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MomsRising and the struggle for change
Selena Allen thought she had it figured out. The Kent mother was
pregnant with her second child, and she and her husband had good jobs.
They were excited about the new baby and had carefully worked out
finances so that Selena could stay home for a month after the birth to
bond with her newborn.
"I had two and a half weeks of paid leave saved up, and we could afford
another week and a half unpaid by cutting corners," Allen says. "We
were set for the birth at the end of May. But, lo and behold, Connor
had other ideas."
Six weeks before Connor was due, Allen was pushing a cart through the
grocery store when she started feeling strange pains. Twenty-six hours
later, Connor was born at Seattle's Swedish Hospital and whisked away
immediately to the neonatal care unit. The tiny newborn was severely
jaundiced, unable to digest any food.
Heartsick and worried, Allen and her husband needed a new plan, and
fast. They had no idea how long Connor would be in the hospital -- it
could be a week or six weeks. With precious little leave time
available, the couple made a painful decision: Allen would return to
work immediately, and take her leave after Connor came home.
"I gave birth on a Thursday and on Monday I was back at work," Allen says.
A critically needed law
Like thousands of mothers in our state, Allen struggles with an
all-too-common predicament: finances and time stretched paper thin by
the birth of a child. Even the most carefully laid plans can be
obliterated by an unexpected twist of fate -- a medical emergency or
the loss of a job. Many of us are living just one calamity away from
financial ruin.
But there is new hope for mothers, in the form of a groundbreaking law
that just barely survived a contentious battle in our state
Legislature. The Medical and Family Leave Act gives workers five weeks
of paid family leave after the birth or adoption of a new child. That's
over and above the existing federal family leave law, which allows
workers at businesses with 50 employees or more 12 weeks of unpaid
leave. The bill passed after being stripped of many details, including
a provision allowing for leave to care for a sick family member.
"When a baby or health crisis arrives, should we have to leave our
families, or should we have family leave?" says state Rep. Mary Lou
Dickerson, the bill's House sponsor, who's been working on a family
leave law since 2001. "No one should have to choose between the job
they need and the family they love, and right now moms across
Washington have to make those kinds of decisions every day."
As of this writing, legislators are working to reconcile the House bill
with the Senate's; once a compromise is reached, it will go to Governor
Gregoire for her signature. If she signs it, our state will join
California as the only two states in the nation to have a paid family
leave law.
The mommy wars
You can certainly call this progress, but it's been painfully slow in a
situation some call disgraceful at best. A recent Harvard/McGill
University study compared 173 countries, and found that only five don't
have some form of paid leave for new mothers: the United States,
Swaziland, Lesotho, Liberia, and Papua New Guinea (see Resources for
the full study).
Within our country, there are other startling statistics in what some
are calling the "mommy wars." An American mother with a college degree
can expect to give up $1 million in lost wages over her lifetime,
according to Ann Crittenden, a former reporter for The New York Times and the author of The Price of Motherhood.
And while progress has been made on the so-called "glass ceiling,"
mothers aren't seeing the same workplace gains as women without
children. Right now, non-mothers earn 10 percent less than their male
counterparts, but the mommy wage gap is even worse: Mothers earn 27
percent less than men, and single mothers earn as much as 44 percent
less, according to a Columbia University study (see Resources).
And, forget the glass ceiling -- how about the "maternal wall"? Moms
have a tougher time just getting a job. A recent study at Cornell
University turned up evidence of discrimination: Mothers were 44
percent less likely to be hired than non-mothers for the same job --
even with the exact same qualifications. Researchers had applicants use
the same résumé, but for some, added a line about being an officer in a
local PTA. Those applicants were 44 percent less likely to get the job.
In the same study, the mothers who did get hired were offered an
average of $11,000 less than non-mothers for the same job (see
Resources). It may come as no surprise, then, that the poverty rate of
elderly women is approximately twice the poverty rate of elderly men,
according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
In fact, having a child is the single biggest predictor that a woman will go bankrupt, according to The Two-Income Trap,
by Harvard Law professor Elizabeth Warren and her daughter, Amelia
Warren Tyagi. According to their research, fully half the families that
file for bankruptcy do so in the wake of a medical problem, and most
are middle-class, college-educated homeowners. Across the nation, at
least 9 million children have no health insurance at all, according to
the Kaiser Family Foundation.
Moms rise up
Shocked and appalled by those statistics, Kirkland mom and author
Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner vowed to work for change. She teamed up with
another mother, Joan Blades, to write The Motherhood Manifesto,
a six-point call to action to create family-friendly laws. Then
Rowe-Finkbeiner and Blades, who also co-founded MoveOn.org, created a
new grassroots online campaign to unite mothers across the country to
work for change. In just one year, MomsRising has nearly 90,000
members, a success Rowe-Finkbeiner credits to an untapped need among
mothers and fathers to know they're not alone.
"For years, we've been talking about the need to balance work and
family issues, but many people feel like they're struggling with these
problems alone, and if they just bought a new calendar it would fix the
problem," says Rowe-Finkbeiner. "But it's not an epidemic of personal
failing. MomsRising is resonating because so many people are dealing
with these issues."
MomsRising members sign up free online and receive weekly email blasts
with updates about political progress and ways they can get involved,
from sending MomsRising e-greeting cards, to lobbying the Legislature,
to signing online petitions to pressure lawmakers to support
family-friendly policies.
A recent email blast asked MomsRising members all over the country to
donate decorated "onesies" for a display at our state's Capitol, in
support of the family leave act. The onesies, bearing slogans such as
"Family leave or bust!" and "My business loves family leave" were
strung together to "remind leaders that families are counting on them,"
says Rowe-Finkbeiner.
The goal is to provide an easy entry into citizen advocacy. Funded
entirely by donations from individuals and foundations, MomsRising is
focusing on passing family leave acts in our state and in Oregon and
New Jersey, among others. Rowe-Finkbeiner says it's likely that
MomsRising will target health care laws next.
To do this, the group has assembled an impressive collection of
nonprofit "partners in action," including the AFL-CIO and the National
Organization for Women (NOW), many of which have never before partnered
on family issues.
And now, cropping up all over the country are MomsRising house parties,
informal gatherings of women and men to view the group's documentary
based on The Motherhood Manifesto, narrated by actress Mary Steenburgen.
"The DVD has been an incredibly powerful tool, a consciousness-raising
tool," Rowe-Finkbeiner says. "People say, 'Wow! I'm not alone in this!'
In a nation of rugged individualists, people realize they are not
alone."
Grassroots warriors
"I went to a Motherhood Manifesto
screening in Wallingford," says Ballard mom Colleen Butler. "The film
pushed me over the edge and made me cry." Butler, a former attorney,
immediately got involved, organizing screenings and recruiting new
MomsRising members. She says the stark reality of the facts left her
little choice.
"There is all this dogma
around 'family values' at election time," Butler says. "But what does
that mean: family values? We need policies [like family leave] so women
and families don't have to make these heartbreaking choices. I feel
like the things MomsRising is working on affect everyone -- it doesn't
matter if you're Republican or Democrat, rich or poor -- it affects
everyone in America.
"I'm upper middle class, with tons of education, and still we live
paycheck to paycheck. People have to stop thinking about it in terms of
me and mine and start thinking about it in terms of society. We're all
interrelated."
Vashon couple Yvonne and Ken Zick couldn't agree more. They went to one
of Butler's screenings and found themselves forever changed.
"It was so powerful to me," Zick says. "My husband and I always used to
say our political activism involved writing checks, but I saw this and
it just made me mad, that we are still allowed to discriminate against
women in this country if they have children."
The stories hit home for Zick, who grew up in foster care and was a
single parent for years. "It was so hard, and I was so exhausted
fighting each step on the way to success. I was on welfare and going to
a four-year university. I was called into the welfare office and told I
had to either quit school or lose my benefits.
"Now we have enough and I'm privileged, but that's not how it is for
most of us. I'm in a position that I can fight for all of these moms
who can't take the time to come to our meetings. I can be a voice for a
lot of us."
Together with her husband, Zick devised an eye-catching two-person
protest: Since January, they have worn MomsRising T-shirts, and vow
never to stop until a family leave act is signed into law in our state.
"It's really scary to get involved," she says, "but I had to say, 'This
is not OK.' I had to make a statement."
Why get involved?
If your own family is financially secure, why should you care? "Women
who are doing OK right now -- with a good job, or a husband with a good
job, financial security -- may not have that economic security in their
older years," says Rowe-Finkbeiner. "Anything can happen, and the
implications of our lack of family-friendly policies impact women and
their children over their entire lifetimes.
"The economic repercussions of families living in poverty affect us all."
Rowe-Finkbeiner's 8-year-old daughter, Anna, agrees. "This is for all
mommies and all people who have mommies."
American women now make up 46 percent of our country's paid labor
force, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and nearly
three-quarters of all working women are mothers. Women and mothers are
in the workplace to stay, and Rowe-Finkbeiner and MomsRising members
say it's about time our laws and policies caught up with that reality.
"It shouldn't be an option for just the chosen few that we get to stay
home and take care of our newborns or take care of a sick loved one,"
agrees Zick.
And Selena Allen wants you to know that what happened to her can happen
to anyone. "We were middle class," Allen says. "We were making decent
money, but, if you've got kids, money is often tight and when things
happen that are completely unforeseen, you're stuck in these binds.
"You never know what may happen. At any time, something can happen that changes your whole world."
Kristen Dobson is ParentMap's managing editor, a former television producer and teacher. She is the mother of two children, ages 7 and 10.
Resources
Web sites
Books
Motherhood in America - Source: MomsRising.org
- 46 percent of American workers are women.
- 82 percent of American women become mothers by the age of 44.
- Non-mothers
earn 10 percent less than their male counterparts; mothers earn 27
percent less; and single mothers earn between 44 percent and 34 percent
less.
- Women are among the most well-educated people in our population, comprising 58 percent of college graduates.
- 43
percent of working women who have children take time out of the
workforce to care for family members. Of those, 74 percent return to
work within two years.
- On average, women
take an 18 percent cut in pay for taking two years off from work; women
in the business sector take a hit of 28 percent. And women who stay out
for three or more years can expect a 37 percent loss of earning power.
- A college-educated woman with one child can easily pay a "mommy tax" (lost lifetime earnings) of $1 million.
- Of
173 countries surveyed, only five don't have some form of paid family
leave: the United States, Swaziland, Lesotho, Liberia, and Papua New
Guinea.
- Having a child is the single biggest predictor that a woman will go bankrupt.
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