A child helps your career, if you're a man

[gollygee]

This was interesting to me. I knew having a child was a bad career move for women, but I didn't know it helped the careers of men - particularly high-income men.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/07/upshot/a-child-helps-your-career-if-youre-a-man.html?abt=0002&abg=1&_r=1

Yet much of the pay gap seems to arise from old-fashioned notions about parenthood. “Employers read fathers as more stable and committed to their work; they have a family to provide for, so they’re less likely to be flaky,” Ms. Budig said. “That is the opposite of how parenthood by women is interpreted by employers. The conventional story is they work less and they’re more distractible when on the job.”

Ms. Budig found that on average, men’s earnings increased more than 6 percent when they had children (if they lived with them), while women’s decreased 4 percent for each child they had. Her study was based on data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth from 1979 to 2006, which tracked people’s labor market activities over time. Childless, unmarried women earn 96 cents for every dollar a man earns, while married mothers earn 76 cents, widening the gap.

The gap persisted even after Ms. Budig controlled for factors like experience, education, hours worked and spousal incomes. It’s true that fathers sometimes work more after children, but that explains at most 16 percent of their bonus, she found. And some mothers cut back on hours or accept lower-paying jobs that are more family-friendly, but that explains only a quarter to a third of the motherhood penalty.