The lasting financial penalty of motherhood

Yes, the way to stop male violence is for men to stop being violent. One may extrapolate that with longer leave and fewer children, women are a) more able to take on more of the care-giving and b) be less stressed and less liable to ask for their partners to weigh in, which may be what they leads to the conflict they mention, so it seems to be saying men’s lives are less pressured, they won’t be provoked by conflict, so they are less likely to hit out (literally). It’s a new version of provocation as a defence.

No idea how it fits with what we know about coercive control and IPV, but it seems to me a population level of ‘if I do x, y or z, the abuse will stop’. Of course anything which can be done to safeguard women should be done, but why is this about women’s behaviour? The study talks about longer leave-taking but it’s fairly well-hidden in the pages that the longer leave-taking is by women and men’s leave-taking does not change. Talking about ‘parental leave policy’ obscures this point.

Now if they were saying that men had taken more shared leave as a result of the reform and there was less IPV as a result, that would be something.

the ‘why’ was given at the end of the paper, that longer fertility spacing may reduce the stress from rapid successive pregnancies, reducing conflict and IPV risk.

The study seems to be suggesting that the way to reduce IPV, if I read the results correctly, is for mothers to take extended paid leave after birth and that the reduced violence peaks around years three and four afterwards, at the point when usually a subsequent child would be born. (The study said that fathers’ leave taking did not significantly change after the reform, whereas mothers took on average a month more).
The study acknowledges that women will have lower life-time earnings from longer periods of paid leave. It doesn’t seem to acknowledge that they are focusing on women’s behaviours to address a problem of male violence. I find that problematic.

I agree. It's odd. Could well be worth asking. I will back-track and find them.

One possibility might be looking at how partners share their pensions, especially after the death of one. There are good reasons couples used to be treated as a unit, it tends to mean that if the woman takes a pay or benefits hit caring for kids it evens out. The more you separate the two and treat them as individuals the less that is true.

That's interesting. Has anyone gone further with investigation, I wonder?

I agree. We also need society, school and employers to step up too. My husband has genuinely been told when he has needed to take a day off/wfh for a sick child, "you've got a wife for that" they questioned his work ethic and made the environment so toxic (he cried at work!) He left the company. All his workplaces have had this similar view. There are not enough men stepping up to force companies to change its just those few men that do loose their jobs. There will always be a Steve or Bob who is willing to work all hours under the sun as if he doesn't have children for the employer to go well Bob does it. He has a family.

One in three senior management positions is held by a woman, a statistic I find surprising because if they have children, they are either superhuman, exhausted, or have extensive support.

But the point is that the vast majority of people experiencing the pay drop because their hours go down after children are women, which means that their pensions and financial well-being also goes down. The majority of elderly oeople in poverty are women. As others have said on this thread, the choice to reduce hours (and therefore earn less) is not made in a vacuum. That’s the point.

And it is difficult to get back into the workplace after a career break, or to catch up financially if you have dropped your hours, which compounds the issue.

I don’t necessarily think the answer is for parents to both work full-time and make use of childcare full-time, but I do think men need to step up more and society needs to expect men to step up more. Another statistic is that regardless of whether women earn more or not, they still do more childcare and housework. Which means they also have less leisure time. That’s just not fair. There is nothing about being female which says I am better at dusting and hoovering.

Being a single parent means you are at the sharp end of this but it’s a population level issue. Individualising it means that it’s up to every women to fight her own battles, and who wants their home to be a battle ground?

I would say I earn significantly less with having had children but then that’s as I prefer to work part time. However I am very fortunate that I’m doing the job I want to be doing, which matches my qualifications, skills and ambitions and earn the same hourly rate as the people doing similar roles full time. When I had my older children that wasn’t the case and it was very difficult to establish and then also maintain my career as I had each child so motherhood did set me back significantly career wise for many years. The things that made the juggle so difficult which have now much improved includes e.g. inflexible working hours, lack of understanding when child sick, lack of available childcare, not having a supportive partner etc

Isn’t this just women working fewer hours after having a baby?

If you work fewer hours, in almost all cases your pay goes down.

Very simple explanation!

The women going back to work full time after having a baby, and continuing with their career and seeking promotions etc. aren’t experiencing sharp drops in pay, are they?

Yes. If men don’t change, women will continue to take up the slack.

However the way the lack of flexibility means a lot of mothers drop out of higher skilled work, which they are then unlikely to be able to return to even after they no longer need flexibility, makes their financial security pretty dodgy. Women who use flexibility and earn less for a while but can then step back up have far more financial resilience. I think that’s a more critical issue than simply having somewhat lower earnings for a while.

That's a rather dystopian vision.

I think many women would go pretty far to try to bring down that kind of dystopia.

Sure, and that might be great for many woman.

But if women keep choosing the more flexible, and somewhat less well paid options, and men are more likely to choose jobs that are less flexible, or even involve things like working away, women will remain less well paid on average.

There are always going to be jobs where people are wanted who will step up to significant demands of time, or inflexible working conditions.

Possibly, possibly not. Though women reducing hours while they have young children does not have as profound an impact on lifetime earnings, nor the economy as a whole, as women dropping out of skilled work does.

But, as I said, properly subsidized childcare could well be more effective.

Totally agree with you. The first wave feminists gave us much. The problem is, I think, that neo-liberal capitalism benefts women at the top who assume that what suits them suits all, when that's not the case.

Agree totally everything else you say. About time we recognised reproductive labour.

Exactly. Too often feminism is branded as being anti-men or anti-family. For me feminism is looking at how women are treated in society and making sure that women aren’t put at a disadvantage. Whilst it is true that women may choose to stay at home with young children, this doesn’t negate the fact that women also tend to arrive considerably poorer at retirement. We need solutions that are suitable for all of society, not just those who seemingly contribute more financially - which we all know is generally facilitated by women anyway, at least in the case of heterosexual relationships with children.

Might be of interest - there's already quite a bit of research that says women (as a class) choose to spend more time with young children. But no one seemed to want to know why. We did, and asked them, and lots of their stories went into this:

https://theotherhalf.uk/what-do-mums-want-report

e.g. “I do find myself feeling extremely under valued when all the emphasis is about getting woman back to the work place when in fact I've never worked so hard in my life looking after my two children."

Feminism is a broad church. It’s a caricature of feminism to say it’s about wanting women to behave like men.. To have the same rights and opportunities as men, maybe, but what is wrong with that?
That we have what is now child benefit is down to Eleanor Rathbone who advocated for mother’s allowances which became family allowances.
First wave feminists argued in part that women should be given the vote because of the qualities they brought to the public sphere as women.
It was women who advocated and organised for infant welfare and to reduce maternal mortality.
And so on. Much feminism has organised around women’s needed.
The idea that women should be like men in the workplace is a result of neoliberalist capitalism although you also found this in communist societies. In both reproductive labour is not valued.
And surely, the point is that women should not be penalised financially for their role as mothers, and they are. Nurturing and caring for your children does not pay the bills.

I agree with a lot of what you say @Grammarnut but the "grind" of parenthood can absolutely be shared equally by men without ignoring the unique role of mothers. There is nothing innate in making packed lunches, remembering dentist's appointments, sterilising bottles, folding laundry and all the 1,000s of tasks that men too often ignore, placing a triple burden on women who are carrying the mother-load, the work-load and the domestic load.

I agree. Motherhood is something we do and are. Feminist who want mothers to behave as if they were fathers i.e. men and work the same hours, share the grind of parenting equally are entirely missing the point. It's not like that. Men can't breastfeed, babies are programmed to be attached to their mother who they have already known intimately for 9 mths and whose body had built them. Childcare from others is a very poor substitute for mum holding you in the middle of the night when you are hungry and feeding you from the body that made you.