Wish I shared it on Mother’s Day instead but nonetheless, it’s worthy of a blog post despite my typical laziness.
While I respect everyone’s choices on whether having or not having kids is for them, the topic of working mom struggles has come up many times in previous conversations between me and my friends ––– particularly how sometimes employers might use that to discriminate against promoting/hiring them. Even though these findings are derived from a single study and the sample size is very restricted to academia, the results of this published research are astounding and should be brought up anytime someone makes a sexist remark about working moms not being able to be as productive or committed as those who don’t have kids.
This research found that women in academia with 2+ more children are more productive at work than those with 1 child or childfree in overall career average. They are even more productive than their childfree male counterparts. However, during their children/child’s preteen years, there is a significant loss in productivity (9.5% first kid, +12.5% second kid, +11% third kid), attributing to average 33% loss in productivity first four years, however once the child reaches teenage years they pretty crush all other demographics. They crush it so hard that their career average ends up being much higher than all other demographics. So pretty much once your kids are no longer asking you for rides, the women excels significantly professional career, more so than those who are childfree in both genders. Some obvious statistics: Women who have children between the ages 30-34 are significantly less affected by the “motherhood effect” than those who have children before the age of 30 (better family planning, financial security, significant other involved, etc)
All in all… mothers of at least two children are, on average, more productive than mothers of only one child, and moms in general are more productive than women who don’t have kids. Fathers of at least two children are also more productive than fathers of one child and childfree men. However, towards the end of the career – men with no children did perform better than men with one. Also another interesting factor, women who have children, have exceptionally highly productive years right before they have kids. Which makes sense because they want to reach a certain professional level (and they work extra hard to get there) before having kids. You may read more about this research here:
Working moms are truly superheroes that don’t wear capes.
Faraway Universe 