From Moms Rising (https://www.momsrising.org/):
Most mothers want more than flowers, candy and breakfast in bed. Let’s be clear, most want those things too, but more importantly, they want a break. And not just 10 minutes hiding in the bathroom.
For many moms, this has been a year of NO BREAKS. It has been a year of virtual learning, diaper changing on work calls, nonstop cooking, cleaning, figuring out unemployment, vaccine hunting for elderly parents, caring for sick family members, and more while being everything our kids and families needed us to be. Moms have been the default teachers, the therapists, the stand-ins for all the friends and classmates, the cheerleaders, and breadwinners facing a record number of pandemic job losses. Moms have had to do it ALL.
And this Mother’s day, it’s time to say that even though flowers and candy are great, moms NEED MORE. Go to https://action.momsrising.org/sign/MothersDayCareInfrastructure to tell Congress to act now on President Biden’s American Families Plan and American Jobs Plan to finally, FINALLY start to catch up with the rest of the world and build a care infrastructure we all need!
Building a care infrastructure means advancing universal childcare, paid family/medical leave, home-and community-based services, living wages, protections for pregnant workers, and a path to citizenship for all care workers and their communities! Building a care infrastructure is both job enabling and job creating – it will help close the wage gap, and keep moms in the jobs we need. It’s time!
Moms and caregivers have been trying their best and have supported, lifted, and held together this entire nation by taking on so many roles during the pandemic ALL AT THE SAME TIME, and it is about time we build the care infrastructure we, our nation, and our economy needs – like universal paid leave and access to universal child care, home- and community-based care for people with disabilities and the aging, as well as living wages and a path to citizenship for all care economy workers.
We needed these things way before the pandemic; and if this past year has shown us anything, it’s that we must prioritize a care infrastructure that truly enables moms and caregivers to go to the jobs we need to support our families and also creates good care economy jobs.
If you are a mom, this pandemic has likely fallen on your shoulders. And you’re unfortunately not alone. Women, particularly women and moms of color, have borne the brunt of this pandemic, with millions of women having been forced to leave the workforce often to take on caretaking roles. The White House itself has noted that 2.3 million women have been forced out of the labor force.[1] In January alone, 1.4 million fewer mothers of school-aged children were working for pay than had been in the previous year.[2] Of those who lost their jobs — over 600,000 are Black and 618,000 are Latina.[3]
The pandemic has made clear the devastating economic and personal costs of our country’s lack of support for moms by failing to invest in a care infrastructure that includes paid family and medical leave, child care, and long-term care. Studies show that women and moms, especially women and moms of color, have taken the most responsibility for caring for our kids, our sick family members, our aging relatives and neighbors and supporting the people in our lives with disabilities; all while sacrificing our own careers and wellbeing in the process.
Moms shouldn’t be forced to sacrifice everything, from their jobs, their income and their very last bit of patience because they aren’t getting the support they need and deserve.
*We need Congress to move forward on care infrastructure, including the American Families Plan and the American Jobs Plan ASAP!
Research has shown that what’s good for moms and caregivers is good for our country. In fact, a robust investment in the care economy that would support moms would also create millions of new jobs [4] for the women hit hardest by this crisis, generate hundreds of billions of dollars in economic activity,[5] and allow millions of women who have been pushed out of the labor force to return. With home health aides and personal care assistants being the third and fourth fastest growing occupations in the United States, investing a benchmark of $77.5 billion per year would support over two million new jobs. Over 10 years, this translates to 22.5 million jobs. And that doesn’t even include the moms who have been pushed out of the labor force and will be able to get back to work, or the family caregivers who can increase their work hours once affordable care options are available. Investing in the care economy is both job creating and also job enabling.
What exactly are we asking for when it comes to building a care infrastructure that enables moms and caregivers to work and people working in the care economy to thrive? (President Biden’s American Families Plan and American Jobs Plan start tackling all of these policies!)
- A comprehensive, federally funded child care system (which estimates show will require a $700 billion dollar investment) that ensures all families have access to high-quality, affordable child care that is available when and where they need it and invests in the education and compensation of a diverse workforce.
- Ensuring that all care workers, as well as every person in our nation, should be paid living wages of at least $15 per hour (and we should get rid of the harmful lower tipped minimum wage).
- Paid Family and Medical Leave that would ensure all working people have access to at least 12 weeks of paid leave to bond with a new child, address a personal or family related illness, or handle needs that arise from a military deployment.
- Invest $400 billion to Medicaid Home and Community-Based Services to create over one million union protected direct care jobs, expand access to home and community-based services to people with disabilities and aging adults, support unpaid family caregivers to re-join the labor force, and advance a path to citizenship for essential workers, Dreamers, and TPS holders.
Decades of underinvestment is what made the pandemic so disastrous for our communities and our families. And it’s costly not only for women, moms, and disproportionately women of color and their families, but costly for our economy overall. For example, “the risk of mothers leaving the labor force and reducing work hours in order to assume caretaking responsibilities amounts to $64.5 billion per year in lost wages and economic activity.”[6]
And without paid leave, caretaking and prioritizing our own well being is impossible. It should be a given, for example, that we should not work and spread illness when we are critically sick and recovering, that we should never have to choose between our families and our paychecks, our lives and our livelihoods. Our families need and want a sustainable paid leave policy in place so that families and businesses are never scrambling for piecemeal solutions when critical illness strikes, a serious family caregiving crisis arises, or a new child arrives. COVID has demonstrated how crucial this is, and honestly, it is inexcusable to think that after everything that has happened, that we go back to how broken things were for moms. We should never be in this situation again.
This is our second Mother’s Day being celebrated during a pandemic. Though we are moving forward, we cannot really progress as a nation without prioritizing what moms want and need. The best Mother’s Day present would be a country that has policies which support and uplift moms. Now is that time.
We’ve done our part to keep our families and nation afloat during an unprecedented crisis, so yes while we will take those flowers and that candy, we also deserve so much more. Moms don’t need lip service for doing such a great job during this pandemic, we need our policymakers to celebrate us by finally building a care infrastructure like most other nations take for granted!
P.S. – Want to have an even bigger impact? Send a letter to the Editor saying “Families need Care Infrastructure now!”
References:
[1] White House: “The Employment Situation in February“[2] “The Employment Situation in February” & “America’s Mothers are in Crisis”
[3] PDF: THE PANDEMIC, THE ECONOMY, & THE VALUE OF WOMEN’S WORK
[4][5] It’s Time to Care: The Economic Case for Investing in a Care Infrastructure
[6] “How COVID-19 Sent Women’s Workforce Progress Backward“
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