Doctoral Dissertation Research: Parenting and Employment Outcomes

这篇拟议的论文调查了有关伴侣状态(已婚或单身)的信息如何影响母亲和父亲的工作结果。以前的研究发现，由于人们对母亲能力和承诺的感知较低，母亲不太可能被聘用和晋升；她们的起薪也低于工作的父亲和没有孩子的工人。这种对母亲的负面后果被称为母亲的惩罚。相比之下，父亲的起薪以及积极的能力和承诺评估，也就是所谓的父亲奖金，都会得到提升。然而，之前的研究结果主要集中在已婚母亲和父亲身上。这项拟议的研究试图通过比较关于单身母亲和父亲期望的工作场所表现的文化假设和已婚父母的文化假设，来检验工作场所偏见的机制。这项拟议的研究旨在检验这样一种观点，即当照顾孩子和养家糊口的角色由一个人承担时--单亲父母--雇主对员工父母的表现期望应该不会受到父母性别的影响。因此，母亲的惩罚和父亲的溢价都应该减少。上述预测将在受控实验室实验中得到验证。在这项实验中，受薪本科生志愿者将对两名表面上真实(但实际上是虚构)的求职者进行评分。两位候选人将具有同等的资格，具有相同的性别(男性或女性)和相同的父母身份(有孩子或没有关于孩子的信息)，只是伴侣身份(已婚或单身)不同。这里提出的实验将重建一个评价性环境，让人们在高度受控的环境中对工作场所的结果做出决定，使研究人员能够区分性别、父母身份和伴侣状况对就业结果的影响。这项研究的主要智力贡献之一是考察了伴侣地位在维持或改变关于父母身份和工作场所表现的性别假设方面所起的作用。了解偏见是如何产生和维持的，是消除偏见并增加工作场所的宽容和平等的第一步，也是关键的一步。这一领域的社会变革可以通过能够获得研究结果的机构代理人和教育雇主了解隐藏的偏见来逐步实现，以减少或防止这些偏见。消除偏见应该通过增加高素质候选人的人才库来服务于雇主。最重要的是，揭示歧视的动态，并寻求减少歧视，应该会极大地惠及那些社会价值较低的人--妇女、单亲父母和一般的照顾者。

The proposed dissertation investigates how information about partnership status (married or single) impacts workplace outcomes for mothers and fathers. Previous studies have found that due to lower perceived competence and commitment, mothers are less likely to be hired and promoted; they also reap lower starting salaries than working fathers and childless workers. Such negative outcomes for mothers are known as the motherhood penalty. In contrast, fathers experience a boost in starting salaries as well as positive competence and commitment evaluations, known as the fatherhood bonus. Findings of previous research, however, focus primarily on married mothers and fathers. The proposed research seeks to examine the mechanism of workplace bias by comparing cultural assumptions about single mothers' and fathers' expected workplace performance to that of married parents. The proposed research is designed to test an argument that when the roles of caregiving and breadwinning are combined in one person - a single parent - employers' performance expectations for employee parents should be less affected by a parent's gender. Therefore, both the motherhood penalty and the fatherhood premium should diminish. The above predictions will be tested in a controlled laboratory experiment. In the experiment, paid undergraduate volunteers will rate a pair of ostensibly real (but actually fictitious) candidates for a job position. The two candidates will be equally qualified, of the same gender (male or female) and same parental status (has children or no information about children), varying only on partnership status (married or single). The experiment proposed here will recreate an evaluative setting where people make decisions about workplace outcomes in a highly controlled environment, allowing researchers to separate the effects of gender, parenthood, and partnership status on employment outcomes. One of the main intellectual contributions of this research is examining the role partnership status plays in sustaining or changing gendered assumptions about parenthood and workplace performance. Understanding how bias is produced and sustained is the first and critical step in eliminating it and increasing tolerance and equality at the workplace. Social change in this area can be gradually achieved by institutional agents having access to research findings and educating employers about hidden biases in order to reduce or prevent them. Eliminating bias should serve employers by increasing the pool of highly qualified candidates. Most importantly, uncovering the dynamics of discrimination and seeking to reduce it should greatly benefit those with less socially valued characteristics - women, single parents, and caregivers in general.