Bankrate survey shows the motherhood penalty can cost women $500k+ in career earnings

Balancing career and family has long been difficult for men and women, regardless of their family structure.

But for mothers there can be a particularly high penalty for being in the workplace, and new analysis from Bankrate shows that they can miss out on over $500,000 in earnings across a 30-year career.

The figure emerged when Bankrate analyzed the Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey data, discovering in the process that mothers earned 31 percent less in wages than fathers in 2023, which is a similar percentage difference to 2022 (32 percent).

It also showed that these lost wages can “compound significantly”, adding up to around $500,000 for mothers over a 30-year career, assuming their earnings remain the same.

The study comes amid other pressures for workers across the U.S., like the recent rise in the unemployment rate. But what’s the background to this penalty on mothers––and what can be done about pay parity?

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Motherhood penalty

Bankrate’s analysis found that while full-time working mothers with children under 18 could expect to earn a median salary last year of $55,276, fathers earned $72,280, meaning an annual loss for mothers of $17,000.

It also discovered that while women can find closest parity with men when they’re single with no children, they nonetheless start out earning less – and this gap between them widens if women marry.

Meanwhile, single mothers with children under 18 earned $43,888 compared to single working fathers with children under 18 ($52,728), losing them around $265,000 in wages across three decades.

Bankrate even discovered that fathers working full-time experience a wage bonus after they have children.

Experts often refer to the “motherhood penalty” imposed on women who want to pursue their career after having children.

In part, it’s driven by the fact that women still disproportionately shoulder caring and domestic responsibilities. This can affect their career growth by forcing them to take on a part-time job or leave the workplace altogether.

A Pew Research report from 2023 found that while the share of women in opposite-sex marriages who earn as much as or significantly more than their husband has roughly tripled over the past 50 years, women continue to pick up a heavier load when it comes to household chores and caregiving responsibilities. 

Meanwhile, the gender pay gap persists in the U.S., with women working full-time being paid 84 percent of what men are paid.

Progress towards the C-suite

This is all occurring despite the fact that in recent decades women have continued to make huge gains within the workplace. In the Women in the Workplace 2023 report, McKinsey found that women’s representation in the C-suite in the U.S. and Canada is at the highest it has ever been.

But it found “lagging progress” in the middle of the pipeline, as well as a persistent underrepresentation of women of color, pointing to even wider diversity issues.

Looking at the situation globally, GrantThornton found that pay parity for women in senior management will only be reached in 2053 if things continue at their current rate. Plus, the percentage of female CEOs dropped globally from 28 percent to 19 percent last year, with some female CEOs at larger firms saying their reasons for leaving included caring responsibilities.

From ‘glass ceiling’ to ‘broken rung’

Part of tackling the persistent gendered gaps for mothers in the workplace comes down to debunking myths about women and career progress in general.

As McKinsey found, these myths include that women are losing their ambition; that flexibility in the workplace is something only women are looking for; that the biggest barrier is the “glass ceiling”; and that microaggressions don’t matter, even though women are more likely to experience them.

Experts told McKinsey that rather than the glass ceiling, it’s the “broken rung” that’s the biggest barrier to women’s advancement – that rung being the first step into a managerial position.

These experts say fixing the rung includes companies thinking about the criteria for these early roles, and encouraging a diversity of people to apply for them – giving women a better chance of reaching the C-suite.

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Another factor that can affect women’s advancement is salary negotiation, which is particularly important when we consider the motherhood penalty.

A recent study – Now, Women Do Ask: A Call to Update Beliefs about the Gender Pay Gap – found that women now negotiate their salaries more often than men. The kicker? They get turned down more often.

The study’s authors noted that the outdated belief that women don’t negotiate can increase gender stereotyping. And as we can see from the Bankrate study, mothers might be particularly keen to negotiate given the existing pay gaps.

While things might be changing, issues still persist when it comes to women achieving equality in the workplace, whether they be mothers or not. But unlike in previous decades, we now have the benefit of more insight into what’s causing the issues – giving workplaces no excuse when it comes to tackling them.

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