The Mommy Tax on America's Mothers

I joined TikTok as it hung under the threat of a permanent ban. It was November of last year. Social media felt like one big funeral service, and I wanted to immerse myself in something other than political mourning. TikTok has been terrible for my productivity, but great for my temperament and I have been thoroughly entertained.

One of the great things about the site is the ‘hot takes’ and think pieces served up by everyday people. Every few weeks there’s a seemingly harmless but apparently incendiary cultural moment that puts the people in an uproar. The latest fallout? A trend based on a years-old Jacquees song. As the 2018 song ‘B.E.D.’ fades to a close, Jacquees croons, “21 with no kids.” In celebration of being intentionally child-free in a society that promotes motherhood as a woman’s ultimate aspiration, women of all ages have been posting their ages as they dance to the snippet in the background. Most women on the app, mothers and non-mothers alike, have received the posts as the empowering nod to a woman’s right to make her own choice about when or whether to become a mother. But for some, “21 with no kids,” has obviously struck a nerve.

Much of the rhetoric criticizing child-free women comes with a demand that child-free women justify their choices. As if to say, “who are you to bypass this expectation, and what reason do you have to exist if you will not have children?” I’ve always thought this demand for justification to be odd. Many forget, in a world that expects partnership and parenthood, that being single and child-free is our natural state. It would probably make more sense to ask why someone wants to alter their natural state rather than ask why someone wants to remain within it.

One thing I find so refreshing about the debate on TikTok is the number of women who have argued that they don’t have kids simply because they don’t want to. Not because they can’t. Not because they haven’t found the right partner. Not because they want to dedicate their energy to their career or some other grand pursuit. They’d rather not and autonomy means they don’t have to.

What I find disheartening is that for all the women that aren’t having children because they just don’t want to, there are an equal number of women who wanted kids and would’ve had them if not for the outsized economic burden society places on mothers.

Parenthood is a different economic calculation for women than it is for men. There’s plenty of conversation about the gender pay gap in America, but we hardly ever talk about the fact that the gap nearly disappears when mothers are taken out of the equation. Child-free women earn roughly the same as their male counterparts, and fathers’ earnings often increase after they become parents. But mothers? Mothers can expect lower pay for the same work, fewer promotion opportunities, lower lifetime earnings, and retirement account balances significantly lower than their male and child-free female counterparts. All this before you factor in the rising cost of housing, transportation, childcare, healthcare, and education.

I recently read that DOGE bro Elon Musk thinks declining birthrates are an existential threat to America. If it means that much to him, he should figure out how to cut the mommy tax on America’s mothers instead of trying to figure out how to cut benefits for America’s seniors.