It's often said that motherhood is perhaps the most important, and most difficult, job on the planet. This cliché hits fairly close to the mark. While we raise our children out of an innate sense of love and nurturing, we also know that raising happy, healthy children who become productive adults is critical to our future well-being as a nation.

But right now, motherhood in America is at a critical juncture. As women's roles continue to evolve, more women than ever are in the workforce and most children are raised in homes without a stay-at-home parent. At the same time, public and private policies that affect parenting and the workplace remain largely unchanged. We have a twenty-first-century economy stuck with an outdated, industrial-era family support structure. The result is that parents, mothers in particular, are struggling to balance the needs of their children with the demands of the workplace.

America's mothers are working, and working hard. Almost three-quarters have jobs outside their homes. Then, too, America's mothers are working hard but for less money than men (and less money than women who are not mothers). In fact, the wage gap between mothers and nonmothers is greater than that between nonmothers and men-and it's actually getting bigger. One study found that nonmothers with an average age of 30 made 90 cents to a man's dollar, while moms made only 73 cents to the dollar, and single moms made 56 to 66 cents to a man's dollar.

"It is well-established that women with children earn less than other women in the United States," writes Jane Waldfogel of Columbia University in The Journal of Economic Perspectives. "Even after controlling for differences in characteristics such as education and work experience, researchers typically find a family penalty of 10-15 percent for women with children as compared to women without children."

What's more, it's still common for women and men to hold the same job and receive different pay. In fact, women lost a cent between 2002 and 2003, according to the US Census, and now make 76 cents to a man's dollar. Most of these wage hits are coming from mothers, because the lower wages they receive drag down the overall average pay for all women.

The United States has a serious mommy wage gap. Why? Because, as Waldfogel writes, "The United States does at least as well as other countries in terms of equal pay and equal opportunity legislation, but...the United States lags in the area of family policies such as maternity leave and childcare." Studies show that this mommy wage gap is directly correlated with our lack of family-friendly national policies like paid family leave and subsidized childcare. In countries with these family policies in place, moms don't take such big wage hits.

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