The Hardship and Hope of Being a Mom in America Right Now

Last week, Moms First hosted a day-long summit dedicated to addressing the systemic issues plaguing moms today. The problems are big, but our potential to solve them together is bigger.

A good friend of mine, who is a mother of two and also happens to be a pediatrician, told me recently that she thinks we—meaning moms of kids today—hit the parenting…what’s the opposite of jackpot? Borasca? Penury? Shitter? It’s not hard to understand her gloomy perspective. Moms who are actively mothering have to deal with not only the challenges their mothers and their mothers' mothers did (you know, making sure your kids have food and shelter and love), but a laundry list of other seemingly insurmountable problems.

The lack of federal paid parental leave. The astonishingly high maternal mortality rate, particularly for Black women. The astronomical cost of child care. The terrifying frequency of mass shootings. The bullying and normalization of abuse that occurs on social media, which our kids are addicted to. The rapid decline in teen mental health. The feelings of shame and guilt that come with the pressure to be a perfect mom.

Thankfully, despite the fact that these are very real, very serious problems, there are also very real, very serious people working on their solutions. Last week, the national nonprofit Moms First held its inaugural summit on motherhood, where more than 350 influential mothers and allies gathered at The Times Center in New York City (along with approximately 12,000 viewers in 49 states and multiple countries virtually) to have an open dialogue about just what it’s like to be a mother today and what we need—personally, professionally, publicly—to succeed at the world’s most important job.

“It’s the only job we’re given zero training and zero resources for and women have been told there’s a maternal instinct, so then the only thing we come up with when it’s hard 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, appropriately, “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 put it, “the unbelievable pressures and worrisome issues that moms are faced with every day.”

The panel covered disturbing and difficult topics, including the rates of exposure that young children have to pornography and the other insidious messages around gender violence that tweens and teens are encountering subliminally in pop culture. But it also included a lot of hope, as much of the day did. “The good news and the bad news about moms is that it does start with us,” said Judd, highlighting the work of Dr. Gail Dines, Culture Reframed.

"We’ve got to support women in the choices they feel right making, and make those choices as supported as possible."

Hillary Clinton

Burke pointed out that the attendees are not only mothers, but voters. “We are a constituency when you put us all together.” An important reminder, especially during an election cycle. Earlier this year, InStyle conducted a survey of more than 2,000 women and nonbinary people across the country, asking participants about a range of issues, including economic opportunity, gun violence, immigration policy, and school curriculums to find out what matters to them most. Some of those findings were presented in the summit’s closing session, including that parents name economic opportunity, housing affordability, and gun violence as the issues most important to them. Additionally, 84 percent of all respondents deemed the cost of child care important, particularly Black women, 91 percent of whom prioritized it. Fifty percent of parents said that child care is unaffordable and 57 percent said the same of the cost of higher education. Among respondents, 30 percent said paid parental leave is an economic issue they want political leadership to address.

What’s more, women told us that they are willing to support companies and candidates that share these values. For example, 82 percent 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 stance on abortion laws and 57 percent would do so based on their stance on economic issues.

Related: Who to Vote for If You Care About Paid Leave

Speakers throughout the day sought to address these concerns. Planned Parenthood President Alexis McGill Johnson spoke about the impact of the Dobbs decision; U.S. 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 the feminist movement of the 1970s missed moms, leading to the crises we face today.

As Secretary Clinton sees it, it’s not that feminism excluded moms—the message then was one of “let’s give women the right and the support to determine their own destiny.” Rather, women then, similarly to today, were “up against a very well-organized backlash campaign.” She acknowledged that (as my friend had expressed), “it’s a much more stressful environment” to parent today than when she or her mother were raising kids. “We have got to get a hold on the idea of motherhood for the 21st century,” Secretary Clinton said, “and we’ve got to support women in the choices they feel right making, and make those choices as supported as possible.”

She emphasized the importance of public support, but also noted the need for personal support, for community. Moms First is working on that, too. At the end of the summit, the organization announced the launch of The Motherhood, a volunteer collective that seeks to mobilize moms and supporters to enact change. The new website points out that “sisterhood” and “brotherhood” evoke feelings of community, but the word “motherhood” feels individual; this group is intended to change that. To start, there will be three areas of focus: impacting policy, remaking the workplace, and shifting the narrative, and members are encouraged to sign up for the approach (or approaches) that resonates with them. They say it takes a village…

The idea of the village came up repeatedly. The idea that so much of what makes mothering hard is that you think you are the only one who isn’t doing it right, but what makes it easier is having someone say “me too” or “I know” or  “I see you.” Secretary Clinton may have 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 and to listen to you and to try to be supportive. And so you can’t let that get lost in all of this, because as hard as it is, you’ve got to have people who you trust and you can rely on.” So, I’m going to stop writing this, and instead take a minute to reach out to my friend, the pediatrician, to say thank you for validating all of our struggles—and for always answering my texts about whether or not my kid has pink eye.

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