Housework, children, and women’s wages across racial–ethnic groups

• I use fixed effects models to examine how housework affects motherhood penalties.
• The relationships between children, housework, and wages differ by race/ethnicity.
• Household labor explains a portion of the motherhood penalty for White women.
• White women face the most dramatic increases in household labor with children.
• Additional children affect housework but not wages for Black and Hispanic women.

Motherhood affects women’s household labor and paid employment, but little previous research has explored the extent to which hours of housework may explain per child wage penalties or differences in such penalties across racial–ethnic groups. In this paper, I use longitudinal Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) data to examine how variations in household labor affect the motherhood penalty for White, Black, and Hispanic women. In doing so, I first assess how children affect hours of household labor across these groups and then explore the extent to which this household labor mediates the relationship between children and wages for these women. I find that household labor explains a portion of the motherhood penalty for White women, who experience the most dramatic increases in household labor with additional children. Black and Hispanic women experience slight increases in housework with additional children, but neither children nor housework affects their already low wages.