Quote Originally Posted by Cataholic
WOW. I am always so amazed when I see this sort of comment from another woman. Women are penalized everyday for "choosing" to stay at home with their child/ren, and re-entering the workforce 5 years later. It isn't that they are not making the same as their former co-worker. It is that they are not making the same as their counterpart...that man in the same position as they are, for whatever reason.

Just think, I coulda ditched my 6 week old infant in daycare JUST TO SECURE MY POSITION IN THE WORKPLACE. What a trade off. I suppose the coined phrase, "mommy track" was invented by someone like me- a working mother, who just had a little too much time on their hands to spare?

From women everywhere, mothers or not, Thank You!
So are you saying that if worker A works for five years, gaining five years of experience, that they don't deserve a higher pay check than worker B, who took five years off and has five years less experience? It doesn't matter one bit if worker A is a man or a woman, it doesn't matter if worker B took five years off to stay home with a child, or to go on safari in the wilds of Africa. Five years less experience equals five years less raises.

Maybe I have just had the fortune to work for progressive companies around progressive people, but I can tell you that I know a lot of men who took time off when their children born, and a lot of women who became the primary "breadwinner". Haven't you all seen this too? Surely I can't be the only one to see that times have indeed changed.

I honestly have never made less then a man in my position. (I worked in Finance, I knew what everyone in the company made, BTW.) I've seriously never seen this.

As for "ditching" your infant in daycare, I suppose I'm up for the "worst parent of the year award" then, because I went right back to work after my son was born. I resent your implication that I am somehow less of a good mother than you because I chose to do so.

Do you seriously think it would be fair if someone who had spent the last five years staying home came back into the workforce where I had been working those five years, and he or she expected the same salary I had, so he or she wasn't being "penalized" for choosing to take a five year break from work?