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Comment by marcodiego | Hacker News Reader

There was a place I worked at where it was well known that if you were a parent you had higher chances of getting higher pay. I asked why and people explained me that employees who are parents are more willing to make extra efforts to keep their jobs.

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It works the other way too. The only people I've known who wanted the thankless but higher paying jobs like middle managers were parents.

In some cases it helped compensate for a spouse's loss of income.

I became a project manager when my daughter was born.

After having kids, I know I can be a better manager after thinking about someone else's needs 24/7, anticipating how to coach them, grow them into successful individuals, and having coaxed a 3 year old to get dressed and put on shoes, I'm way more confident I can help software engineers ship product ;)

There are positions where I was thinking that the perfect hire for that role would be someone who was successful as a kindergarten teacher; all the other skills can be gained on the job but the ability to coax a bunch of figurative three year olds into something resembling organized activity is challenging and rare.

I think it contributes to a renewed sense of purpose and dedication that comes from knowing you are responsible for other people and a desire to show them a positive role model.

Maybe it does - but does that balance out the sleeplessness, tiredness, extra stress, less free time and mindspace etc of parenting?

I'd be confident the extra leverage on parents is a larger factor.

so maybe the additional leverage makes employers more comfortable paying them more because they don't believe they will leave as readily?

Increased leverage to me would imply suppressed wages.

edit:

I also think employers will often empathize with new parents who may be operating on reduced sleep and hours, giving them a little more leeway than otherwise. I know I do this with my employees.

Maybe the employees who are parents push harder in salary negotiations because they have people depending on them.

Nailed it. People with kids are way more likely to seek out higher earning jobs and be bucking for a promotion, they've gotta pay for those kids' educations! I have no kids, so I don't currently have any interest in getting promoted and get to just nope out of the rat race.

Some of the other comments have some good ideas as to why that is--motivation to earn more, management not wanting to fire parents as readily, etc.--but I wonder if on top of all of that, parents have some other selection effects going on.

Maybe whatever hoops must be jumped through to get married and have children are similar in size and shape to hoops that help in the workforce, so group averages move a bit in some positive way.

Time for some light reading...

Or it's need-based - parents need more income to support dependents.

This is close to "we're going to let $A go instead of $B because $B [needs the job more/needs the money more/will have a harder time finding another job]" when by any objective measure $B is the lower performer. It has no place in this type of decision-making (both the bad side with layoffs, and the positive with raises or promotions) but it is still probably there.

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