What explains the motherhood penalty in hiring?
The so-called motherhood penalty is well documented: mothers are less likely to land a job than childless women. But why exactly? Our study, published in the Journal of Marriage and Family, reveals how Flemish employers view mothers… and fathers.
In earlier work, we synthesised the international experimental research on the motherhood penalty. The picture was clear: women more often miss out on a job or a promotion because they are, or could become, mothers. In this follow-up study, we examined whether the way Flemish employers perceive mothers during recruitment can help explain that penalty.
About the study
We asked 452 genuine Flemish recruiters to each assess five fictitious applicants, yielding 2,260 evaluations in total. The fictitious applicants differed at random in many characteristics, including gender, number of children, and the ages of those children. The information on parenthood was included under the heading of family situation, together with marital status, as in earlier research and as is not unusual in practice. Moreover, a large share of the profiles contained no information on the number of children, or mentioned only that there were children without specifying ages, to prevent the participating recruiters from seeing through the experiment.
Mothers penalised, fathers only in specific situations
Mothers are systematically assessed less favourably when applying than childless women, regardless of the number or the age of their children. In concrete terms, fictitious female candidates who indicated that they had children were less often recommended for a job interview or for actual hiring.
The key scientific contribution of our research is the finding that a female candidate’s motherhood immediately triggers a set of ideas about her. Specifically, recruiters see mothers as (1) less ambitious, (2) less flexible, (3) more often absent in both the short and the long run, and (4) less willing to work overtime than childless women.
For fathers, things are different. They are usually not assessed differently from childless men when their parenthood becomes apparent during the application, at least when they have one or two children. Fathers with three or more children are also seen as (1) less ambitious, (2) less flexible, and (3) less willing to work overtime than childless men. As a result, they too are less often recommended for a job interview or actual hiring. For men, the age of their children does matter: fathers with older children are judged more harshly than fathers with young children or children of unspecified age.
We had already observed in earlier policy work that men with three children are less often in work than fathers with one or two children. This new study uncovers a mechanism: employers assess men with three children less favourably. The pattern suggests that employers expect fathers in those situations to take on more care duties. As children grow older, the mother more often returns to full-time work and more practical guidance is needed, for instance with homework or hobbies, so employers may assume that the father shares that responsibility.
Is silence (about your children) golden?
Women who provided no information on whether they had children were not rated worse than childless women in terms of actual hiring chances. They were, however, attributed some of the same negative traits as mothers. In other words, some employers automatically assumed that these women had children. That is a form of statistical discrimination, whereby employers fill in missing information themselves based on the perceptions they hold about certain groups.
Policy recommendations and tips for employers
The unfavourable treatment of mothers in the hiring process shows that some employers still take decisions based on stereotypes. Hence these policy recommendations.
Uniform hiring practices. If we want parents to receive equal chances, recruitment should first and foremost be as objective as possible. Uniform hiring practices can help. Think of standardised application forms or structured interviews that leave out personal details about parenthood and focus on gathering accurate information about the productivity characteristics and performance potential of each individual candidate.
Childcare. In our research, mothers were rated as less available, an image that possibly stems from the assumption that they pick up care duties when no stable childcare is in place. With better childcare provision, such assumptions can fall away. More subsidised places, longer opening hours, and better working conditions for childcare workers are essential. We should not look at the government alone for this. Employers can contribute as well, by organising childcare themselves or by reserving fixed places at the nurseries they partner with.
Parental leave. The Scandinavian countries can serve as inspiration here, too. By actively encouraging fathers to take leave at the birth of a child, they ensure that care duties do not automatically land with the mother. In Belgium, the opposite sometimes happens: when a baby needs extra care, maternity leave is in practice often extended rather than a shared solution being sought. A pleasant surprise in the coalition agreement of the De Wever government is therefore the intention to introduce a Family Credit, whereby family members divide all care leave among themselves. That automatically stimulates the conversation within a family, and the woman no longer automatically pays the price for her fertility while society as a whole benefits from the result. Hopefully, the Family Credit will be implemented soon.
This post also appeared via UGent @ Work, in Dutch. The study is joint work with Morien El Haj, Axana Dalle, and Stijn Baert. This page was last updated on 05 June 2026.