Working lawyers and “the motherhood penalty”

An event highlighted the challenges faced by caregivers

This is an excerpt of an article that was first printed on the Harvard Law School website.

For many lawyers who are also mothers, the more that things have changed in recent years, the more they’ve remained the same.

Mothers in the legal profession are much more likely to feel perceived as “less competent and less committed” than men with children or people without them, said Michelle Browning Coughlin, a member of the ABA Commission on Women in the Profession, during a recent panel discussion at Harvard Law School on “Parenting While Lawyering.”  

Sixty percent of mothers working in law firm settings had this perception, she said, compared with only 25 percent of fathers, even though women have outnumbered men in law school for most of the last decade. The same disparities exist outside of law firms — in government, public interest, and other settings.

These were among the many findings illustrating parents’ “negative experiences at work” that are outlined in the 2023 American Bar Association report “Legal Careers of Parents and Child Caregivers.” Coughlin, who is also assistant professor and director at the Lunsford Academy for Law, Business + Technology at the Northern Kentucky University Salmon P. Chase College of Law, presented the report’s findings with Paulette Brown, former president of the American Bar Association and principal of MindSetPower. 

David B. Wilkins ’80, Lester Kissel Professor of Law, and Jamie Wacks ’98, lecturer on law, moderated the discussion, which also included Hannah L. Kilson ’97, former president of the Boston Bar Association and a partner at Nolan Sheehan Patten, who shared her own reflections on parenting while lawyering drawn from her career working at a large law firm, in government, and now in a boutique private practice.