Julia Rosenblatt | MomsRising

Julia B. Rosenblatt is the Co-Founding Artistic Director of HartBeat Ensemble in Hartford, CT and is currently writing Gross Domestic Product, which explores motherhood and its relationship to to our country’s economy.

Julia B. Rosenblatt is the Co-Founding Artistic Director of HartBeat Ensemble in Hartford, CT. HartBeat creates theater productions based on stories drawn from contemporary life in their communities. The company uses the riches of their own unique play-creation process, which focuses on first-hand accounts and interviews, to extend the boundaries of theater. Through Mainstage Plays, Education and Presenting Programs, HartBeat develops theater works that are accessible beyond the barriers of class, race, geography and gender. Julia was awarded the 2013 Connecticut Artist Fellowship to write Gross Domestic Product, a music-theater work that explores motherhood and its relationship to our country’s economy.

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Childcare & Early Education Family Economic Security Open Flexible Work Paid Family Leave Paid Sick Days Politics & Policy

May 6, 2014

In 1996, Bill Clinton officially announced that motherhood was not work. He did this through his Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act . This legislation stated that people could no longer receive benefits unless they fulfilled 30 hours per week of out-of-home work requirements. Clinton said this would “end welfare as we know it.” And it did. Since 1996, the number of families with children living in extreme poverty ($2 a day or less) has increased by nearly 130% . When I started interviewing mothers for Gross Domestic Product , I focused on mothers who were receiving, or had at...

MomsRising Together

Paid Family Leave Childcare & Early Education Paid Sick Days Family Economic Security

April 4, 2014

The idea to write a play about motherhood came to me when I was writing my last play, Flipside and nursing my second child. Actually, it had been gestating since the day I was nursing my first child and complaining to my HartBeat Co-Artistic Director Greg Tate that the intersecting struggles of child care, career and being broke were making motherhood feel impossible. To this my wise friend said, "Well that's what's behind the movement for counting childrearing as part of the Gross Domestic Product. Think about how much easier this would all be if raising children was valued for what it is -...

MomsRising Together

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Julia B. Rosenblatt

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Being a Low-Income Mother; Then and Now

Gross Domestic Product - What if you got paid to raise your children?