Dear Annie:
I am a 35-year-old woman CPA with extensive experience in finance and accounting. Now that the job market in my field seems to have picked up, I've been looking around for a better job, and I'm noticing something that keeps happening over and over again. In job interviews, everything will be going along fine until I happen to mention that I have two children (ages eight and six). At that point, the interviewer seems to lose interest, or his or her interest turns from avid to merely polite. My friends tell me I'm just imagining it, but I don't think so. Your opinion, please? -- Proud but Puzzled Mom

Dear Puzzled:
You wouldn't believe (or then again, maybe you would) how many women have written to me with this same observation over the past few years. Just last month, for instance, an unemployed marketing manager wrote: "As soon as I let slip that I have little kids, it's as if I had the plague. Job interviewers don't run screaming from the room, but they do find an excuse to wrap up the interview fast." Of course, no employer is going to admit to preferring job applicants who are childless, and human-resources people who I've asked about this pooh-poohed the whole idea. Executive coaches could offer only the odd anecdote to support the notion that women with children have a harder time getting hired. Now, however, comes evidence that what you're experiencing may be a widespread phenomenon. At an American Sociological Society meeting in Philadelphia in August, two Cornell University sociologists, Shelley J. Correll and Stephen Benard, presented a paper called "Getting a Job: Is There a Motherhood Penalty?" It's based on research showing that not only are moms less likely to get hired than men (with or without kids) or childless women, but also that they're likely to be paid less.

Correll, an associate professor of sociology, and Benard, a graduate student, conducted an experiment wherein 84 men and 108 women Cornell undergraduates were asked to evaluate several female candidates for the same mid-level management position. All of the hypothetical applicants were equally qualified, with strong success in their previous jobs. The only difference: Some candidates' profiles noted in passing that they had children and were active in parent-teacher associations, while the other candidates' profiles said nothing about children. The result: The student evaluators said they would hire 84% of the women without children, but only 47% of the mothers. (In case you're wondering, the female evaluators were no more kindly disposed toward the moms than were their male peers.) What's more, the gap in starting pay between mothers and childless women averaged $11,000. "In fact, the more children a mother was described as having, the lower the salary that the test subjects said they would offer," notes Correll. "Other studies have shown that the reverse is true for men. The more children they have, the higher the salary offers they receive."

What's going on here? "We're not saying that employers discriminate against mothers because they don't like them," Correll says. "Motherhood is a role held in very high esteem in our society. However, whether we realize it, consciously or not, our cultural ideal of motherhood is that of a mother who will devote herself first and foremost to her kids, 24/7 if necessary. So, to many people, motherhood and a career -- especially in a company that also demands 24/7 of its employees -- are seen as just not compatible. Fatherhood, on the other hand, presents no such dilemma, since traditionally fathers have been less involved with raising kids and more expected to be primary breadwinners." Ah.

In light of the fact that, according to the Census Bureau, 72% of American women have children, these lingering biases against hiring mothers and paying them equally could go a long way toward explaining the persistent wage gap between men and women overall. That's particularly so since, other Census Bureau figures show, the gap is narrowest when women are in their 20s, that is, when many have not yet had kids. In 2004, for example, college-educated women in their 40s who were working full time earned, on average, 38% less than their male counterparts. Between men and women in their 20s, the gap was much less, at an average of 25%.

What, if anything, can moms do about this? "Not mentioning that you have children, or trying to hide the fact, is obviously a limited strategy," notes Correll. "We're doing another study now to try and determine whether companies with 'family-friendly' and 'work-life balance' policies are less likely to discriminate against mothers than employers that don't have such policies. But in the meantime, what I hear is the advice that mothers give each other." Such as? "Well, one I've heard over and over again is, if you have to take a day off to care for a sick child, don't tell anyone the child is sick. When you call in to the office, say that you are the one who's sick." She adds: "Either way, you're missing a day of work, so why does it matter? But it does."

Folks, I don't know about you, but I find this appalling. I'm bracing myself for a barrage of comments on this subject, from all conceivable points of view, so...bring 'em on!

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