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Motherhood can explain up to 44% of the UK gender pay gap as women struggle to catch up with their male partners after the birth of their first child, new research suggests.

Despite the gender pay gap narrowing over the past 50 years, the income penalty women experience after having children is tenacious.

The study, Child Penalties Across Countries: Evidence and Explanations, concluded that "women experience a large, immediate and persistent drop in earnings after the birth of their first child, while men are essentially unaffected".

Across the six countries analysed, women's earnings had not recovered 10 years after childbirth, and had plateaued.

However there were striking differences in the long-term effects, which differed substantially across nations.

In the UK, motherhood can explain 31-44% of the gender gap, while in Denmark it goes down to 22% and in Germany rises up to 61%.

And although the English-speaking countries record less dramatic short-term effects, these are growing over time.

Do government childcare policies have an impact?

An explanation for the differences focus on government policies.

Taxes, transfers and family policies such as parental leave and childcare costs directly affect mothers' incentive to work.

The study found that parental leave and childcare policies have short-term impacts in both earnings and employment.

In Sweden, for example, there is a larger short-term child penalty in comparison to Denmark, which could be attributed to Sweden's longer and more generous parental leave.

Moreover, the small dip in earnings Swedish fathers experience following childbirth could be explained by the presence of earmarked paternity leave in Sweden - as opposed to maternity leave or generic parental leave.

Nevertheless, child penalties in the long run are not driven primarily by public policies, but by social and cultural views of gender roles.

"Girls growing up in families with a more traditional division of labour between the parents incur larger child penalties when they themselves become mothers," the study, lead by Henrik Kleven, wrote.

"These findings are consistent with an influence of the family environment in the formation of women's preferences over family and career."

Thus, countries that experience larger child penalties are also characterised with having greater gender conservative views.

What about child penalty in same-sex couples?

A separate study looking at the causes of child penalty found that for same-sex female couples, there was a 13% drop in income of the partner who gave birth.

This is compared to a 22% drop in income for women in a heterosexual couple, with the drop persisting over time.

The study, What Causes the Child Penalty? Evidence From Same Sex Couples and Policy Reforms, found that the birth mother's partner experiences an initial income drop of 5%.

"Despite a larger immediate drop in income, the mother who gives birth catches up with her partner around two years after birth, and from that point on both mothers experience similarly sized child penalties which decrease over time," the study's authors Martin Eckhoff Andresen and Emily Nix wrote.

It concluded that by four years after birth, there is no longer a child penalty.

The study said the result was driven by the fact "heterosexual women can lean on their male partners, who derive less utility from time with children".

It said that the patterns suggest that the majority of the child penalty experienced by heterosexual couples is due to personal preferences and dominant gender norms.

Co-author Ms Nix said the evidence presented in the paper suggests that while the biological cost of giving birth does play a small role, it cannot explain the persistence of child penalty in heterosexual couples.

She told Sky News: "Our results indicate that most of the gap is explained by some combination of women preferring to stay at home with children more than men and gender norms, although unfortunately we are unable to disentangle these last two."

She said the results also strongly indicate that same-sex female partners share the many costs of raising children "far more evenly" than heterosexual couples.

What do British people think about gender roles?

The last British Social Attitudes' report from 2017 revealed that traditional views on gender roles are continuing to decline.

Some 72% disagree with the view that a man's job is to earn money and that a woman's job is to look after the home and family - with the figure up from 58% in 2008.

Over time there has also been a decline in the view that women should stay at home if they have a child under school age, down from two-thirds in 1989 to a third in 2017.

What is the situation now?

Although the perception is changing, there is work to do to achieve fairer routines at home and a gender balance in the work place.

Women still shoulder the responsibility of "unpaid work."

Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) data shows that women spend less time on leisure activities than men do, while doubling the time spent on housework, shopping and childcare compared to men.

In England, the employment rate of men with dependent children is on average 20 points higher than the women's rate, rising five points since the late 1990s, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

Richmondshire and Adur are the local authorities with the highest gap between the employment of fathers and mothers.

On the other side of the table, West Somerset, Cannock Chase, Broadland, Torridge, Derbyshire, South Northamptonshire, North Warwickshire and Weymouth and Portland record higher female employment rates than male ones.

The employment rate is lower among mothers with children under school age, while the fathers' rate is relatively unaffected by the age of the youngest child.

Likewise, children affect the number of hours mothers work, but not fathers.

Around half of women with dependent children work less than 30 hours a week compared to 6.8% of men.

Gender roles are therefore not only impacting women's earnings, but also working habits of mothers.