What to Know
Moms balance relationships, parenting, careers, home life, family schedules, and so much more. Much of that work is unpaid. It takes a tremendous amount of time and can create unexplained gaps in a resume.
For decades, women who left the workforce to raise children often found it hard to find a job. Some felt the need to hide the fact that they had kids to get a job.
Now, experts say that talking about parenthood can actually help women in the workforce. But it appears that works well for white women, and Black mothers don’t have the same advantage. It’s both an interesting and disappointing reality.
The “motherhood penalty” has hurt women in the workforce for years.
For many mothers, their children come before anything. That can create unfair bias when employers assume moms are less dependable than other candidates. This motherhood penalty can also account for wage gaps and unfair treatment. But in recent years, that seems to be shifting.
According to a Duke University study published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, employers don’t penalize mothers as much as they used to.
“We found that this long-held established presumption of a motherhood penalty no longer held up in these experimental studies,” lead author Ashleigh Shelby Rosette, the James L. Vincent Professor of Leadership at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business, told SheKnows.
Sadly, race sometimes causes bias.
In 2026, it’s hard to believe that people are still seeing color, but that bias continues to exist in the workforce.
“These first-impression experiments showed that parenthood appears to convey a universal evaluative advantage rather than a penalty, indifferent to race,” Rosette said.
But as the study continued with a larger pool of 1,604 adults, parenthood seemed to benefit white moms and dads much more than Black parents.
“Perceptions of white employees became more favorable when they were described as parents, but the same boost did not occur for Black employees,” Rosette said of the “unexpected” result. “Based on the results of our first two studies, we expected the parenthood effect not to differ by race.”
The motherhood penalty has not disappeared.
Rosette explained that while it doesn’t hurt to discuss motherhood in a woman’s work experience, plenty of people still won’t appreciate that type of work.
“This work captures what essentially ‘single-shot’ impressions are,” she said. “Participants evaluate someone based on a limited profile, and in this context, we do not find any evidence to support the motherhood penalty. Now, that does not mean that the motherhood penalty has disappeared. It still may emerge in more dynamic and consequential workplace settings.”
Rosette added that she’s not telling people to put that they are a parent on a job application or resume, but she doesn’t feel that it needs to be hidden either.
“Our findings suggest that sometimes when others know that you’re a mom or a dad, you may be viewed more positive than negative,” she said.
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