Last month I met a woman named Elizabeth, who told me about how her newborn daughter had been rushed to the NICU as soon as she was delivered—where she would stay for six weeks. Elizabeth explained that she had found herself with an excruciating decision to make: start her limited paid leave immediately, and risk running out of time to spend with her daughter when she was finally released from hospital. Or go back to work within hours of a deeply traumatic birth, in order to save the time off that she had for when her daughter was allowed home. She chose the latter—working while just hours postpartum, her body still in recovery, her baby hooked up to a CPAP machine and struggling under bilirubin lights, all to ensure that she would maximize her time with her daughter once she was discharged. It was a choice no mother should ever have to make. And as I listened to her choke up recounting what had happened I thought, how is this still possible in America?
Things aren’t good for moms in America. We remain one of the only countries in the world without any guaranteed form of paid leave. We continue to have the worst maternal mortality rates of high-income nations, particularly for Black women. Child care is more expensive than rent or college tuition in a number of states—and a majority of Americans live in child care deserts, meaning there is no accessible care at all. The costs of living seem to increase daily. Abortion bans are multiplying. Fertility and maternal health investments—dismal to begin with—are now being slashed. Women are dying. So what do you do? How do you keep going, keep hoping, keep advocating for better? What do you do when systems and leaders profoundly fail you?
At Paid Leave for All, the organization I lead, the answer for us has always been community.
This Mother’s Day, together with MomsRising and more than 50 mission-driven brands, we’re working to build it. We will be organizing the largest collective action among businesses giving back to mothers in a single day. This nationwide, community-powered effort across business and advocacy—that we’ve called “Pop Up for Paid Leave”—will offer more than $130,000 in mutual aid and free services to moms, from professional and personal coaching to diapers and formula. We are creating small havens in pop-ups across the country to give out these products, treat moms to some food and drink and experiences, and to help them feel like, somewhere, finally, they are seen. Instead of closing doors, we’re opening them, to connection across communities, sectors, walks of life. Until our leadership reflects the real experiences and needs of working families, we will show up for each other ourselves, with care.
We’re also aware that, of course, what moms really need is well beyond “stuff.” It’s not the mom “medals” the White House has allegedly been considering. It’s affordable groceries and essentials like diapers and postpartum care. And it’s the safety and dignity of knowing that you can earn a decent living and afford a family in this country. We deserve the ability to maintain a life and a livelihood, something much of the world takes for granted. And so we’re doing this action not just to give back to moms, but to keep paid leave in the national conversation, a policy priority we won’t concede again.
And we’re changing the conversation. Instead of sharing only heartbreaking stories, dark statistics and the costs of inaction, we’re asking moms and caregivers to share what their lives could have been like — what their world will be like — with the assurance of paid family and medical leave. Some of the answers have already trickled in:
“Paid leave would have given me something priceless: more time with my baby after the NICU.”
“Paid leave would give me emotional and financial stability and a second child.”
“National paid leave would mean I could work where I want to, not just where I have to.”
“Paid leave would save my family.”
Can you imagine your life, a world, where you had the freedom to pursue the work or start the business of your dreams? Where you could have children, or care for aging parents or ill loved ones, without worrying about breaking the bank? Where you wouldn’t have to live with not just the fear of a diagnosis, but keeping a job throughout treatment? Where you didn’t have to live with the financial and emotional stress of the inevitables in life? Can you imagine a world where no one missed a baby’s first smile or a parent’s last breath?
In my own life and motherhood I often say I was lucky. I scrapped together a little bit of paid leave; I had family who was able to support me, I had health insurance. I was better off than many women in this country — the one in four who have returned to work within two weeks of giving birth. The countless who have never found affordable care. The many who didn’t even survive. And yet, becoming a mother in America was still the hardest experience of my life. I went back to work well before my child was sleeping, well before my body had healed. I’ve never been the same. But this Mother’s Day, in spite of the challenges and dangers around us, I’m looking ahead and invite you to too. What if you knew you had paid leave, no matter where you lived, or where you worked, or who you loved? What if you had the peace of mind of both a healthy family and a healthy paycheck? What if you had the time you needed, to recover, to bond, to heal?
We’re at a crossroads in a lot of ways in America, and about our character as a country, whether we look out for each other and protect all working families, or just serve a billionaire class. Whether we tackle a dwindling birthrate with faux incentives or punishments, or address a crisis of care with real structural change that allows all families to thrive. Whether we pursue common-sense economic solutions with overwhelming bipartisan support, like paid leave or affordable child care, or continue gutting the little social safety net we have left.
In the end Elizabeth was able to use her state’s paid leave program to extend her leave from work, take her daughter home from the NICU, meet her and hold her beyond the bilirubin lights. We asked her what paid leave had given her and she wept again, this time with joy. “It gave me the ability to be home with my daughter.”
This Mother’s Day, what else could we wish for—paid leave for all.
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