Young women sometimes underestimate how difficult it will be to juggle a career and start a family.
In fact, they often overestimate how involved in their work they’ll be in their 30s, a time when most women are having children, according to a report distributed Monday by the National Bureau of Economic Research.
Child-rearing has significant effects on women’s employment, but female workers don’t anticipate these changes, nor how their views toward working may shift after childbirth, the researchers from Princeton University, Yale University and the National University of Singapore concluded. They looked at the British Household Panel Survey and U.S. Census Bureau panel data on young women.
The financial and logistical challenges of motherhood come as a shock to many new moms. Women on average, especially more educated women, say parenthood is harder than they expected and tend to develop a negative view towards employment after they have children, the report found.
See: American women are having babies later -- and in 2017 are still conflicted about it
Approximately 7 in 10 mothers with kids younger than 18 were in the labor force in 2015, according to an earlier analysis by the Pew Research Center, but that’s still an improvement from 47% in 1975. (And working mothers (60%) are more likely than fathers (52%) to say balancing work and family is difficult.)
The authors of the latest report said that female high school seniors, in particular, substantially overestimate how involved they’ll be in the labor market in their 30s.
One explanation: The cost of having a family and working have grown significantly, the researchers said, and many young women today do not account for that. Such costs, known as the “mommy effect,” include a decline in employment after childbirth and stunted wage growth.
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“The costs of motherhood have risen in a manner today’s cohort of mothers was likely unable to predict,” they wrote. Meanwhile, more women are waiting until their early 30s to have babies, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Working mothers face serious challenges when they have a child. In some cases, career opportunities shift or disappear completely when they go back to work after having children, according to one analysis, “Women, Work and Family,” by researchers at Cornell University and the University of Missouri-St. Louis.
Mothers also earn less than women without children, a separate University of British Columbia study found. Mothers with postgraduate degrees saw the greatest difference in salary: They earned 7% less than childless women.
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Women may be able to mitigate their fears of missing out at work while still growing a family by finding jobs with flexible work hours. According to the UBC study, when mothers had flexible hours, they earned 12% more than childless women who also had flexible hours.
The ability to telecommute allows them to maintain their working hours, but build their schedules around their responsibilities as a new mom. They can also try to anticipate some of the challenges that may arise from having a baby.
The employment costs of motherhood will likely change over time because of technological developments and a more flexible and generous employment policies for working mothers, the latest paper distributed by the NBER suggested.
