Quote Originally Posted by Twisterdog
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?
I think I clarified with Cathy's post that I was not saying what you seem to think that I am. I am talking about a person in a similar situation. The word similiar means just that, similiar. Experience, education, etc. It doesn't mean five years less experience. So, continue, please, to read something different than I am typing. I can't control that. I won't bother explaining it a third time, though.

As for whether you ditched your child into daycare, and whether you qualify for mother of the year, I cannot say. I don't know your parenting issues. Only you do. I was not implying anything about anyone's parenting choices. I was implying that employers, in general and on a whole, penalize women for NOT ditching their child in daycare.

I do give you kudos, though, for returning to work immediately after your child was born. That seems significant to you, and if that was what you wanted to do, I think it is wonderful. Not everyone makes those same choices.

And, as for not seeing any sign of income disparity, well, you might be the odd man out! Pun intended. Just cause you don't see it doesn't mean it doesn't exist.