It’s hard to be a mom in America: moms first have solutions

A good friend of mine, a mother of two and also a pediatrician, told me recently that she thinks that we, that is, today’s mothers of children, are touching parenting…what a is the opposite of jackpot? Borasca? Shortage? Shit ? It is not difficult to understand his gloomy point of view. Moms who are actively mothers face not only the challenges that their mothers and their mothers’ mothers faced (you know, making sure their children have food, shelter, and love), but also to a long list of other seemingly insurmountable problems.

The absence of paid parental leave from the federal government. The surprisingly high maternal mortality rate, especially among black women. The astronomical cost of child care. The terrifying frequency of mass shootings. The bullying and normalization of abuse that happens on social media, which our children are addicted to. The rapid decline in adolescent mental health. The feelings of shame and guilt that come with the pressure to be a perfect mom.

Fortunately, while these are very real and very serious problems, there are also very real and very serious people working on their solutions. Last week, the national nonprofit Moms First held its inaugural Motherhood Summit, where more than 350 influential mothers and allies gathered at the Times Center in New York (with approximately 12,000 viewers in 49 states and several countries virtually) to have an open discussion. dialogue about what it means to be a mother today and what we need – personally, professionally, publicly – to succeed in the most important job in the world.

“It’s the only job we’ve had no training and no resources for and women have been told there’s a maternal instinct, so the only thing we offer when it’s difficult is it’s my fault“, Dr. Becky Kennedy, clinical psychologist and founder of Good Inside, told the audience during the summit’s opening panel titled, aptly, “It’s Hard to Be a Mom in America.” She was joined by activist Tarana Burke, actress and humanitarian Ashley Judd and moderator Katie Couric, and the four discussed, as Couric puts it, “the incredible pressures and worrying issues moms face every day.”

The panel touched on troubling and difficult topics, including young children’s rates of exposure to pornography and other insidious messages around gender violence that tweens and teens face subliminally in pop culture. But it also held a lot of hope, as did much of the day. “The good news and the bad news about moms is that it starts with us,” Judd said, highlighting the work of Dr. Gail Dines, Culture Reframed.

Burke emphasized that participants are not only mothers, but also voters. “We are a constituency when you bring us all together. » An important reminder, especially during an election period. Earlier this year, In the style conducted a survey of more than 2,000 women and non-binary people across the country, asking participants about a range of issues, including economic opportunity, gun violence, immigration policy and school curriculum, in order to discover what matters most to them. Some of these findings were presented during the summit’s closing session, including that parents cite economic opportunity, housing affordability and gun violence as the issues most important to them. Additionally, 84 percent of all respondents rated the cost of child care as important, particularly Black women, 91 percent of whom prioritized it. Fifty percent of parents said child care was unaffordable and 57 percent said the same about the cost of higher education. Of those surveyed, 30 percent said paid parental leave is an economic issue they want political leaders to address.

Additionally, women have told us of their desire to support companies and candidates who share these values. For example, 82% of women told us they avoid or seek out brands based on their values, at least some of the time; 41 percent told us they would vote for a candidate primarily based on their position on abortion laws and 57 percent would do so based on their position on economic issues.

Throughout the day, speakers sought to address these concerns. Planned Parenthood President Alexis McGill Johnson spoke about the impact of the Dobbs decision; US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo introduced a session on the economic returns of investing in child care; and Moms First founder Reshma Saujani had a fascinating conversation with feminist icon Hillary Clinton about whether moms missed the feminist movement of the 1970s, leading to the crises we face today ‘today.

According to Secretary of State Clinton, feminism did not exclude mothers: the message was: “let’s give women the right and support to determine their own destiny.” On the contrary, then as now, women were “faced with a very well-organized campaign of reaction.” She recognized that (as my friend had expressed) “it’s a much more stressful environment” for parents today than when she or her mother were raising children. “We must embrace the idea of ​​motherhood for the 21st century,” Secretary Clinton said, “and we must support women in the choices they feel are right to make, and make those choices with greatest support possible.

She stressed the importance of public support, but also stressed the need to staff support, for the community. Moms First works there too. At the end of the summit, the organization announced the launch of The Motherhood, a volunteer collective that seeks to mobilize moms and their supporters to enact change. The new website emphasizes that “sisterhood” and “sisterhood” evoke feelings of community, but the word “motherhood” seems individual; this group is destined to change that. To begin, there will be three areas of focus: policy impact, workplace redesign and discourse change, and members are encouraged to adhere to the approach (or approaches) that interest them . They say it takes a village…

The idea of ​​the village comes up several times. The idea that a lot of what makes motherhood hard is because you think you’re the only one not doing it right, but what makes it easier is that someone tell you “me too”, “I know” or “I see you”. .” Secretary Clinton perhaps said it best: “Cherish your friends. When you’re a young mother, when you’re a middle-aged mother, when you’re a grandmother, you need other women to talk to you, listen to you, and try to support you. And so you can’t let that get lost in all of this, because as hard as it is, you have to have people that you trust and that you can rely on. So, I’m going to stop writing this and take a minute to contact my friend, the pediatrician, to say thank you for validating all of our struggles and for always responding to my texts about whether or not my child has eye pink.