The "Mommy Tax" Is Real - Here's How to Avoid It

From a sociology point of view, parenting seems to have taken a conflicting approach owing to the changes that have occurred and are occurring in the family institution. From the women’s point of view, marriage and parenting comes at a hefty price ( Crittenden, 2007) . Most of them have to give up their lucrative careers and focus on raising their children in the Ozzie and Harriet families. In the cult of domesticity notion, women are expected to center their lives on childbearing and parenting and nothing else. As a result, they have to forego their ambitions and sacrifice their earnings. Moreover, women who provide care for their elderly relatives also lose substantial income in work hours lost. Evidence from a survey focusing on such individuals found that they lost close to seven hundred thousand dollars of wages and other benefits through their lifetimes ( Crittenden, 2007) . It thus seems that the family unit comes at a massive cost that most modern individuals may be unwilling to pay, making the future of families to be somewhat uncertain. 

Notably, the cost of bearing and raising a child weighs heavily on the mother who has to lose several months of earnings to take care of the child. Currently, the paid leave is no longer mandatory in the US and as such, a good number of women opt to quit their jobs for the sake of raising a family ( Crittenden, 2007) . Furthermore, programs for career advancement take place after work, locking out many women who need to provide care for their babies. Such trends have triggered most women to reduce the number of children and bear them at a later age to guarantee better lifetime earnings. Worse still, some women opt to have no children at all or are unable to have them for having postponed it for too long. Thus, the future of families is an increase in divorce instances and a reduction in the number of children. 

Reference 

Crittenden, A. (2007). The mommy tax. Shifting the center: Understanding contemporary families .