The maternal wall structurally reduces women's lifetime earnings

Quality and quantity of direct evidence for or against the claim — RCTs, systematic reviews, natural experiments, large cohort studies.

Women's earnings fall approximately 30% relative to pre-birth trajectory upon childbirth while men's earnings are essentially unaffected, directly supporting the child-penalty claim.

Whether the proposed mechanism is valid and established — does the how make sense, or are there fundamental flaws in the causal logic?

Correll's audit study isolates discrimination directly, finding mothers rated 10% less competent on identical résumés, confirming the discrimination component of the mechanism.

Degree of agreement among domain experts and relevant scientific or policy bodies — depth and quality of consensus, not just majority opinion.

Labor economists broadly concur, following Kleven's cross-national event-study framework, that the child penalty reflects structural rather than purely voluntary dynamics.

Whether findings hold across independent studies, populations, and contexts — resistance to p-hacking and publication bias.

Kleven's cross-national comparison shows Denmark's near-zero penalty under subsidized childcare and parental leave, replicating the structural-cause finding across multiple countries with different policy regimes.