A popular political Tweet about Mother’s Day is floating around. It says
Things I want for Mother’s Day:
- Federally paid maternity leave
- Pelvic floor therapy covered by insurance
- Lactation consultants for all
- Changing tables in all gender bathrooms
- To not set our careers back when we have a baby
- Affordable childcare
It’s a nice list, but as with everything, the devil is in the details:
Federally paid maternity leave, as embodied in the proposed FAMILY Act, would rob from the poor to fund the parental leaves of the rich. IWF has put forward a better idea. And we’ve also been encouraged by the leadership of the private sector, where family leave benefits exploded as the economy grew during the late 2010s.
Pelvic floor therapy and lactation consulting are a great help to many women, and we support policies that make these services more affordable for everyone. But insurance mandates backfire by making the covered thing more expensive, not less.
Check out what happened to birth control.
Affordable child care sounds like a solution for women who are concerned about getting “set back” by having a baby, or at least it sounds like a good safety net for moms who have to work to provide for their families. But surveys reveal that government-sponsored day care isn’t really what moms want for their kids. In fact, day care is the least preferred option.
So what is it that moms really want for Mother’s Day? Here’s my grown-up Mother’s Day list:
- An end to the war in Ukraine. Freedom, peace, and security for all moms and kids.
- A clear legal definition of “woman” to preserve women’s safety, privacy, and opportunity.
- Schools that stay open and don’t require masks, so our kids can live normal lives.
- An economic policy that stops the out-of-control inflation that’s robbing families.
- Workplace flexibility and the freedom to work for ourselves how we choose.
- For people to stop describing kids as a setback. Kids are our greatest blessing.
To all the moms out there, happy Mother’s Day.