Why would a group like MomsRising emerge during this period? Over the last few decades there has
been a growing awareness of the fact that the United States is one of the only nations in the world that
does not provide paid family leave for new mothers and fathers. “When the United States’ work-family
policies are compared with those of countries at similar levels of economic and political development,
the United States comes in dead last.”^63 The majority of the United States’ peer nations have adopted
humane and family-friendly policies that help mothers (and fathers) to combine paid labor with the work
of raising children, such as state-subsidized childcare, shorter workweeks, universal healthcare policies,
and, most obviously, mandatory paid parental leave. The United States, however, has never put into law
the kinds of social welfare policies that are now commonplace in developed nations across the globe. It
has been difficult to implement such policies in a country where “socialism” is treated as a dirty word,
where there is a deeply rooted suspicion of “big government,” where there is resistance to the wealthy
paying higher taxes to ensure a better quality of life for all citizens, and where social conservatism
receives strong political allegiance and expresses itself daily in popular media outlets like talk radio and
Fox News. The consequence is that while some workplaces in the United States provide parental leave as
part of their benefits package, most do not. This means that a majority of American parents can only take
time off after the birth of a child under the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993; however, this act is
only applicable to those who work at companies with fifty or more employees, and it provides twelve
weeks of unpaid job-guaranteed leave, which makes it an untenable solution for most families, since most
families rely on the income of working mothers to survive.
In contrast, let’s look at Sweden. In this northern European country, mothers get fourteen weeks of
leave at full pay—seven weeks prior to and seven weeks after the birth of a child. Furthermore, the
parents of each new child are given a total of 480 days of paid leave to use as they see fit: each parent is
given 40 days (or two months of work days) of this total, and the remaining 400 days (or year and a half
of work days) is assigned as a family benefit that the parents can divide between themselves.^64 In
Sweden, the state also provides affordable, accessible, and educational childcare, making it easier for
mothers to go back to work without worrying about their children’s well-being or their family’s economic
situation. In the United States, most childcare is privatized, and the quality varies greatly depending on
where one lives and where one works; even when good childcare is accessible, its cost often puts women
in a difficult situation. Should they go back to work, just to turn over most of their income to the childcare
provider who makes it possible for them to go to work? Or should they save the cost of childcare but lose
their income—and their retirement contributions, health insurance, and job advancement—by leaving their
jobs to take care of their children? “We need to stop sentimentalizing mothers and other caregivers,”
argues feminist writer Ann Crittenden, “and start according their work the respect and material
recognition that it deserves—and earns. I believe that this is the big unfinished business of the women’s
movement.”^65