As millions of Americans put in orders for flowers, massages, and other treats for Mother\u2019s Day, working mothers spoke to MarketWatch about the \u201cmom tax\u201d or \u201cmotherhood penalty\u201d \u2013 a toll that impacts women when they become mothers and raise a child, by increasing their responsibility at home and limiting their earnings and income.<\/p>\n
Women already face a myriad of economic and financial penalties, from paying taxes on menstrual products to stepping back from the labor force to take on a caregiving role, which consequently translates into having fewer opportunities to invest and save sufficiently for retirement.<\/p>\n
\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a real struggle for women, and it\u2019s a real struggle for mothers,\u201d Misty Heggeness, a professor at the University of Kansas, told MarketWatch. \u201cWe need to, as a society, do better to recognize the ways in which these cumulative negative economic impacts hit women.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Even before children entered the picture, women were being outperformed by men, the women stressed.<\/p>\n
The typical woman in America was only earning 82 cents for every dollar earned by men, according to the Pew Research Center last year. In other words, for every $100,000 a year made by a man, a woman would only earn only $82,000. That gap has barely budged in the last two decades, Pew noted. Back in 2002, women made 80 cents on the dollar compared to men.<\/p>\n
There are many theories as to why women persistently earn less than men. Some women may be conditioned to think, or be nudged into lower-paying professions. In 2017, Glassdoor released a study that revealed that many of the college majors that resulted in higher paying jobs were male-dominated \u2014 such as engineering and computer science. But female-dominated college majors \u2014 like social work and nursing \u2014 resulted in lower pay.<\/p>\n
Pew also attributed the different roles working fathers and working mothers take on.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Moms between the ages of 25 and 44 are \u201cless likely to be in the labor force\u201d than similarly-aged women who don\u2019t have kids at home, the report stated, \u201cand they tend to work fewer hours each week when employed.\u201d This ends up reducing how much some mothers earn.<\/p>\n
But \u201cthe reality today is that 75% of caregivers are women,\u201d Lorna Kapusta, head of women and engagement at Fidelity, told MarketWatch. And these women spend as much as 50% more time providing care than their male counterparts, according to research from the Institute on Aging.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat that means is that oftentimes, [women] may be taking some time out to care for our children\u2026 which impacts your income and the growth of your income,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n
Fathers, on the other hand, return to the labor force and even work more hours each week than men without children. \u201cThis is linked to an increase in the pay of fathers \u2013 a phenomenon referred to as the \u2018fatherhood wage premium\u2019 \u2013 and tends to widen the gender pay gap,\u201d the Pew report said.<\/p>\n
The \u201cmom tax\u201d is most apparent when comparing the wealth of mothers to women without children to single mothers\u2019 wealth, Kapusta said.<\/p>\n
Single moms had a median wealth of just $7,000, compared to other single people, who had a median net worth of between $57,000 to $65,000, according to a St. Louis Federal Reserve report released last year.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe motherhood wealth penalty is clear,\u201d the Fed said. \u201cSingle women without children had over nine times more median wealth than single mothers.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
And once again, dads were not subject to the same type of \u201ctax.\u201d The median wealth of dads compared to men without kids \u201cdid not significantly differ, indicating there wasn\u2019t a commensurate wealth penalty for fatherhood,\u201d the St. Louis Fed report added.<\/p>\n
Women commonly step back from the labor force or work part-time or on a freelance basis to take care of their family, said Lorna Kapusta, head of women and engagement at Fidelity. \u201cIt isn\u2019t just about those who have children, often, women may be dealing with or taking care of aging parents, or a family member,\u201d Kapusta said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
There is growing acknowledgement that the caregiving economy is the backbone of society. Heggeness, a former economist at the U.S. Census Bureau, has tried to quantify the amount of time people put into caregiving as part of the \u201ccaregiving economy.\u201d She recently received a two-year grant to fund a project where she can provide a dashboard that reveals all data on the work Americans do every day to provide care.<\/p>\n
Adults in America with kids under the age of 6 spend an average of 2.2 hours a day on childcare, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). And about 14% of the population that\u2019s over 15 provided unpaid care for the elderly \u2014 with a quarter of that group doing so daily.<\/p>\n
But there was a stark difference between men and women: On an average day, a mom of kids below 6 spent 1.2 hours providing care. Men spent 31 minutes.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Heggeness said she is also concerned about the state of mental health among working moms \u2014 who have pivoted from working from home during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic with their school-age children to returning to the office and the office commute without skipping a beat.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Stories by media outlets during the pandemic highlighted how some women felt overwhelmed by balancing work and childcare at the same time in the same place, reaching a breaking point. \u201cAmerica\u2019s Mothers Are in Crisis,\u201d a headline from the New York Times stated in 2021.<\/p>\n
So how do women break this cycle, avoid the \u201cmom tax,\u201d and help prepare younger generations for this critical time in their working lives?\u00a0<\/p>\n
Be a role model for both sons and<\/em> daughters, experts say. They both need to see that financial responsibility, household chores, and parenting should fall equally on both men and women. Consider the fact that even though the number of female breadwinners has tripled between 1972 and 2022 from 5% to 16%, according to Pew, \u201cthe way couples divide their time between paid work and home life remains unbalanced,\u201d the think-tank said in a report. \u201cWomen pick up a heavier load when it comes to household chores and caregiving responsibilities, while men spend more time on work and leisure.\u201d<\/p>\nTalk about money, talk about saving, and explore the idea of investing with teenage children. When they start to earn pocket money from part-time jobs or household chores, talk to them about how to make the money they\u2019re earning work for them, Kapusta said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a different way of thinking,\u201d she said. Open savings accounts for your teenage children and grandchildren to get them used to the idea of depositing money and watching it grow. Have an ongoing conversation about their savings, and how they plan to use them. And share your own stories too.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Don\u2019t lower your own expectations for yourself. Abbey Donnell was seven months pregnant when she was in the process of launching her own company in Houston, Texas, five years ago.<\/p>\n
The entrepreneur was determined to go full steam ahead with her goal of being her own boss. But being so heavily pregnant and in the third trimester, Donnell did, however, found herself rethinking that decision for a moment. But she brushed it off, since she really wanted to pursue her pilot project, which was building suites in office buildings for use by new mothers to express breast milk.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cSo many women are so worried about the way a pregnancy or motherhood might impact their job that they don\u2019t go for the next promotion or they don\u2019t take on the next project,\u201d said Donnell, CEO of Work & Mother, a commercial lactation suite service, told MarketWatch.<\/p>\n
Lead by example. Invest your own money wisely: Take advantage of your 401(k) match to invest in low-fee target date funds, talk openly about stocks and bonds, and set up a tax-advantaged 529 plan to save for your children\u2019s college education. And if you have a daughter? Talk about STEM subjects, and encourage them to pursue careers in finance and technology, if they show an interest in those fields.\u00a0<\/p>\n
And lastly, try to let go of mom guilt, she said. \u201cFrom my perspective as a mom, I think we all have some level of mom guilt,\u201d Kapusta explained. Some moms report feeling guilty in dropping their children off at daycare or letting their children have what they consider too much screen time.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have worked throughout when my children were young,\u201d she said. \u201cThe way I\u2019ve quieted down the mom guilt is, when I\u2019m working, I\u2019m working, and when I\u2019m with my kids, I\u2019m with my kids,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
Read the full article here<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As millions of Americans put in orders for flowers, massages, and other treats for Mother\u2019s Day, working mothers spoke to MarketWatch about the \u201cmom tax\u201d or \u201cmotherhood penalty\u201d \u2013 a toll that impacts women when they become mothers and raise a child, by increasing their responsibility at home and limiting their earnings and income. Women […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8244,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"gallery","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[236],"tags":[83],"class_list":["post-8243","post","type-post","status-publish","format-gallery","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-featured","post_format-post-format-gallery"],"yoast_head":"\n
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