Last year, Times Opinion asked readers to tell us about their journey to motherhood. Almost 2,000 responded, and an overwhelming number were not actually focused on the path to parenthood. Instead, readers wanted to talk about the challenges they experienced after their children arrived.
Their struggles are encapsulated well by Patsy Freeland of New Jersey, one of the dozens of women my colleagues followed up with, who said, “I was not prepared for how inflexible work would be, how expensive it would be and how much our society and economic systems are built off of taking my labor as a mother for granted.” Her words perfectly illustrate the “motherhood penalty” as depicted in the video above.
Technically, the motherhood penalty is the notion that when women become mothers, they earn less money and their wages tend to decrease with each child. When men become fathers, their wages increase, especially among the highest-earning men. That’s the “fatherhood premium.” Inflation over the past several years has made the motherhood penalty feel even more like a punishment.
While the motherhood penalty has been the term of art for what happens to working women when they become mothers, it does not encompass the financial hit taken by the stay-at-home parent. This financial burden isn’t just temporary, either — it stretches all the way to retirement.
Mothers have less money in personal retirement accounts, and they also receive less money from Social Security because they’re more likely to have gaps in their employment history, and their caregiving isn’t valued by society in the way that it should be. Which is to say, caregiving is neither paid nor truly respected.
Because child care has long been more expensive than a mortgage payment in most states, many women feel that their choices are constrained. They’re not always working because they want to, or staying home because they want to — they’re trying to complete a financial puzzle that has several pieces missing. Of course, many fathers feel this, too, but culturally, they’re pushed more into breadwinning than women tend to be (which may not be what makes them happiest, but it does make them more financially solvent).
Over the 15 years that I have been covering parenting — all but two of which I have also been a parent myself — I find that I get more and more pushback for the idea that raising children is a community responsibility. Some people scoff at the idea that parents should ever complain about the financial stress of raising children in the United States, where our social safety nets are some of the flimsiest in the developed world. Pretty consistently, I get responses that boil down to: If you can’t afford kids, that’s on you. You chose to have them. But I think that’s both unempathetic, and shortsighted.
Unempathetic for obvious reasons, including that children are human beings; they shouldn’t be a luxury good. There’s evidence that our society’s disdain for mothers is affecting them emotionally, a kind of embodiment of the motherhood penalty. In May, a large study was published showing that self-reported mental health had become significantly worse for American mothers from 2016 to 2023. The study, which surveyed nearly 200,000 mothers of children up to age 17, found that while mental health had declined for all demographics of mothers, mental health was “significantly” worse for single mothers, mothers with less education and mothers whose children were on public health insurance or had no health insurance at all.
The financial strain of raising children is a contributing factor to lower birthrates around the world. A 2025 report from the United Nations Population Fund asked women from 14 countries around the world, including the United States, “In your personal situation, what factors have led or are likely to lead you to have fewer children than you initially desired?” “Financial limitations” was the most cited reason in every country. In South Korea, which has the lowest fertility rates in the world, 58 percent of respondents said that their finances were holding them back from their ideal families. The second-most-cited reason was unemployment or job insecurity.
While I am not yet worried that the United States will turn into South Korea, if we continue to ignore the financial stress of mothers, we could be headed that way.
The good news is that there are solutions to be had. Permanently increasing the child tax credit has bipartisan support and is in the current Senate tax proposal. But we need to think bolder and bigger than that to really help mothers throughout their life spans, and whether or not they remain in paid employment. Affordable or subsidized child care would be a huge help. In The Atlantic last year, Elliot Haspel suggested caregiver credits go toward Social Security and giving cash assistance to low-income parents who care for their children at home, which a few states have done.
Just listening to mothers about their fears and joys, as expressed in the video, is a start. So many of them are brought to tears talking about how much they love their kids, and how, despite the often unexpected financial strains, their children are their heartbeat. “Was it worth it? 100 percent,” one woman in the video said. It’s worth it — it just shouldn’t have to be this hard.
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Emily Holzknecht (@emilyholzknecht) is a producer with Opinion Video. Adam Westbrook is a producer and editor with Opinion Video.
Jessica Grose is an Opinion writer for The Times, covering family, religion, education, culture and the way we live now.
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