News broadcasters are preparing their reporters to make the big trip to London. Photographers are staking out their spot for the best hospital shot while republicans everywhere are letting out a collective groan.
Princess Kate Middleton is pregnant with her second child (seemingly the first bout of morning sickness wasn’t enough of a turn-off) meaning little Prince George is set to become a big brother and the throne just got one step further away for his “fun-loving” uncle, Prince Harry.
But just say Kate Middleton had married an Australian, instead of a prince, what would she and her career be up for following the new addition?
If you thought the motherhood penalty was tough after the birth of a first child, it gets even tougher if you decide to give that first born a little brother or sister – and for every consequent child after that.
As WGEA recently stated in its Parenting, work and the gender pay gap paper, a woman returning to work following 12 months maternity leave can expect an average 7% wage penalty, rising to 12% during her first year back – that penalty will increase over time and expand much further with every additional child.
And if Prince William were a regular Australian Dad, he’d find the opposite to be true, with the same WGEA paper finding men actually experience strong career growth and an increase in pay when they become fathers.
Indeed, having children is a big factor behind why Australia’s gender pay gap is now at 18.2%, according to the Diversity Council of Australia.
Meanwhile, if Kate goes on to have a third child in her hypothetical, non-Princess, Australian life, she’d be unlikely to be doing much participating in the labour market at all. If she was, she’d face assumptions about her ambition and commitment to work in the office, and find the penalty of having the audacity to have all those children accumulate over her lifetime to see her retire with significantly less saving that her husband
And we can’t imagine Kate having to navigate an inflexible and expensive childcare system, spending half her maternity leave calling up multiple childcare centres begging them to accept her willingness to make a hefty, weekly transaction in return for caring for her child.
Nor will she be managing the double-kid childcare drop-off. Thinking things are sort of going well until one child gets sick, and then the other follows a week later, starting a fortnightly cycle of flu, colds and exotic epidemics you once thought only affected cloven-hoofed animals (like Hand, foot, and mouth disease).
So what kind of penalty will Middleton be up for?
It won’t be about salary, or career breaks, flexible work, or a gender pay gap threatening her retirement. Nor will it be with her attempting to manage the ‘double shift’ of paid and unpaid work – we’re pretty sure Kate has all of that covered. And it won’t be pregnancy-related discrimination, which 50% of new mums in Australia say they encounter.
But we can’t envy the Duchess of Cambridge entirely. Not many of us will become the subject of dieting articles following the birth of a second child, with personal trainers and nutritionist ‘sources’ brought in to determine just how we’ll lose the baby weight in the 48 hours after giving birth. And having every parenting choice going to ‘trial by media’ doesn’t sound like much fun at all.