Chapter Eight: As Mothers Go, So Goes the Country

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Chapter Eight:

As Mothers Go, So Goes the Country


Lorri pulled the baby bottle out of her briefcase and smiled. It had been a tough morning. A mother of two, Lorri woke up around 5 A.M.to the sound of the phone ringing. It was her childcare provider calling to say she was too sick to watch children that day.

The marathon began. Her children, aged six months and two years, were still in bed. That quickly changed as Lorri and her husband raced to get them to her job-sponsored “back-up day-care.” Adding to Lorri’s stress was the fact that she had an important meeting scheduled for 7:30 A.M.

They all got in the car, commuting as a family since her husband’s work was just a few blocks from her own. First stop was the Juice Joint, her husband’s restaurant, where the family breakfasted on spicy egg wraps, cereal, and, of course, juice. Lorri called the back-up daycare center from the restaurant to make sure there was space for the kids. Thankfully, space was available, and Lorri breathed a sigh of relief.

Professionally dressed, with a backpack on her back for the two-year-old’s diapers, snacks, extra clothes, wipes, one toy, and blankie—all labeled at 6 A.M. with brown masking tape— and another bag for the baby on her arm, Lorri pushed an outdated 50-lb stroller down Fifteenth Street in Washington, D.C. “It was so hard balancing all the stuff, the backpack, the bag, the babies in the stroller with my briefcase in the basket under the stroller,” recalls Lorri.

The kids, wired from the change in routine and the unfamiliar sounds of D.C. rush hour traffic, kept dropping things from the stroller as Lorri pushed them along. She picked the items up and stuffed them in any available spot as they rolled down the sidewalk.

The drop-in daycare opened at 7:30 A.M., the exact time Lorri was supposed to be at work, so she rushed to fill out the requisite forms and organize their food, toys, bottles, and blankies.

Ten blocks of speed-walking back to work brought a film of sweat to her body. Her pantsuit rumpled, she entered the conference room where her meeting was about to begin, opened her briefcase to take out the meeting materials, and found a leaking baby bottle, a bag of halved grapes, and random cheerios mixed in with her agenda.

One of the secretaries asked, “Did you forget something? Is there a baby here?” And Lorri broke the ice with her laughter.

By providing back-up daycare for children at $15 per child per day, Lorri’s company ensured she was able make it to work on this particular day in early September and do her job well. She was able to maintain a high level of work productivity, and, quite importantly, didn’t miss her meeting with several new hires. Without the company program, Lorri would likely have missed an important work day.

In the end, Lorri notes, “When you are a working mom, you really have to learn to laugh at yourself.” Being a mother has made her “more organized at work and better at time management...You really have to use time more efficiently after children, I don’t know how you’d survive if you didn’t.” Lorri is one example of how changes in workplace policies can increase worker productivity—improving a company’s bottom line while providing a structure of support for families.

Another company, Google, one of America’s fastest-growing companies, has also taken steps to keep valuable employees in their workforce as they raise families. Google offers employees with children three months maternity leave at 75 percent pay, two weeks of free meals on wheels to new parents’ homes, two weeks off with full pay for fathers, comfortable breast pumping rooms and a lactation program with free lactation consulting, special parking spaces for expectant mothers, childcare centers, healthcare coverage for the family, up to $5,000 per year for adoption assistance, and flexible work options.

Why go to all the effort? Stacy Sullivan, Director of Human Resources at Google, comments, “The goal has always been to create an amazing search engine to get information out into the world, and also to make this an incredible place to work for employees—a company where people really want to come every day, and a company that helps people take care of worries and stress at home so employees can be happy and more productive at work.” This effort is paying off.

One employee, Ninette, a real estate planning manager, started about six years ago at the company. Her daughter, now two years old, stays in the Kinderplex—Google’s workplace childcare facility—and is learning gymnastics, dance, preschool curriculum, and art while her mom works in her office, which is about five minutes away. The transition to working mother has been easy for Ninette—after having her daughter, she took three months off with 75 percent pay and came back to work part-time for a few weeks; then she later transitioned to a four-day work week until her daughter was older. Ninette kept her job at Google as her daughter grew into the cute little person she is today, practicing “Jingle Bells” for her preschool holiday show in the car, on the phone with her grandmother and aunts, and at other times only a two-year-old would think to belt out a holiday tune long after the season is over. “She really enjoys it, and it’s cool to see her taking these things home with her,” comments Ninette.

Ninette continues, sharing her feelings about the Kinderplex as well as support she’s received from Google, “It’s been a godsend for me. I drop her off, and once I’m gone she has a great time. I don’t worry about her while I’m at work, and it’s pretty flexible because the company has always stressed work/life balance from the top. If you ever have to leave early, it’s understandable.” The company was able to keep a terrific real estate planning manager, and Ninette was able to balance her job with her growing family. It’s a win/win situation.

8.2 - Moving Forward

Not all companies are able to provide this much family support. In fact, most can’t. However, a combination of government and business initiatives could provide this much support for all types of jobs. The cost of paid family leave for new parents needs to be an expense our society shares as we recognize the value of providing parents with what they need to raise healthy children.

Offering flexibility in work hours is an opportunity many companies can embrace without hurting the bottom line (and often actually helping it). The cost of healthcare for individuals, let alone families, has risen to the point where our economy is suffering— a joint effort by government and business working together to improve our healthcare system is long overdue. Lorri and Ninette’s experiences show it’s possible to better balance work and family. We need to make basic supports available to all parents.

In order to do so, we first have to face the fact that times have changed and most modern families have two working parents. This is not inherently a problem if we, as a country, embrace both the need to work and the need to care for family. But to truly embrace both work and family, changes have to be made.

It’s time to start thinking outside the box. We have to face up to the fact that the status quo is not adequate for most working mothers, and that in most cases there are not enough incentives for businesses to take up the slack. This is leading to a situation that is increasingly untenable for working mothers and their children.

Feminists Are Mothers, Too

by Kim Gandy, President, National Organization for Women (NOW)


There was a titter as the women looked to their interpreter to see if I was joking. They were from countries not known for women’s advances (Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar) and found it hard to believe U.S. family leave policies were so inferior to their own. But it’s true. Unlike most of the world, our country treats child-rearing as each family’s private burden,rather than a societal priority.

Our politicians talk about “family values,” but do little that values families.

For nearly forty years, NOW has worked toward equal rights, broader opportunities, and respect for women—in all the work we do. After all, we coined the rallying cry: “Every Mother is a Working Mother.” But we have a long way to go until most women (and men) have genuine choices, freely made ... until caregivers are given both respect and financial security ... until people stop saying “women can’t have it all” and start asking “why are women expected to do it all.”

It’s time to start working toward national solutions to support parent-friendly working environments. Taking good care of family and being an exemplary employee does not need to be an either/or choice. We can do both. Changes in public policy, along with cultural and policy changes within companies, will help working mothers while improving our collective economic bottom line. From company-sponsored back-up childcare to universal healthcare for all children, from paid family leave to flexible work options, the solutions are out there.

These are not merely ideals we aspire to, but concrete national policies: policies that will help our economy by ensuring mothers are able to contribute to their full potential; policies that will help our communities by ensuring children have the support they need to be healthy; and most of all policies that will help children by allowing them to grow up in homes that are able to support and nurture them in order to allow them the opportunity that should be the right of every American—the opportunity to succeed in life.

The Motherhood Manifesto highlights shared needs of mothers and families across economic and social boundaries. There is a growing understanding that mothers need to be able to work and raise children. Paid family leave, flexible work structures, afterschool programs, family health, childcare, and economic sufficiency are all important ways to support parent’s efforts to care for their children. Any one Manifesto Point standing alone, unsupported by the others, is not sufficient. The Manifesto Points are all interconnected, creating a web of safety for families. That said, improvement in any one of these parts of our lives creates consequences that reverberate throughout. There is a convergence of need and opportunity when these issues are worked on together.

We all want children to grow up in a healthy environment that encourages them to develop to their full potential. Though we have achieved this for some families, many families still have to make choices that are too much like King Solomon’s dilemma: No parent should have to choose between being able to care for their child and being able to feed their child; no parent should be put in a position where their income is less than their childcare costs; no parent should be forced into a job merely to keep their healthcare coverage; and most of all, no woman should be punished economically with lower wages and less chance for advancement because she chose to start a family.

NOW has consistently sought economic recognition and financial security for mothers and caregivers—like our Homemaker’s Bill of Rights legislation. But creating a genuine work-life balance would mean long-sought changes in our country and culture. It would mean achieving what we’ve demanded for forty years: paid family leave, universal high-quality childcare and healthcare, support for poor mothers, full reproductive options, real job flexibility—and fathers doing their fair share. Just for starters.

Our progress thus far (job protection for pregnant women, unpaid family leave, childcare deductions, awareness of work/family conflict) is a direct result of concerted action by the feminist movement, despite strong resistance to changing the status quo. But there is much more to do. Our NOW Committee on Mothers and Caregivers’ Economic Rights is helping chapters form grassroots taskforces across the country to expand women’s choices. Both women and children, and yes, even men, will benefit.

Kim Gandy has been active in NOW for thirty-two years and was elected President in 2001. She is an attorney and lives in Silver Spring, Maryland,with her partner,Kip Lornell,and their two pre-teen daughters.

Nurturing children requires us to take the long view. In a culture where short-term profits and losses are often the tipping point for decisions, we have to think decades out into the future. This is a stretch for some companies that haven’t been around for more than a decade, and also for some politicians who just want to get reelected next year. Yet more and more parents find they’ve acquired a long view when they look into the faces of their sons and daughters. These parents realize that when we take a short-term approach at the expense of long-term benefits, we are really taking from our children. Our children are depending on us to provide them with a mother who is not discriminated against at work, to provide them with the wherewithal to get to a doctor when they are sick, to allow them the right to be children and not grow up in a environment that is saturated with themes and ideas suitable only for adults, and to allow them to live in a home that is able to provide for their basic needs.

It is our turn to act. There is a rising tide of consciousness that change is needed.

8.3 - Taking Action

After a very rough time landing her first job in Pennsylvania, Kiki—whose story was shared in Chapter One—has been fully employed for over a decade. Her children are now grown and she is terribly proud of them. As a single mother with a full-time job it would have been easy, and vastly more comfortable, for her to forget the humiliation of ending up on welfare, but she didn’t. She never wants her daughter to suffer the same discrimination that left her unemployed and dependent on government subsidies and food stamps.

So Kiki has been working with the nonprofit organization, 9 to 5 National Association of Working Women, for over a decade advocating that Pennsylvania pass a law to protect single mothers like her from bias in hiring. They haven’t succeeded yet—and neither have people in more than half of the states in our nation, which also leave mothers unprotected from discrimination based on their marital/familial status during job discussions.1 This problem is bigger than Pennsylvania.

Kiki hasn’t given up. October 2005 marked the fiftieth anniversary of the Pennsylvania Human Relations Act legislation that Kiki is working to amend so mothers can’t be asked questions about their marital and childbearing status in job interviews. This particular amendment has been stuck in a legislative committee for the past three legislative sessions. To commemorate the Golden Anniversary date, as well as to draw attention to the languishing amendment, Kiki went to a local party store after work one day and purchased stationary decorated with golden balloons and ribbons. She then brought her new purchase back to the home office she shares with her cat, Eddie, and went to work.

Kiki’s home office is sparsely decorated with oak furniture, a purple rug, and the electronic devices needed to for advocacy: computer, fax, scanner, and printer. Copies of the state house and senate amendments are carefully tacked on her bulletin board along with prized pictures of her daughter’s college graduation and her son’s wedding. And a special place is reserved for the card she got from her daughter with a picture of Rosie the Riveter that says, “We Can Do It.”

In this office, surrounded by oak bookcases filled with papers, letters, and over a decade of advocacy history on this legislation; and comfortably situated in her favorite yard sale find, a purple secretary’s chair, Kiki drafted the text for the golden stationary that she would mail to all the state legislators in Pennsylvania: “You are cordially invited to end discrimination against Pennsylvanians in the job hiring process. October 27, 2005, marks the 50th Anniversary of the enactment of the Pennsylvania Human Relations Act.” The letter goes on to describe history of the bill and the last line says, “On this Golden Anniversary of this Act, I cordially invite you to please vote YES to eliminate discrimination against the people of Pennsylvania based on their marital/familial status. Please vote YES when this bill comes before your committee for a vote and please vote YES when the bills are passed on to the floor for a vote.” Kiki recalls, “To make it look like a party invitation I put an RSVP with my phone number at the bottom. I received a total of six phone calls; one of which was an aide to say her boss could not attend. I said, ‘Well, if you read it carefully, then you would see that it’s not a party, it’s a request for help.” Kiki then asked the aide to please read it again and ask her boss for help. The other calls Kiki received from legislators were all favorable, but the amendment still didn’t move forward.

The Mothers' Movement

by Judith Stadtman Tucker, Editor, the Mothers Movement Online



Just as we now look back at events that set earlier waves of the women’s rights movement in motion, perhaps the first quarter of the twenty-first century will be remembered as a period of renewed outrage over the persistent relationship between motherhood and women’s inequality. Today, the nation’s mothers are calling for change—in popular books describing the nature and origins of the contemporary motherhood problem, through formal advocacy statements issued by mothers’ support groups, and in the emerging public forum of a progressive-alternative mothers’ media.

The new breed of outspoken mothers is perfectly clear about what they want. They want mothers and fathers to have more and better options for integrating work and family life. They want respect and recognition for the social and economic value of mothers’ work—both paid employment and the unpaid caring work mothers do at home. They want flexible workplaces, more control over working hours, and equal pay for equal work. They want to close the critical gaps in U.S. family policy, and they want reasonable protection from economic hardship they may incur due to their maternal status. Above all, mothers’ advocates view the need for these adjustments as a social justice issue, and are working to mobilize an organized social movement—a diverse grassroots uprising—to move their concerns to the forefront of the national agenda.

The mothers’ movement, while still in its infancy, is rapidly gaining momentum. Across America and around the world, mothers—and others—who think about social change are ready to act.

The fight continues, and while Kiki keeps advocating for the amendment to move out of committee with the help of organizations like 9to5 and the Pennsylvania Commission for Women (a state commission enacted by the governor), she’s been gathering together with friends to knit scarves for mothers who are visiting food pantries.

“We get hammered with ‘Toys for tots, toys for tots!’ but moms are left out,” comments Kiki. “These scarves are going to be infused with love for women we don’t know, but who are just like I was. I figure that if I can’t stop the job discrimination right now, then at least I’ll knit some scarves to keep them warm.” Kiki thinks for a moment and then says, “But why not give the gift that will last all year which is dignity, and do this by getting involved in politics and putting pressure on the legislators to make anti-descrimination bills a reality?”

Kiki’s encountered more than a few people who are astonished to hear her story, “Many people can’t even fathom that we live in a society that is so cold and callous against mothers that they are deterred from getting jobs simply because they have children. But just because it isn’t happening to you, doesn’t mean it isn’t happening. And that’s the truth of it. When people start talking about these issues and realizing how backwards we can be in terms of keeping up with the times, then changes will happen.”

There are women, men, and parents like Kiki working on important family issues across our nation. Just like Kiki, all need our help and support to move these issues forward. By coming together we can help make the changes necessary to level the playing field and support America families.

America can design work to be compatible with good parenting, and we can provide needed resources for working parents. Our country will be stronger as a consequence. Society needs kids—we all depend on a vibrant younger generation to take care of us. Many of the visibly explosive issues of the day—retirement security, Medicare, exploding health costs—are symptoms of a society that is aging. We can fuss over the numbers all day long, but in the end nothing works if we don’t raise children to take the world forward when we’re ready to retire. The economic strength of our country relies on healthy families.

In the last few years there has been a rapidly growing awareness of the need for meaningful support for parents and children. However there is a remarkable quiet in the halls of power on these issues. Legislation for paid family leave, paid sick leave, childcare, and benefits for part-time work has been introduced. But this legislation has remained stuck in committees and largely invisible to the average citizen. It is time for millions of citizens to work together and empower leaders with vision. Citizens can and must initiate change in their local and national communities.

Aided by emerging internet activism, political engagement has grown dramatically in the last decade. MoveOn.org, cofounded by one of this book’s authors, is an example of how citizens working together can make a difference. With MoveOn, friends tell friends about ways they can engage, and now MoveOn has well over three million members who amplify each other’s voices. These members have helped define the advocacy agenda for the organization, created amazing ads, hosted press events across the nation, delivered petitions to senators in every state, made millions of phone calls, provided political backing to good leaders, effectively opposed some very bad policies, and raised millions of dollars in small contributions for candidates who reflect their values. And after Hurricane Katrina, tens of thousands of MoveOn members opened their homes to hurricane victims. The hearts of Americans are big, and this is why a movement to ensure mothers and families are supported is ultimately going to be successful.

This type of organizing, and more, can be done to provide paid family leave, open flexible workplaces, after school programs, healthcare for all children, excellent childcare, as well as realistic and fair wages. The opportunities for constructive change are vast.

The time has come to begin a new discussion about motherhood in America, to join together to create a groundswell of support for change, to tell elected leaders our priorities, to make the issues facing mothers central to our policy discussions, to solve these problems—because nothing is more important to the continued success of our nation than guaranteeing the health and happiness of our greatest and most important investment, our children.

To make change, go to www.MotherhoodManifesto.com.

Chapter Eight Note

8. As Mothers Go, So Goes the Country Endnote
  1. National Conference of State Legislatures, “Unlawful Discrimination in Employment Laws,” July 2004, http://www.ncsl.org/programs/employ/empdisc.htm.