Doctoral Dissertation Research: Parenting and Employment Outcomes

拟议的论文调查如何伙伴关系的状态（已婚或单身）的信息影响工作场所的结果为母亲和父亲。以前的研究发现，由于较低的能力和承诺，母亲不太可能被雇用和晋升;他们的起薪也低于工作的父亲和没有孩子的工人。这种对母亲的负面影响被称为母性惩罚。相比之下，父亲的起薪以及积极的能力和承诺评估都有所提高，这被称为父亲奖金。然而，以前的研究结果主要集中在已婚母亲和父亲身上。这项研究旨在通过比较文化假设对单身母亲和父亲的预期工作场所的表现，已婚父母的工作场所偏见的机制。这项拟议中的研究旨在检验一种论点，即当养家糊口和养家糊口的角色在一个人身上-一个单亲-雇主对雇员父母的业绩期望应较少受到父母性别的影响。因此，母亲惩罚和父亲奖励都应该减少。上述预测将在受控实验室实验中进行测试。在实验中，受薪的大学生志愿者将对一对表面上真实的（但实际上是虚构的）求职者进行评分。两名候选人将具有同等资格，性别相同（男性或女性），父母身份相同（有子女或没有子女信息），仅在伴侣身份（已婚或单身）上有所不同。这里提出的实验将重新创建一个评估环境，人们在高度受控的环境中对工作场所的结果做出决定，允许研究人员将性别，父母身份和伴侣关系状况对就业结果的影响分开。这项研究的主要智力贡献之一是研究伙伴关系的地位在维持或改变有关父母身份和工作场所表现的性别假设中所起的作用。了解偏见是如何产生和维持的，是消除偏见、提高工作场所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逐步实现，办法是机构人员获得研究结果，并教育雇主了解隐藏的偏见，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数量来为雇主服务。最重要的是，揭示歧视的动态并寻求减少歧视，应该大大有利于那些社会价值较低的人-妇女、单亲和一般的照顾者。

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.