watch now"For mothers, employment and earnings conditional on being employed fall sharply around the time of birth for women, and, more ominously, may remain permanently lower well after childbirth," the authors of the PNAS study wrote.
There is a dynamic that perpetuates itself, according to Jasmine Tucker, vice president of research at the National Women's Law Center.
Alternatively, fathers who work full time experience a wage "bonus" when they have children, according to a separate report by the British trade union association TUC.
"The gender imbalance in time spent on caregiving persists, even in marriages where wives are the breadwinners."
In fact, the motherhood penalty is even greater in "female-breadwinner" families, the PNAS study also found, where higher-earning women experience a 60% drop from their pre-childbirth earnings relative to their male partners.
Persons:
Jasmine Tucker, Tucker, Richard Fry
Organizations:
National Women's Law, TUC, Fathers, Pew Research Center, Pew, CNBC
Locations:
British