Moving beyond dominant interpretive frameworks such as the motherhood penalty and the fatherhood bonus, we have been analyzing parenthood as a process that evolves over time and transforms a person’s relationship with work, and academia as an institution. In debates on balancing academic careers with parenthood, the voices of men and people who have consciously chosen not to have children are still underrepresented. But without incorporating these experiences, the picture remains incomplete, and the patterns reproduced are too one-dimensional.
In most European Union countries fertility rates remain significantly below the replacement level. This is a problem not only for pension systems or the labor market, but a challenge for institutions such as universities.
Academia needs people who will conduct research for decades, teach future generations, and build academic communities. However, this career model still rests on the assumption of uninterrupted availability, mobility, and maximum productivity. This means that parenthood is not built into the career trajectory. Rather, it seems a disruption of continuity that must be “minimized” so as not to lose momentum.
Although academia educates successive generations and spreads knowledge about inequality, sustainable development, and intergenerational responsibility, it does not always put these values into practice on its own turf.
From a broader perspective, the organization of childcare is the result of legal regulations, institutional solutions, and entrenched cultural norms. If this system is implicitly based on the assumption of female responsibility for care, even the most progressive declarations by institutions have limited agency. For example, in Poland, the parental leave system formally allows for fathers’ participation, yet its structure reproduces the traditional division of roles: the mother is entitled to 20 weeks of maternity leave (of which 14 weeks are mandatory), followed by 32 weeks of parental leave which she may but is not required to share with the father. Additionally, the father is entitled to a separate two-week paternity leave. In practice, this means that the burden of career break continues to fall primarily on women, and the system’s professed “neutrality” and “equality” do not translate into actual symmetry.
- The motherhood penalty refers to the systemic costs of motherhood: slower career progress, reduced productivity, and lower visibility in the workplace. However, a more complex narrative emerges from our interviews with female academic leaders. Many of them described motherhood as a turning point in their careers—a moment for redefining priorities and strengthening their sense of agency and courage in taking on ambitious projects.
Motherhood is thus seen not as an obstacle but as a foundation of identity that shapes how they conduct research, manage teams, and build relationships in academia. Many women emphasized that motherhood taught them to set clearer boundaries, engage more selectively in projects, and work in a more focused and effective manner. Instead of scattered multitasking and “overactivity,” they developed more strategic actions and conscious management of their own energy.
In this sense, motherhood is not merely a source of cost but a factor that transforms women’s attitudes toward work in a way that can foster long-term careers. Interestingly, some of the interviewees admitted that they had seriously considered leaving academia before giving birth. Paradoxically, motherhood dissuaded them from this decision, in part because it helped them move away from their previous perfectionist standards and the pressure to constantly prove their worth. The birth of a child became a moment of reflection, a time to redefine priorities. According to one of the interviewees: “If it weren’t for the child, I probably would have left. It forced me to set boundaries.” Another added: “I stopped trying to prove to everyone that I could handle it.” Instead of leaving the system, they decided to change how they operate within it by adopting new, healthier principles.
- The fatherhood bonus, on the other hand, suggests that fatherhood reinforces the image of men as stable and responsible scholars. Our research, however, suggests that the experiences of fatherhood are far more diverse and do not fit into a simplified model of professional rewards.
Men are confronted with rising expectations regarding their involvement in family life—in fact, many of our interviewees stated that they had given up additional projects, trips, or grant-seeking activities to be present as fathers at home. Men also spoke of the lack of a proper language to discuss fatherhood in academia and of their fear of speaking up in debates about parenthood, lest they be accused of “mansplaining” or appropriating women’s space for discussion. A recurring theme in the interviews was relief when they could voice their own perspective: “Finally, someone listened to me.”
Importantly, men raised the topic of mental health more often than women. Although postpartum depression is associated with women’s experiences, recent studies indicates that reduced well-being during the perinatal period affects men as well. Yet, because they feel less “entitled” to speak about such costs and difficulties, they remain silent, and this silence reinforces the belief that caregiving is the domain of women. It is one of the most striking findings of the research: the problem is not a lack of involvement on the part of fathers but a lack of language and space to express that experience. Thus, fatherhood remains the invisible half of this story. The experience of fatherhood is also less firmly established in academic discourse than that of motherhood, even though models of masculinity have been undergoing a significant shift: from a model focused exclusively on the role of the family provider to that of an engaged, present father who shares in caregiving and emotional responsibilities. Still, this change is not necessarily reflected in prevailing notions of an academic career.
One of the most interesting findings from our conversations with women and men is that after becoming parents, many of them began to work more productively. Parenting forces better management of time and energy, work becomes more focused, and decisions more strategic. Consequently, it is not so much the number of activities undertaken that increases, as their quality and purposefulness. The study shows, however, that the effects of parenthood vary significantly depending on gender and the couple’s organization of caregiving.
The fatherhood bonus is more pronounced when the partner is employed, but for mothers their partner’s employment does not translate into increased academic productivity. They do not receive a motherhood bonus. This imbalance clearly highlights the importance of the division of caregiving and household work.
In addition to parents, we also studied the perspectives of men and women working in academia who have consciously decided not to have children. The reasons behind these decisions are complex and stem from a combination of economic, relational, and ideological factors. The most frequently cited arguments were financial uncertainty, lack of job stability, housing difficulties, and the absence of a suitable partner. Childlessness is therefore not merely a “lifestyle choice” but often a rational response to the conditions faced by young adults in academia. Environmental themes surfaced in the interviews, too: the belief that, in the face of the climate crisis and global overpopulation, the decision not to have children is ethically responsible. This argument, though morally grounded, can also be an expression of a deeper sense of uncertainty concerning people’s social and economic future.
In some statements, “substitute” narratives emerged, in which relationships with animals were treated as a form of “parenthood,” linguistically reinforced by neologisms such as “my little doggie/kittie.” But such metaphorical equivalences require caution. Relationships with animals can be deep and meaningful; they teach care, responsibility, and empathy, build sensitivity to the needs of another being, and develop caregiving skills. At the same time, equating a relationship with an animal with the experience of parenthood is problematic. The parent–child relationship involves participation in the development of a new person—their cognitive, linguistic, and social maturation—as well as long-term responsibility, with a significantly different existential and social dimension. Blurring these differences through language can lead to the trivialization of parenting and to oversimplified comparisons on an emotional level.
To conclude, our interviews confirm that the experience of parenthood is highly diverse and dependent on various overlapping factors: not only gender but also age, career stage, economic status, job stability, access to institutional childcare, partner support, and broadly understood social capital, such as support networks, mentors, the university’s organizational culture, or state policy.
Parenting looks different in a system based on short-term contracts than in a system of stable employment. It is different in a large city with high-quality childcare infrastructure, and different in regions where the burden of care rests almost entirely on the family. Ultimately, it is not just “having a child” that determines a career trajectory, but the configuration of resources and constraints within which a person operates.
We need to find a more balanced language for this debate. In the public sphere today, the experience of parenthood is often portrayed in extreme terms: either as heroic sacrifice or as a limitation on an individual’s autonomy and lifestyle. But such polarization only simplifies the complexity of the experience and fosters narratives that devalue children as a common good. Academia, as an institution that shapes public discourse should avoid both the idealization and the trivialization of parenthood. This is not about waging an ideological war but about opposing treating children as an organizational problem. Parenthood is one of the fundamental dimensions of social life, crucial for development, not an object of irony and exclusion.
Hence, it is essential to include fathers in the academic debate on parenthood, not as an “additional voice,” but as equal participants in the conversation about academic norms and caregiving responsibilities. Without the presence of men, the discussion will remain incomplete and cultural change will remain glib. That is also why we need to move away from a career model based on the ceaseless progression of victories toward an approach that allows working in stages, with breaks, and at a variable pace of development, without the system diminishing their value by default.
We need an organizational culture that does not mindlessly reproduce narratives of motherhood penalty nor reduce parenthood to costs and constraints. Neither is it about constructing an opposing, equally simplistic narrative of automatic fatherhood bonuses. Academia can only gain from recognizing parenthood as an integral part of scholars’ lives and by acknowledging its essential role in the development of science. Then, it can then also teach others how to do so effectively.
___
The research article is available in European Management Journal: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0263237326000290
This article was machine translated.
