28 Time August 17/August 24, 2020
TheView Essay
First, we need to normalize women
receiving help with childcare. We are the
only industrialized nation without guar-
anteed paid parental leave, and for half
of Americans, full-time day care costs
more than in-state college tuition. Ad-
ditionally, other industrialized nations
offer income supplements to help raise
children or subsidies for childcare costs.
We do not. This disregard has contin-
ued even in these unprecedented times.
As economist Betsey Stevenson pointed
out to Politico, “We gave less money
to the entire childcare sector than we
gave to one single airline, Delta.” The
U.S. also ranks 26th in the world for ac-
cess to preschool for 4-year-olds, and
24th for 3-year-olds. But access to early-
childhood education rarely becomes a
top policy priority. The implication is
clear: Mom will take care of it.
We also need to recognize the hypoc-
risy in giving mothers so little support
when we make it difficult for women to
choose when and whether to have chil-
dren in the first place. Recently the Su-
preme Court ruled 7 to 2 to allow employ-
ers the right to deny insurance coverage
for birth control. In addition to prevent-
ing some women from getting pain relief
from endo metriosis and heavy periods,in 1974, humorisT erma BomBeck puBlished a
syndicated newspaper column that looms over the lives of
American mothers whether they’ve read it or not. In “When
God Created Mothers,” Bombeck describes God making a
mother with the help of an angel. “She has to be completely
washable, but not plastic. Have 180 movable parts... all re-
placeable,” God tells the angel. “Run on black coffee and left-
overs. Have a lap that disappears when she stands up. A kiss
that can cure anything from a broken leg to a disappointed
love affair. And six pairs of hands.”
My mother, who homeschooled eight children, saw that
column as a mark of her valor. Not only did it hang on our
wall at home, I grew up hearing it quoted in church sermons
on Mother’s Day.
But once I became a mother, I came to hate that column.
I think Erma Bombeck did us dirty.
As the pandemic forces us to rethink almost every aspect
of our society, from why we go into an office to how we set
up a kindergarten classroom, allow me to suggest that we
reassess the very foundation of our society: motherhood.
Motherhood is valorized in American culture because we
don’t want to admit the truth: we have built an entire econ-
omy on the backs of unpaid and poorly paid women. Even as
gender roles have shifted in the U.S., the expectation that the
mother will be the parent primarily responsible for maintain-
ing the household and taking care of the children, no matter
what else she has on her plate, is still as true today as when
Bombeck wrote her column. Never has this been clearer than
during the pandemic.
Although in 2017, 41% of mothers were the sole or primary
breadwinner for their family and an additional 23.2% brought
home at least a quarter of their total household earnings, the
loss of most outside support—from school, from camp, from
day care—has meant that mothers are the ones picking up
the slack. A recent study of about 60,000 U.S. households
published in the academic journal Gender, Work & Organiza-
tion showed that in heterosexual couples where both partners
were employed, mothers “have reduced their work hours four
to five times more than fathers.” There’s no reason to believe
this will get better—and plenty of reasons to suspect it will
get worse—as school districts announce back-to-school plans
that are all remote or a hybrid of online and in person. The
drive to reopen the economy without adequate childcare
will force women from the workforce in record numbers.
Society will call it a choice, when in reality, it’s a failure
of the system.
This is not a new problem, nor are the solutions a mystery.
We’ve just chosen until now not to listen. It’s time to abolish
our conception of what it means to be a mother in America
and rebuild it on a policy level.
SOCIETY
America is failing moms.
Let’s start over
By Lyz Lenz
When
women
leave the
workforce,
society
will call it
a choice. In
reality, it’s
a failure of
the system