A study featured in Knowlege@Wharton shows that motherhood might affect how much you are paid and how much slack your employer cuts you at work. Where as motherhood seems to negatively affect women’s pay, fatherhood positively affects men’s pay. One of their theories was that single women are dedicated to their careers, mothers might be late more often, but fatherhood might settle men down. (Single women were given more pay than single men.)
Interestingly, the students ranked women without children as the most qualified on several measures, giving them the highest scores for commitment, competence and likelihood of promotion. Even so, childless women weren’t offered the highest starting salaries. Those went to fathers, who also were rated as most likely to be promoted. Childless men didn’t fare as well. They beat mothers on most measures but fell behind childless women on every measure but one. Maybe the raters assumed they would spend too many nights out carousing.
If you are interested in reading the whole article, here it is: Two New Studies Look at Mothers — and Smokers — in the Workplace – Knowledge@Wharton.