The Essentials
Mombassador Nathalie Demirdjian-Rivest shares the balance of responsibilities and systemic problems mothers often have to juggle, from the high cost of expenses to difficult decisions on entering or leaving the workforce, all without adequate care policies to help care for families.
Nathalie shares her experiences as a mother juggling responsibilities of caregiving, decisions on whether or not to enter or leave the workforce, and more while not having enough quality care policies to rely on to help care for families.
$2,220 from the Child Tax Credit for each qualifying child often does not cover the “baby tax” of how expensive raising a child currently is.
Addressing systemic problems of not investing in care policies like child care, paid leave, health care, healthy food access, and more is critical to support healthy and balanced livelihoods for families.
What Does Being a Mother Mean
Am I doing a bad job? Before becoming a mom, I worked hard. I spent late nights at the office. I kept a calendar of friends’ birthdays so I could make them cake. I traveled to see my parents, got dressed up for date nights. I felt like a good person, and the world seemed to agree.
Fast forward to being pregnant in a big city. Leaning heavily against the candy rack at Trader Joe’s checkout during rush hour, people glancing vacantly at my pregnant form swaying to relieve the discomfort of 20 minutes in line, and then back at their phones. No seat on the metro, staggering with each lurching stop. The doctors’ appointments conflicting with long-scheduled meetings. Labor and childbirth crashing up against a critical period at work—taking calls between contractions and the day after giving birth. Forfeited maternity leave. Child care falling through on days we’re stretched to breaking. Family sick days following a week of deadlines and lost sleep. Missed calls from friends, work. Late to the wedding, no kids policy at the hotel, no child care.
How is it possible to do this well?
The “Baby Tax”
And then we add the cost. I call it the “baby tax.” The $2,200 tax credit would make any parent chuckle. We have the receipts. Daycare, babysitters, diapers (so many diapers!), formula. Whatever a trip to the market cost before having a baby, add $50. Buying premium to avoid toxic chemicals? A luxury. You’re wasting your money. Buying the store brand? How could you cut corners and risk your child’s health?
There are a thousand ways to fail every day once you become a mom. A thousand times you’re assumed to fail because you are a mom. A thousand times you watch yourself being judged in the eyes of others. And a thousand times you’re told how and why you’re failing by lawmakers who have never walked in your shoes. Just give up half your household income, you don’t need daycare. Watch your expenses multiply, buy the diapers, buy the formula, stay home with your baby. [1] Moms are the problem and the solution. Stay home and be quiet. Be grateful and mind your own business. What would you know about how to make things better? That’s for the experts with no relevant experience.
So this is all mom’s fault?
The Never-Ending Balance of Motherhood
Only in America is abandoning your career to become a mother floated as a solution to major structural issues caused by a failing social policy and short-term corporate interests. The rest of the developed world has normalized two income families who enjoy their time at home thanks to livable wages, humane working hours, and paid family leave. Out of 41 developed countries the US is the only one without mandated paid leave for new parents. [2]
In America, we blame moms instead of the architects of American families’ suffering. We call the common-sense policies that make moms and kids safe in other countries divisive and greedy. In America, the right kind of people don’t need help, and those who struggle should have known better than to have a family. (“In this economy?”) The leaders who shape our culture and its failures thrive on fanning the flames of these damaging beliefs. They teach us to blame ourselves and each other instead of them, when it is their job by definition to steer the ship. When our lawmakers and titans of tech tell us to blame ourselves and each other, and that our struggles—with the cost of food, health care, child care—are not theirs to resolve, it begs a simple question: are they right, or are they the problem? We pay the salaries of our lawmakers. We pay for their offices. We pay for their advisers, their travel, their long summer recesses. We pay them so they can spend their days learning about our struggles so that they can fix them. We pay for them to hear our goals so they can set the groundwork for us to realize them.
In a nation of equals, a U.S. Senator should be held to the same standard as any American worker. Let’s test out that theory. Try to imagine a delivery driver telling their employer, casually, that they didn’t deliver their packages for the week because there was a road closure. They talked to their partner about finding an alternate route, but decided it wouldn’t work out and went home for the day. Imagine a nurse saying that a patient was mad about her handling of their IV, so she decided to stop delivering their medication. A janitor who says the last shift did a bad job, so he spent his shift day-trading instead of cleaning up.
American workers are expected to solve problems, overcome interpersonal hurdles, and pick up the slack for our coworkers every day, or we lose our jobs. When did it become okay for lawmakers to spend decades on the public’s payroll while blaming us and each other for their failures?
Systemic Failures in Investments in Care Policies
When lawmakers blame moms for our hard lives, or tell us to have babies and to do it alone, they’re adding one more arena in which to have their cake and eat it too. What role is there for government—where do they need to work, where have they failed—if every problem an American family faces is its own fault?
There are systemic problems, decided by our President and lawmakers, that make it impossible to have a balanced and healthy family life in America. Our government doesn’t invest in child care for young families, or make employers provide it. Baby Tax. Our government doesn’t let us stay home to care for our babies, or make our employers accommodate it. Baby Tax. Our government doesn’t make it easier to buy healthy food for our family, or keep companies from making billions advertising unhealthy foods to our kids. Baby Tax. [3]
We are experiencing a birth rate crisis in this country not because young women don’t realize that babies are cute, or because we prioritize our work more than the hope of building a loving family. We’re experiencing it because women know how hard it is to sustain a life in this economy. We’ve watched our own mothers. Because our lawmakers make excuses and fan the flames of division between us instead of hammering out solutions. It’s a lie and a distraction to tell us that these problems will be fixed by taking away our right to choose how or when to start our families. By shutting us out from the public sphere and telling us that the problem is that we’re losing touch with our gentle femininity. What if moms are mad because we understand the challenges in front of us, we understand how they should be fixed, and we know who isn’t fixing them?
Our country structurally underpays those who dedicate their lives to supporting healthy families, and rewards those who make life harder. Government exists to be a leveling influence—to make things sustainable enough that our society can keep moving forward. And it is failing.
“There are systemic problems, decided by our President and lawmakers, that make it impossible to have a balanced and healthy family life in America. Our government doesn’t invest in child care for young families, or make employers provide it. Baby Tax. Our government doesn’t let us stay home to care for our babies, or make our employers accommodate it. Baby Tax. Our government doesn’t make it easier to buy healthy food for our family, or keep companies from making billions advertising unhealthy foods to our kids. Baby Tax.”
[1] Moira Donegan, “Republicans Are Raiding Childcare Funding – to Push Women out of the Workforce,” Opinion, The Guardian, May 19, 2025, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/may/19/republicans-childcare-women-inequality.
[2] Gretchen Livingston and Deja Thomas, “Among 41 Countries, Only U.S. Lacks Paid Parental Leave,” Business & Workplace, Pew Research Center, December 16, 2019, https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2019/12/16/u-s-lacks-mandated-paid-parental-leave/.
[3] Play Video Patricia Arquette et al., “The Motherhood Penalty,” AAUW : Empowering Women Since 1881, n.d., accessed May 29, 2026, https://www.aauw.org/issues/economic-security/motherhood/.
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