NWO received 138 full proposals. Forty-one project proposals were eventually awarded funding, among which Erik Plug’s research about different costs and benefits of motherhood.

The aim of the Competition - SSH is to facilitate excellent, curiosity-driven research that addresses a research question and research problem primarily in the field of social sciences or humanities.

The different costs of motherhood

Prof. dr Erik Plug 
We exploit natural experiments to explore different costs and benefits of motherhood through four open questions. (i) Is there a penalty to anticipated motherhood? (ii) Does the motherhood penalty vary by the mother’s sexual orientation? (iii) Are there marriage-market benefits to motherhood? (iv) Are there intergenerational benefits to (good) motherhood?