It's funny how we pretend we want "equal pay for equal work" and compensation to be tied only to merit and productivity, but in practice do the opposite. While the visible salary number might be the same, the benefits structure of contemporary American corporations means that employees with children have a total compensation at a drastically higher hourly wage than their childless peers.

To be perfectly clear before I'm attacked and downvoted- I'm not arguing against society benefiting from people having children or wanting parents to be stable and supported or anything of that nature.

But there is a huge double-standard here about what a job is and how compensation works. Am I being paid for the value I'm creating with my labor or am I receiving an ongoing entitlement for having passed an interview? Why is a VP paid $500,000 for taking care of their child for 6 months but an entry level employee is paid $50,000 for taking care of theirs?

Would it be more fair, inclusive and equitable to allow employees to choose between compensation structures that either paid higher hourly wages without the benefits of paid time off or lower hourly wages with paid leave, such that all employees ultimately received equal pay for the labor they provided?