The Motherhood Penalty

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
The Watchdog on Wall Street podcast explaining the news coming
out of the complex worlds of finance, economics, and politics
and the impact it will have on everyday Americans. Author,
investment banker, consumer advocate, analyst, and trader Chris Markowski.

Speaker 2 (00:16):
The motherhood Penalty. Yes, CNBC has got their various different
little series that they do. They got a lot of
time they have to fill, so they got this bit
on women and wealth and they put out a column
here and I was taken back by it. Working moms

(00:36):
are still more likely to handle child's care. It costs
them twenty thousand dollars a year in lost wages, and
they're calling this the motherhood penalty. Despite making major strides
in the workplace, as women approach their forties, they're still
more likely to take time out of the labor force

(00:57):
or reduce the number of hours worked because of care
taking responsibilities. This also results in fewer opportunities for advancement
and lower pay. The motherhood penalty. We women are achieving
increasing levels of education, working as much, if not more
than their male counterparts, at least until they reach an

(01:18):
age when they often get married or have children. I
dynamic that has proved remarkably stubborn. Quote. Women are more
likely to exit the labor force, either permanently or for
a couple of years, to take care of children. Kelly Shue,
Professor of Finance at the Yale School of Management. Twenty
six percent of mothers are stay at home parents, compared

(01:40):
with just seven percent of fathers. Mothers working full time
and year round outside the home rarely recruit the loss wages,
which add up to twenty thousand dollars a year on average.
Why is this bad? I'm just asking life. Life is again,

(02:04):
there's trade offs in life. There's transactions in life. And
I'm here to say if you're worried or you are
bent out of shape that because you've got to take
time off to take care of your kids, you're going
to be late making less money. Do the nation a solid.

(02:26):
And I'm sorry, I just don't have kids. It's not
a penalty. Now I'm thinking of it this way. I'm
going to play pretend here, what if I didn't have kids?
What my wife and I said, Yo, what we're not
going to have kids? Well, yeah, it would be a

(02:50):
non kid bonus. Would we call it the amount the
amount of.

Speaker 3 (02:54):
Money that we we'd be able to put away and
save and spend on our ourselves and party on Wayne,
party on garth because I wasn't coaching teams and spending
money on club lacrosse and whatever it may be, and
spending money on kids.

Speaker 2 (03:11):
Yeah, everything in life is a trade off. It's not
a penalty, it's a choice. Again, I'm sorry. This is
pretty sad. If you're looking at this as a penalty
rather than a blessing, don't have kids. Watch dog on

(03:33):
Wall Street dot com.