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Women having babies in the United States are more educated than ever, a trend that has accelerated during the recession.

The recession has been bad for a lot of people, but one sector is benefiting: babies.

Women having babies in the United States are more educated than ever, a trend that has accelerated during the recession, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data.

In the three years after the recession started in 2007, there was a 17 percent decline in births among women who did not have a high school diploma. By 2011, only 14 percent of new moms lacked a high school diploma, according to the report released Friday.

As of 2011, 66 percent of mothers with infant children had at least some college education, compared with 18 percent in 1960.

“We have a short-term-trend that is an exaggeration of a long-term trend,” said Gretchen Livingston, a senior researcher at Pew and the lead author of the report.

That’s good news for the babies, the Pew report notes, because of other research that has made a strong link between maternal education levels and healthy birth weights, delivering at term, improved cognitive skills and higher academic achievement. 

“It is difficult to determine whether maternal education is causing some of these outcomes, or if it is serving as a proxy for some other causal factor (for example, economic well-being). What is irrefutable, though, is that on average the more education a woman has, the better off her children will be,” the report states.

The caveat to that element is that on the extreme end, older women tend to have higher health risks during late pregnancies, Livingston said. And while overall, women are having fewer babies since the recession started, the exception is women in their 40s, whose biological clocks leave fewer options to delay a pregnancy until the economy rebounds. Since 2008, birth rates are up 9 percent for women ages 40 to 44, according to the study.

“This short-term trend may be due to the fact that younger, less educated women have been particularly hard hit by the recession, and thus have delayed childbearing, the report states. “Or, it may be the case that younger women know that they have the time to ‘make-up’ childbearing when their prospects improve in the future, while the typical 40-year-old does not have that opportunity.”

The study also points out that the percentage of higher-educated mothers can be linked to the fact that the share of women with at least some college education has more than doubled since 1960 and has again stepped up since the recession started.

In recent years, the share of women ages 15 to 44 with less than a high school diploma declined by 5 percent and the share with only a high school diploma but no further education declined by 4 percent. During that time, the percentage of women of child-bearing age with a college degree increased by 6 percent while the women with at least some college education increased by 3 percent.

What would you value more? Mom cooking dinner for the family, or Dad killing a spider in Junior’s room?

While women are still dealing with the gender wage gap at work, when it comes to the unpaid work moms do at home, their imaginary paychecks would be bigger than those of their husbands.

As Father’s Day approaches this weekend, it’s time to take stock of what dads do for their families beyond just bringing home a paycheck. Alas, the household chores they tend to do aren't worth as much as the sweat equity moms put in at home year round, according to two recent reports.

Insure.com calculated what they deemed to be daddy duties, including things such as barbecuing, killing bugs and mowing the lawn. The study found the domestic tasks would total about $20,248 a year if they were paid work. That compared to $60,182 annually for moms for doing things such as cooking, cleaning and nursing wounds. The value of the work was based on data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics for how much similar jobs out in the real work world would pay.

Another study by Salary.com found that the value of what working dads do at home is actually rising. The company looked at online responses from nearly 3,000 dads who reported on the number of hours they put into tasks at home, including everything from cooking to driving kids around, and found the value of what the dads did jumped to $36,757 this year from $33,858 the previous year. A previous study of work done by working moms found what the moms do at home is valued at $66,979, compared to $63,471 in 2011.

The dads in Salary.com’s sampling were doing more laundry this year, about 1.4 hours, compared to 1.2 hours in 2011; but they cut back on their kitchen time, from 2.7 hours to 2.2 hours.

Women are still the ones doing the heavy lifting at home, said Nancy Folbre, a professor in the Department of Economics at the University of Massachusetts. But she cautioned against giving this type of data on what dads do too much credence.

“They underestimate both what mothers and fathers do,” she noted.

Indeed, Emmet Pierce, a spokesman of Insure.com, said his firm's research was not a scientific study but rather a “lighthearted view of fatherhood. It’s not that every dad conforms to this, but it gives a broad view of what fathers do.”

Dads are doing more around the house, but a shift from that 1950s mentality has been slow.

A study by the Bureau of Labor Statistics released last year found: “On an average day, 20 percent of men did housework — such as cleaning or doing laundry — compared with 49 percent of women. Forty-one percent of men did food preparation or cleanup, compared with 68 percent of women.” And a 2008 Gallup poll found that women are much more likely to do most of the household chores, while men are primarily taking care of the family cars and doing yardwork. 

But traditional family roles are being questioned. A report released Monday by Boston College’s Center for Work & Family found that those dads who choose to stay at home with their kids made “a conscious choice and commitment to be home with their children to the benefit of their families, their wives’ careers, and their own personal fulfillment.” And the center reported 3.4 percent of at-home parents are dads today, compared to 1.7 percent 10 years ago.

“Nearly all fathers are increasingly likely to experience active caregiving, and the result will require employers to adapt their thinking and their actions regarding who needs support to do so adequately,” said Brad Harrington, author of the study and executive director of the Center for Work & Family. “This is not simply a women’s issue.”

Folbre believes that gender responsibilities as they relate to household work are being “renegotiated” but there’s still some resistance and inertia when it comes to change. “We still have a really long way to go,” she added.

Here's a rundown on what working dads do at home and the value of their household tasks from Salary.com:

The number of pregnancy discrimination charges increased about 15 percent in the last 10 years to 5,797 last year.

It’s hard to imagine we still have to tell employers this today, but here goes: Pregnancy discrimination is illegal.

While it may sound obvious to some, blatant pregnancy bias is still alive and well in the workplace. A pregnant woman who applied for a job at a Subway franchise in Phoenix was told by a manager “we can’t hire you because you’re pregnant.” Last month, she won punitive damages against the employer.

It’s just one example of the types of flagrant pregnancy discrimination that the federal government is trying to stop.

“A few employers have forgotten, or never learned, that it’s against the law to discriminate against women because of pregnancy,” David Lopez, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission's general counsel, said during a public meeting before the EEOC commissioners Wednesday.

It’s unlawful, he stressed, to deprive a pregnant woman "the opportunity to sustain herself or her family based on stereotypical assumptions” that she won’t be as dedicated to her employers as a man or a woman who isn't pregnant.

The number of pregnancy discrimination charges increased about 15 percent in the last 10 years to 5,797 last year. That's down slightly from 2010's total claims of 6,119, according to the EEOC.

While the EEOC is doing outreach to employers so they understand the law, the agency is also using the big-stick approach.

The EEOC has increased the number of cases it has filed against employers when it comes to pregnancy bias, Lopez said, reaching 20 cases last year, inching up from 19 in 2010.

He pointed to a $1.64 million settlement reached with Akal Security Inc., the largest provider of contract security services to the federal government, in 2010. The agency claimed Akal had a national policy “of forcing its pregnant employees, working as contract security guards on U.S. Army bases, to take leave and discharging them because of pregnancy.”

Such conduct, the agency maintained, violated the Pregnancy Discrimination Act, which prohibits gender discrimination in employment, including pregnancy discrimination.

This type of bias can hit low-wage workingwomen the hardest, said Sharon Terman, senior staff attorney in the gender equity program at The Legal Aid Society Employment Law Center, who spoke at the EEOC event.

“We’ve heard from many women who were fired immediately upon announcing their pregnancy and whose employers explicitly told them the pregnancy was the reason,” she explained.

Low-income women who become pregnant, she continued, are routinely denied minor workplace accommodations that would help them continue working. A common example of accommodations would be allowing a worker to sit on a stool instead of standing all day, or letting her carry a water bottle.

She offered one case of a pregnant janitor who was fired via text message by her boss after she told him her obstetrician was late for her appointment.

Many poorer workers also don’t have paid sick days, she pointed out. The United States is one of the only industrialized nations that does not mandate paid sick days for employees. While some states have passed laws requiring some paid sick time, the majority of workers nationally are not covered by such legislation.

Although many employers have anti-discrimination policies, it still occurs. Employment attorney Sara Begley said, “Unenlightened managers who are simply focused on getting the job done may violate a pregnant employee's protected rights by taking adverse action for taking maternity leave, not provide salary increases or bonuses to employees on leave, assume an employee will not return post leave and transfer her duties to another employee, assume an employee will be on Mommy Track post maternity leave."

Such outdated assumptions, she added, “can and must be remedied by training and enforcement of applicable policies."

The biggest “knowledge gap” when it comes to the law, she added, appears to be with smaller firms who just don’t have adequate training.  

While reaching out and educating employers is important, said EEOC Commissioner Stuart Ishimaru, he shared his frustration that so little has changed in the 35 years since the Pregnancy Discrimination Act was passed.

“Why have we missed the boat?” he asked the panelists assembled at the hearing. Why, he added, does pregnancy bias persist? “It’s a puzzle to me.”

Judy Lichtman, senior advisor to the National Partnership for Women and Families, who spoke at the hearing, said it was all about long-standing stereotypes, and not just regarding pregnancy but for caregiving too. Our society doesn’t value people with family responsibilities, she said. “What are our real obligations to change an engrained paradigm?”