we need to talk about the motherhood penalty
what the data tells us about motherhood in America (and why we should be raging)
I think I’ve always known I wanted to be a mother, even when admitting it felt like a confession of inadequate ambition. The certainty sits in my bones like an inheritance, passed down through generations of women in my family.
My own mother has been nothing short of a north star. As I was growing up, she navigated motherhood with a grace that made it look effortless, though I now understand it was anything but. By day, she commanded boardrooms and led global teams, but never missed my dance performances. I remember her hands, always moving. Before her business trips, she'd fill our refrigerator with individually labeled homemade meals. She made sure I was well-read and well-traveled, hosted dinner parties, maintained deep friendships, and still found time to tuck me in at night, giggling together in the dark. Her mother, my grandmother, was cut from the same cloth of quiet strength. Together, they formed a maternal lineage that showed me motherhood could be both tender and fierce, sacrificial and empowering.
But watching my own generation grapple with motherhood has begun to crack the portrait of possibility my mother painted.
The modern landscape is fraught with contradictions that even her extraordinary example can't prepare me for. Recent research shows that new mothers face a staggering 51% drop in pay (around $8,000 annually) while fathers' earnings remain unchanged. The statistics read like a warning label on the door to maternal bliss: women spend twice as much time as men on household chores after children enter the picture, marriages with kids tend to suffer, the mental load becomes crushing.
The political landscape makes these personal anxieties feel even more acute. In a post-Roe America, motherhood doesn’t always feel like a choice — sometimes, more like a mandate. As lawmakers craft policies that treat women as little more than vessels for reproduction, we're living in a country that simultaneously glorifies motherhood and refuses to support it: no universal childcare, no guaranteed paid leave, maternal mortality rates that would shock most developed nations. The same politicians who celebrate "traditional family values" vote against basic protections for working mothers.
This disregard extends beyond policy to the very physical reality of becoming a mother, a truth we're only beginning to speak aloud. The postpartum period, what many cultures call "the fourth trimester," is treated in America like an inconvenient footnote rather than the major medical event it is. Women are sent home days after major surgery, expected to heal while keeping a new human alive on minimal sleep.
The numbers should stop us in our tracks: up to 20% of women experience postpartum depression. Our maternal mortality rates are the highest among developed nations, with 32.9 deaths per 100,000 live births: a rate that has doubled in the past 20 years. For Black women, the statistics are even more dire: they're three times more likely to die from pregnancy-related complications than white women, regardless of education or income level.
When mothers report postpartum depression, chronic pain, or exhaustion, they're often dismissed with a casual "ugh, sucks! but that's just motherhood!" — as if the physical toll of creating and sustaining life is something to be overcome through sheer will, a weakness to push past rather than a reality to honor. Studies show it takes an average of 12 months for a woman's body to fully recover from childbirth, yet American mothers are expected to bounce back in weeks, often without proper medical support or paid leave.
Sometimes I think, rather wryly, that I'd make an excellent father. The bar feels... wonderfully manageable? Change a few diapers, do some middle-of-the-night feedings, show up at a couple soccer games, and you're father of the year material. The cultural script plays out like some bizarre theater: fathers are applauded for remembering their children's birthdays, while mothers are expected to orchestrate Pinterest-worthy parties while maintaining their careers, their homes, their bodies, their marriages. All without visible effort or complaint.
The statistics tell us we can't individually optimize our way out of this problem. Every time someone suggests "just finding the right partner" or "setting better boundaries," I want to scream. Even in the most progressive households, with the most well-intentioned fathers and the most carefully crafted Excel sheets dividing labor, the burden of motherhood falls predictably, almost gravitationally, onto women's shoulders. The data is clear: even when women out-earn their partners, even when both parties start with the best intentions, mothers still bear the brunt of the invisible work. Which means it's not just about individual choices or finding the right balance, but about a system designed to ensure that someone (usually the mother) picks up all the slack that society refuses to address.
What frustrates me most isn't just the weight of these expectations, but the collective shoulder shrug they inspire, as if this is simply the natural order of things. We discuss the motherhood penalty with the same resignation we might talk about bad weather — an unfortunate but inevitable fact of life rather than a deliberate policy choice. My mother's generation marched and fought and dreamed of having it all, only for my generation to discover that "all" means "all the responsibility" rather than "all the opportunity." They shattered glass ceilings only for us to find ourselves sweeping up the shards, still bleeding.
The most damning evidence lies in how uniquely American this crisis is. While we're told to solve systemic failures with individual grit, other countries have long recognized that supporting mothers means supporting society itself. The research paints a stark picture: In Sweden, where parents receive 480 days of paid leave to share between them and childcare is heavily subsidized, the maternal employment rate is 88.3%, compared to America's 75.4%. Finnish mothers are given a "baby box" full of essentials for their newborn, along with comprehensive prenatal and postpartum care—a sharp contrast to American mothers being rushed out of hospitals days after giving birth. In Denmark, the gender wage gap is half of what it is here, and working mothers don't face the same career penalties. These countries show significantly lower rates of postpartum depression, around 8% compared to America's 20%, and their mothers report higher levels of life satisfaction across all income levels.
But perhaps the most revealing statistic is this: in Sweden, there is no motherhood penalty when women out-earn their male partners, while in America, these high-earning women face the steepest penalties of all, losing up to 60% of their earnings. When I look at these numbers, I can't help but think about how different motherhood could be if we stopped treating it as a private burden and started seeing it as the public good it is.
And yet, I still want to be a mother. But I wish I didn't feel like I was choosing between becoming a mother and remaining myself. I wish I didn't have to approach motherhood like a tactical military operation, timing it perfectly between career milestones and financial goals. I wish more people were raging about this, taking to the streets about this, treating this as the national crisis it is.
We cannot keep having the same tired conversations about "work-life balance" and "maternal instinct," as if color-coded calendars and better boundaries could fix what's fundamentally broken. We tell women to lean in, to optimize, to try harder, suggesting that if they just execute motherhood perfectly enough, they can escape its penalties. But the numbers don't lie, and they're telling a story that no amount of individual striving can rewrite.
The truth is both simpler and harder than all our carefully crafted solutions: we've built a society that reveres motherhood in theory while punishing it in practice, and until that changes, no amount of personal optimization will save us.
I’ve got no words for how good this is, yet also how saddening. I think you’ve captured that internal struggle so beautifully, especially in today’s political and social landscape
Perfect amount of personal touch and cunning cut to the core of the problem. Thank you for distilling so much of this.
I often also grapple with the thought that motherhood is selfish, at this point, if the result is bringing a child into… all of this. Who is it really for? Not them, certainly.
I come back to the supreme need to kill the nuclear family. To make networks of mothers and rely on mutual aid. I still harbor my dream of motherhood, just think it will look awfully different than what I’ve seen before. If I have it my way, my children will have many parents, not just Mom and Dad ❤️ here’s to hoping!