Over a Career, Women Who Have Children Are More Productive

Over the span of thirty years, women with two or more children are more productive than those with none, according to a recent study conducted by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. In order to quantify productivity, they examined the output of more than 10,000 career academics by analyzing their research publications.

Both men and women with two or more children outperformed their peers who had one child or were childless. In the case of women, those without children “substantially underperformed” when compared to women with children during the first five years of their career.

“Mothers tend to be more productive both before and long after the birth of their children. When that work is smoothed out over the course of a career, the paper found, they are more productive on average than their peers. ‘While you have small children, it has an impact on you,’ said Christian Zimmerman, one of the paper’s authors. ‘But after that, it seems that the impact is the other way.'”

Jody Greenstone Miller, founder and CEO of Business Talent Group, argues in her Big Think interview that having women in leadership positions is desirable because they bring a diversity of values that benefit corporate culture. But the amount of hours demanded by top jobs, i.e. eighty-plus hours a week, is arbitrary and makes workers less productive, particularly women who assume a greater share of domestic and child-raising duties: