Study challenges the “motherhood penalty” by revealing how moms excel at work

Becoming a parent may change more than family life — it may also reshape how some people view their work. A new study published in the Journal of Applied Psychology suggests that parents, particularly mothers, are more likely than non-parents to see their jobs as a way of demonstrating values such as responsibility and dedication to their families. This stronger sense of purpose was associated with greater work effort and more constructive workplace behavior.

Working parents are often discussed in terms of conflict, with the demands of raising children assumed to compete with career responsibilities. These beliefs have contributed to the “motherhood penalty,” in which mothers are often perceived as less committed employees and may face disadvantages in hiring, promotion, and pay. Fathers, by contrast, may benefit from a “fatherhood premium.” However, growing evidence suggests that family life can also enrich work by improving well-being, developing useful skills, and encouraging greater efficiency.

The researchers proposed another explanation that has received far less attention: parenthood may change the meaning people attach to their work. Rather than viewing work solely as an income source, parents may see it as an opportunity to demonstrate qualities such as responsibility and integrity to their children. The researchers called this the family-centered symbolic meaning of work — the belief that work allows people to serve as role models for their families. They also predicted that this perspective would be particularly strong among mothers, as women often face greater social expectations around caregiving and moral guidance within families.

Huiyao Liao, a researcher at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and colleagues first developed a new measure of the family-centered symbolic meaning of work. They then tested it on 283 employees from a Chinese pharmaceutical company, including 223 women and 60 men. The sample’s average age was 35.5 years. The sample comprised 181 mothers, 32 fathers, 42 women without children, and 28 men without children.

Employees completed surveys across two time points. At a third time point, 52 supervisors evaluated each employee’s work effort and organizational citizenship behavior. The latter is an extra-role behavior that indirectly enhances organizational effectiveness, specifically “ethical voice behavior”—meaning communicating concerns about ethical violations or suggestions about upholding ethical standards. The findings were subsequently replicated in another Chinese sample of 294 employees and a United States sample of 300 employees.

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Across the studies, parents were more likely than non-parents to view their work as a way of setting an example for their families. In the primary study, this relationship was strongest among women. Employees who reported greater family-centered meaning were also rated by supervisors as putting more effort into their work and engaging more often in ethical voice behaviors that benefited their organization.

Importantly, these relationships remained even after accounting for other well-established explanations for why family life may benefit work, including improved mood, parenting-related skills, and greater efficiency. This suggests that deriving symbolic meaning from work may represent an additional pathway through which parenthood influences workplace behavior. As one participant explained, “I want to show them that hard work pays off in the end.”

It must be noted that the study has several limitations. Because it was observational, it cannot establish that parenthood directly causes changes in work behavior. In addition, the primary sample was skewed heavily toward mothers, with working fathers and child-free men being underrepresented.

Also, the researchers measured supervisor-rated work behaviors rather than objective outcomes such as productivity, promotions, or salary. The authors noted that this may be why their findings contradict previous research about the motherhood penalty: while previous research measured subjective assessments of promotability or hireability, this study measured tangible work behaviors, which are more objectively discernible. Thus, the findings do not show whether employers recognize or reward this potential “motherhood advantage.”

The study, “Uncovering a Motherhood Advantage: How Parenthood Impacts Perceptions of the Meaning of Work and Work Outcomes,” was authored by Huiyao Liao, Tammy D. Allen, Zhaopeng Liu, Thomas Ptashnik, and I-Heng (Ray) Wu.