10-08-2025
Firstborn daughters ‘cost mothers more in lost pay and housework'
Having a first child often entails sacrifices, but a study suggests that British mothers pay a far higher price when the baby is a girl.
It is well established that women's earnings tend to fall after childbirth. The new research shows that this so-called 'child penalty' is, on average, steeper when the firstborn is a daughter.'Mothers' monthly earnings over the five years after birth were, on average, £450 lower if they had a daughter compared to a son,' said Sonia Bhalotra, a professor of economics at the University of Warwick, who worked on the study with Angelina Nazarova of the University of Essex and Damian Clarke of the University of Exeter.
'To put these figures in perspective, they exceed the child benefit for first children, which is approximately £110 per month.'
The arrival of a girl, rather than a boy, was also associated with mothers doing more housework, and with fathers saying that they were more satisfied with their relationships with their partners.
The research draws on more than a decade of data from the UK Longitudinal Household Survey, which tracks about 100,000 individuals from about 40,000 households. It suggests that the sex of a first child shapes not only women's careers, but also family life, household chores, societal views and mental health.
Mothers of girls saw their incomes fall by an average of 26 per cent in the five years after birth, compared with fathers — more than eight times the 3 per cent fall for mothers of boys. Employment rates showed a similar pattern: they fell by about 20 per cent for mothers of daughters, compared with 6 per cent for mothers of sons.
• Flexible hours 'trap' mothers into doing more parenting
After a first son, the share of household chores mothers carried out alone increased by 27 per cent; after a first daughter, it jumped by 43 per cent. Similarly, mothers were 57 per cent more likely to identify as the main carer after a son, but 67 per cent more likely after a daughter.
The researchers also found that mothers, compared with fathers, became more likely to report 'traditional' views such as the belief that 'the husband should earn and the wife should stay at home'. Fathers' views did not change.
Mothers of girls suffered a bigger drop in mental health than mothers of boys. Meanwhile, fathers of daughters reported greater satisfaction with their relationships with their partners than fathers of sons, a finding that may be linked to women shouldering more domestic work.
The study could not show what caused these results. It is possible that some mothers choose to take more time off to nurture daughters, or that fathers share more of the household burden when they have a son. However, these remain speculative explanations.
To the extent that children benefit from the mother spending more time at home, the behavioural shifts the authors observe may give firstborn daughters an advantage. Bhalotra stressed that the term 'child penalty' has been used in academia to refer to a persistent drop in earnings of the mother relative to the father after birth, and that it does not imply any moral judgment.
'These intriguing findings imply that girls grow up in a systematically different household environment than boys, which could influence their perceptions of the role of women and men,' she and her colleagues wrote in a working paper.
