Research has shown that 15 years after graduating college, mothers earn 11 percent less than women without children — and a staggering 42 percent less than fathers. There’s a term for this: the motherhood penalty. Last year, Times Opinion asked readers to tell us about their paths to becoming mothers. Nearly 2,000 women of varying ages and from all corners of the country wrote in, but they weren’t all interested in describing their journeys to parenthood. Instead, many shared how having children had put them in a punishing financial bind. This week, Times Opinion published a video featuring interviews we conducted over the past several months with some of these women. Reading through their submissions, I was most struck by the stories of women who were confronting retirement with paltry financial reserves after leaving ambitious careers. They had found more flexible part-time work or in some cases dropped out of the labor market entirely to stay home with their kids, facing insurmountable child care costs or the demands of caring for children with special needs. “I’m an independent contractor and don’t have paid time off, so giving birth, getting sick, anything that takes me away from working is money lost,” wrote Debbie Friedman, a Los Angeles-based mother of a 3-year-old. “It’s been so much harder financially than I ever expected, and I expected it to be challenging.” Listening to these women, I could tell they don’t regret having children — despite the sacrifices they’ve had to make. “Was it worth it? One hundred percent,” one woman in the video said. It just shouldn’t come at such a high cost.
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