, helplessly, as friends and family members with young children languished, isolated, in their homes, without the support of schools or childcare or loved ones.

 In the comments and on social media, readers chimed in. While some were supportive and could relate, others were harsh. “Oh please. This is a great country to be a parent in compared to most of the world… Cold truth, being a parent is hard wherever you are. It's a full-time job. Millennials seem to be shocked whenever anything actually involves work,” wrote one commenter. 

 Another declared, “After reading this article I have decided you should not be parents. You will never be ‘ready’ for children because being a good parent means putting your child above all else.” 

 All this, because I asked: “Will we be ready to have a baby in a year? With an erratic economy and the barely existent child-care system crumbling? As a same-sex couple who just moved to the worst state when it comes to child-care deserts? And what if things get even worse?”

 Luckily, things got better. We were soon vaccinated against COVID-19 and built new community with the family and friends near us. We were fortunate to stay employed and began to rebuild our savings for the cost of fertility treatments. Little by little, we got used to our new normal. 

 In the next couple weeks, I will give birth to our first child—launching us into a life we’ve long-awaited and dreamt about, despite whatever sleeplessness and stress it brings our way. Unlike two years ago, we feel ready for this next chapter. 

 But the truth is, at the structural level, not much has really changed. High-quality child care remains elusive, and the price has skyrocketed, leaving us not entirely sure what we’ll be doing for child care six months down the road. The U.S. remains the only wealthy country in the world without paid family leave, leaving me reliant on my savings and my partner in order to take a few months off to recover and to bond with the new baby. 

 The most immediate shocks of the pandemic have passed, but they leave in their wake the long-standing costs of parenthood that mostly women have been enduring for decades. Despite our planning and accounting, I can begin to see how the gendered price of parenting, labeled by researchers Paula England and Michelle Budig as the “motherhood penalty,” takes shape. 

 Over two decades ago England and Budig found that mothers experienced a 7 percent reduction in wages for every child they had. Last week, a study by Pew Research Center found that the gender pay gap has stayed largely the same since then, with women on the whole earning about 82 cents to the dollar men make.  Motherhood remains a significant factor in that gap, in part because working full time and parenting is so difficult, and women feel immense pressure to lean into caregiving.

 “Mothers ages 25 to 44 are less likely to be in the labor force than women of the same age who do not have children at home, and they tend to work fewer hours each week when employed,” writes Pew. This causes a significant drop in pay for women in their reproductive years (men, on the other hand, tend to earn more when they become fathers). 

 Though the reduction in working hours or the break from the work force may be temporary, there are long lasting effects of these years. Mothers may miss out on critical opportunities for advancement and career growth, and on the whole, earn about 28 percent less than women who aren’t mothers over the course of their lifetimes. 

 They also lose vital time in saving toward retirement. One study found that mothers receive about sixty percent of the Social Security benefits of women who aren’t mothers, despite the receipt of spousal benefits for those who were married to a working partner. 

 Knowing this data, it’s easy to imagine a scenario in which my too-brief unpaid parental leave from work precedes a gradual return to full-time employment, as I adapt to my new life and my child’s needs. After all, I’ll be breastfeeding, and have a more flexible work schedule. And it’s easy to see how the precarity of our child care arrangements begets a stilted return to big projects and a hesitance to seize big opportunities, should I be fortunate enough to have them come my way. As we face the expense of child care and I ease back into work, my retirement savings will remain at a standstill. 

 From here I can begin to grasp how the motherhood penalty creeps into people’s lives, even with the best of intentions. No discriminatory employer, no traditional marriage arrangement necessary. Just two people who want to be parents and want to do it well. 

 I don’t know what the future holds–not two weeks from now, and certainly not two months or years or decades from now. I’ve got a due date, and then who knows? That’s the beauty and excitement and thrill of this rollercoaster ride we put ourselves on.

 We know that parenting will be hard work. The commenters on my original Post article weren’t wrong about that.  But should becoming a parent make life so much harder? Should it be accompanied by such precarity? Should it require such a long and expensive list of sacrifices—sacrifices that will fall on women disproportionately—not just for a few years, but for decades to come? Do we want to live in a society where parenting comes with penalties? 

 We all deserve a more supportive and secure society. The research is clear that care infrastructure strengthens our economy, decreases crime, and contributes to our  overall happiness. Though the pandemic didn’t bring the commonsense policy supports I’ve written about, it did solidify the determination of swaths of Americans to seek them. Whether they’re in place in time for us, is yet to be seen. 

 So, I close my eyes, grab my wife’s hand, and get ready for the big drop ahead. We can’t see the track from here and know it’s still a work in progress. We’ll have to build it as we go.