“Maybe Baby?” The Risky Business of Potential Parenthood

Abstract

Research grounded in lack of fit and gender role theories has shown that women face numerous employment disadvantages relative to men, with mothers often facing even greater obstacles. Integrating intersectionality theory, we challenge this dichotomy, proposing that motherhood is not a necessary condition for women to face motherhood penalties. Instead, we argue that managers’ expectations a childbearing-aged applicant will have a child in the near future (i.e., “maybe baby” bias) increase their perceptions of risk associated with employing women–but not men–especially for more costly positions (i.e., with more maternal leave benefits). Conceptualizing hiring as a risk assessment process, we further propose that managers’ perceived risk and cost drive more risk-averse employment conditions (e.g., shorter job tenure, less likely to be hired) for these women. Results largely supported our predictions across attitudinal and objective indicators, triangulating evidence via a field study with early-career employees (Study 1) and an experiment with hiring managers (Study 2). Extensive research has shown that mothers face greater employment obstacles than their childfree or male counterparts. However, the current findings suggest that the perceived risks and costs of parenthood can be more hazardous for the employment of women who simply have the potential to become parents.