Short answer. No. The law is direct: no employer shall discriminate against any solo parent employee with respect to terms and conditions of employment on account of that status. Being a solo parent cannot lawfully cost you a job, a promotion, fair pay, or equal treatment at work.
What the law says
No employer shall discriminate against any solo parent employee with respect to terms and conditions of employment on account of his/her status
RA 8972, Section 7 — No Discrimination At Work. Read the full provision →
The rule in plain terms
The protection is stated without qualification: No employer shall discriminate against any solo parent employee with respect to terms and conditions of employment on account of his/her status. Read carefully, it covers the whole working relationship — not just hiring, but the terms and conditions that make up the job: wages, assignments, promotion, training, discipline and dismissal. The forbidden reason is precise. An employer may still act on genuine performance or conduct grounds, but it may not use the fact that you are raising a child alone as the basis for treating you worse than anyone else. Your status as a solo parent is simply off-limits as a reason.
What counts as discrimination here
Discrimination is not only an outright firing. Passing over a qualified solo parent for promotion because they might need to leave early, cutting their hours, denying them a post given to others, or singling them out for harsher rules can all be forms of it, if the real reason is their status. The law targets the motive. That said, it protects against unfair treatment for being a solo parent — it does not turn a solo parent into someone who cannot be managed, corrected, or let go for legitimate, evenly applied reasons that have nothing to do with parenthood. The line is whether the status was the reason.
The wider law it sits within
This anti-discrimination guarantee is one piece of a broader scheme of solo-parent protections, which the Expanded Solo Parents Welfare Act (Republic Act No. 11861, 2022) carried forward and widened, adding benefits and support on top of the non-discrimination rule. To be covered, a worker generally needs to qualify and be identified as a solo parent under the law's definitions, which is why keeping your solo parent identification current matters. The point of the framework is that raising a child alone should not become a penalty in the workplace, and the employer's duty not to discriminate is the backbone of that promise.
If you think you were treated unfairly
Evidence decides these cases. Keep the paper trail: performance reviews, the notice or memo behind an adverse decision, messages that reveal the real reason, and a record of how comparable co-workers were treated. If a manager tied a decision to your being a solo parent, note when and how it was said. Raise the matter through your company's grievance process where one exists, and seek advice on the labor remedies available to you. Because outcomes depend heavily on what can actually be shown, bringing your documents to a lawyer or the proper labor office early gives your complaint its best chance of being taken seriously.