A growing body of research suggests that parenthood plays a central role in shaping gender disparities in academic careers, influencing retention, productivity and advancement. A study released in March by the Centre for Economic Performance at the London School of Economic and Political Science, UK, draws on several large-scale datasets to examine how becoming a parent directly shapes academic career paths. The researchers found that men and women tend to follow comparable professional trajectories prior to having children, but their careers begin to diverge sharply after the birth of their first child.

Parenthood penalty by the numbers

Using extensive data from Danish national registries, lead author Sofie Cairo, an economist at Copenhagen Business School, and her team identified 13,347 individuals who had been enrolled in Ph.D. programs at Danish universities between 1996 and 2017 and who became parents after their first year of doctoral study. The study integrates these records with publication histories from Elsevier’s Scopus citation database, alongside responses from a 2017 survey of Danish academics that explored career goals, work–life balance and childcare responsibilities.

The results point to a pronounced “parenthood penalty,” particularly for women. Eight years after the birth of their first child, mothers were 29% less likely to be working at a university than they would have been had they remained childless. For fathers, the decline was smaller, at 14%. Even among those who stayed in academia, mothers and fathers followed notably different career paths. Women who had children faced a marked reduction in their likelihood of securing tenure—falling by 35% within three to four years after childbirth and remaining 23% lower eight years later compared with women without children. Fathers, by contrast, showed no meaningful change in their chances of tenure.

Research productivity also differed. Men maintained a steady rate of publication after becoming fathers, whereas women saw a substantial decline. Eight years after the birth of their first child, mothers had produced 31% fewer papers than their male counterparts. These gaps persisted even among academics who delayed parenthood until after obtaining their first academic position, although the disparities were somewhat less pronounced in that group.

Broader implications

So what’s behind the differing outcomes for mothers and fathers in academia? The researchers say that, importantly, the cause does not appear to be differing career aspirations—the survey data they examined show similar interest in career advancement and key job attributes. Instead, the data point to unequal childcare responsibilities. The women surveyed report “significantly fewer working hours when children are young and assume five times as many childcare responsibilities as their male counterparts,” according to the study. The time disparity is particularly pronounced for care with unpredictable timing that constrains working ability, such as doctors’ visits, sick days and nighttime childcare.

The study also highlights differences beyond academia. Women who left university positions experienced an average 12% drop in income and were less likely to transition into roles at research institutes or laboratories. This suggests that motherhood not only pushes many women out of academia, but also reduces their likelihood of continuing in research careers altogether—a pattern not observed among fathers.

The researchers highlighted that the negative impacts on women were more pronounced among mothers who were trained in departments without women in senior positions, underscoring the critical role of female mentorship and representation.