Born in France, Penalized Anyway: Motherhood Costs Vary by Immigrant Origin

The economic cost of having children has long been recognized as one of the most stubborn features of gender inequality in modern labor markets. Women who become mothers are more likely to reduce their hours, interrupt their careers, or leave employment altogether, and those who stay in work tend to earn less and advance more slowly than comparable women without children. A new study published in Social Indicators Research shows that in France, a country often praised for its generous family policy and high maternal employment, this penalty is far from uniform. Even among women who were born, raised, and educated entirely in France, the disadvantages associated with motherhood remain structured by the geographic origin of their parents.

The research, conducted by Noa Achouche of Université Paris Nanterre and the University of Haifa together with Haya Stier of Tel Aviv University, focuses on second-generation immigrant women, the native-born daughters of immigrants who occupy what the authors describe as an in-between position in French society. Although they share the same schools, institutions, and legal environment as women of native parentage, they are socialized within families whose cultural backgrounds, gender norms, and economic resources often differ from those of the majority population. The study asks whether this inherited background changes how much motherhood costs in the labor market, and the answer, in short, is that it does, though not always in the ways standard assimilation theory would predict.

To answer the question, the researchers drew on six waves of the French labor force survey, the Enquête Emploi en Continu, covering 2015 to 2020. After pooling the data, they assembled a sample of 57,319 women of native origin and 12,961 native-born daughters of immigrants, all aged between 25 and 45, the years when childrearing and career building overlap most intensively. The age restriction also addresses a technical limitation of labor force surveys, which identify mothers only through children living in the household and would otherwise misclassify older women whose children have left home. Origin was defined by parental country of birth and grouped into categories: women with two native-born parents, two parents born elsewhere in Europe, two parents born outside Europe, one non-European-born parent, and a residual group of other configurations.

The analytical strategy combined logistic regressions predicting employment with linear regressions predicting the logarithm of monthly wages, estimated in successive steps that first established raw associations and then added sociodemographic controls. A central methodological concern was selection: women who become mothers differ systematically from those who do not, and women who remain employed after childbirth are a selective subgroup in every origin category. To address this, the authors applied inverse probability weighting, balancing mothers and childless women on observed characteristics such as age, education, partnership status, and residential area, and applying combined weights in the wage models to account for selection into both motherhood and employment. Marginal predictions were computed for a representative 35-year-old woman with a graduate degree, a co-resident partner, and a standard 35-hour working week, allowing direct comparison of predicted outcomes across origin groups and family sizes.

The descriptive portrait already revealed deep divides. Women with two non-European-origin parents, primarily descendants of immigrants from North Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Turkey, had an employment rate of 59.7 percent, compared with 77.8 percent among native-origin women and 80.8 percent among those with two European-origin parents. They also reported the highest average number of children, 2.21 against 1.92 for native-origin women. Interestingly, women with one non-European-origin parent reported the highest rate of graduate education, 20.1 percent, exceeding even native-origin women at 13.7 percent, a pattern the authors link to the strong emphasis that mixed families often place on education as a route to upward mobility.

The employment findings showed a graded structure. Each additional child was associated with a 6.9 percentage point reduction in the probability of employment in unadjusted models, attenuating to 5.5 points after controls. Predicted probabilities from the selection-adjusted model made the origin contrasts vivid: among native-origin women, the predicted employment probability fell from 0.94 for childless women to 0.88 for mothers of two or more children, a gap of roughly six points. Women of European origin displayed an almost flat pattern, declining only from 0.90 to 0.89, while women with two non-European-origin parents showed the largest drop, from 0.92 to 0.83, a difference of about nine percentage points. Women with one non-European parent fell in between, closely mirroring the native-origin gap. Multinomial regressions added a crucial nuance: the lower employment of women of non-European origin was driven mainly by labor force withdrawal rather than unsuccessful job search, a pattern consistent with caregiving norms rather than simple unemployment.

Yet the strongest and most surprising results concerned wages. Among employed women of native origin, each additional child was associated with roughly 0.6 percent lower monthly wages after full adjustment. For women with two non-European-origin parents, the child-related wage loss was dramatically larger: each child carried an additional 2.9 percent wage disadvantage beyond the baseline, implying a combined penalty of about 3.5 percent per child, a difference that remained statistically significant even after accounting for selection into motherhood and employment. By contrast, women with one non-European-origin parent displayed the opposite pattern, with each additional child associated with wages about 2 percent higher than the reference group. The authors interpret this unexpected premium as a form of advantageous selection: the employed mothers of mixed origin who remain in the labor market are an exceptionally well-positioned group, benefiting from the dual socialization and stronger navigation of host-country institutions that mixed families often provide.

The theoretical implications cut across two influential literatures. Classical assimilation theory predicts that sustained exposure to host-country institutions should erode origin-based inequalities across generations, and indeed women of European origin, whose employment and wage patterns closely resembled those of native-origin women, fit this expectation. But the persistent disadvantages among women with two non-European-origin parents align better with segmented assimilation frameworks, in which structural barriers, discrimination, and minority-status dynamics channel different groups onto divergent paths. The authors also draw on intersectional theory, arguing that gender, family status, and parental origin are overlapping axes of position whose combined effects produce hierarchies among women that aggregate gender-gap statistics conceal. Employer perceptions may play a role here too: second-generation mothers of non-European descent may still be read through the lens of their parents’ origin and stereotyped as more committed to family than to work, compounding the biases that all mothers face.

The study’s limitations are acknowledged candidly. Because the labor force survey is cross-sectional, women cannot be observed before and after childbirth, so the estimates capture associations rather than causal effects and may partly reflect pre-existing differences between women who become mothers and those who do not. The broad European and non-European categories also obscure heterogeneity within groups, and the data contain no information on religion, which may partly confound the cultural mechanisms at work. No longitudinal French data source currently combines detailed employment histories with information on immigrant origin and generation, however, making this design the only feasible option. The authors frame their goal as descriptive: documenting how motherhood-related inequality is distributed across origin groups rather than isolating the causal effect of childbearing itself.

The broader message is stark. In a republic whose universalist ideals officially render origins irrelevant, the price of motherhood is still being paid on unequal terms, generation after generation. Employment and earnings penalties associated with having children are not simply gender inequalities but are shaped by family migration histories, particularly through caregiving responsibilities. As debates over immigration, integration, and equality continue to dominate French public life, the findings suggest that policies aimed at closing gender gaps, from childcare provision to anti-discrimination enforcement, will fall short unless they attend to the differentiated positions of women within the second generation. Motherhood, the study concludes, is not merely a moment of individual transition but a mechanism through which intergenerational inequality is quietly reproduced.

Subject of Research: Motherhood-related labor market disadvantages among second-generation immigrant women in France, examined by parental origin.

Article Title: The Price of Motherhood Among Second-Generation Immigrants in France

Article References: Achouche, N., & Stier, H. (2026). The Price of Motherhood Among Second-Generation Immigrants in France. Social Indicators Research, 184(3), Article 47. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-026-03938-1

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s11205-026-03938-1

Keywords: motherhood penalty, second-generation immigrants, France, parental origin, wages, employment, labour market inequality, gender inequality, immigrant integration, mixed-origin families, Social Indicators Research, Price