CA Healthcare - Cover all kids NOW!

(From MomsRising.org)
I just signed a petition to support bringing health care to all California children, and I hope you will too. Next week, your petitions will be presented together directly to the Governor and Legislature when they return from their summer recess and begin considering health care reform. Let's send a strong visual message - stacks and stacks of thousands of petitions calling for our leaders to cover all kids. We can do it! Please ask your friends and family to sign on too by forwarding this email their way.

SIGN THE PETITION TO COVER ALL KIDS - Tell the Governor & California State Legislature, "Cover all kids! Act now to ensure that all children in California have health care coverage and fully fund the programs to support full coverage":
**Click here to sign:
The goal of providing health insurance for all children in our state is not a pipe dream. Over the past few years, California has made great progress in ensuring more children have insurance; now we can finish the job. In the coming weeks, the California legislature is considering health care reform legislation that could provide health care coverage for all children in California. Yes, that's right, 100% of children in California.

HEALTH CARE FOR KIDS 101 - Providing health care coverage for children in California is needed AND good for all of us. Here are some facts that demonstrate this!

* Nearly 9 million children in the U.S. (that's 12% of all children) do not have healthcare insurance. And in California, about 763,000 children in California are uninsured.

* While there are current state programs to provide health care coverage for some low-income children, these programs are not available for all kids, and employers are dropping coverage at an alarming rate. And as we all know, dollars just don't stretch as far in California as they do elsewhere, so our definition of "low-income" might be different than in some other states.

* Health insurance improves children's well-being and helps them reach their potential in school. Research shows that formerly uninsured children who were covered under public programs had a 63% improvement in paying attention and keeping up with school activities compared to their previous performance when they were uninsured.

* Children with health insurance are healthier, at less risk of suffering from preventable illnesses and have better access to needed health care services. When children have to wait until common, preventable health problems become emergencies to seek treatment, the result is high-cost emergency care - costs that are passed on to the state, communities and individuals.

SIGN THE PETITION NOW - Don't forget to sign the petition to the Governor and California Legislature now:

Get Dad Fired Up for Families, on Father's Day

Some folks I love have launched a new site in time for Father's Day, for dads who are into fighting the good fight for a more Family Friendly America. It's called FamiliesRising.org and I'm pleased to alert all the male folk who have been telling me, "That MomsRising organization is great but I wish they'd be more inclusive of dads", know that their wish has been granted.

They've got a great group of dad writers on the FamiliesRising blog and I think you'll find it fascinating to hear from the "other half" about how they view America's investment in our children and what can be done to improve it. I also think dads like to be part of groups just as much as we mommies do. So Happy Father's Day, daddies. Here's a group for you!

Don't ask, don't tell, don't know until it's way too late

Yesterday the Supreme Court ruled that Lily Ledbetter, a 60-year old "fiery mother of two," could not make a claim of workplace discrimination (the claim is that for years she was paid between 15% and 40% less than her male counterparts on the management team--a team that included members who were far less qualified than she was) because she attempted to make this claim more than 180 days after the pay was set.

Um. What the HELL does 180 days have to do with this? First of all, very few people would ever, much less within 180 days, know how much their counterparts are making. I know when I was in the corporate world it was INCREDIBLY taboo, if not illegal, to inquire about my colleagues' salaries. How many of you know exactly what your co-workers make? And how many of you keep constant tabs on amounts those folks make as pay periods pass?

The long and the short of this situation is that Ms. Ledbetter got financially screwed because she was a woman, for years. And, because employees don't freely share information about their exact salary packages, it took a while for her to realize how poorly treated she was in comparison to the less qualified males on her team--how much less she was saving for retirement and how many less options she was given in terms of health care.

But hey, it's been more than 180 days since that first or last inequity was instituted. So who cares, right?

A lot of people care, and so should you. Justice Ruth Ginsburg wrote the dissenting opinion for the 5-to-4 decision, and in it she asked Congress to overturn the ruling and clarify the intent of the law. Several Congressional leaders are already stepping forward to counter this outrage by drafting new fair-minded legislation. Let's get behind them so they can pass this legislation immediately.

SIGN THE PETITION & PASS IT ON: Tell Congress, "We Need Equal Pay for Equal Work--it is good law, make it enforceable!"

Read more

MomsRising and Me in the SF Chronicle Today

Well, I've never made the cover of the Chronicle before, so I have to post this. Goooo MomsRising!

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/05/20/CMGCEPG9UE1.DTL

San Francisco Chronicle
The Motherhood Movement
Can a group like MomsRising finally foment policy change in America by harnessing a citizen army of mothers?

Katherine Seligman

Sunday, May 20, 2007

There is a certain irony in a roomful of women who all had to find child care so they could come to a meeting to watch a film about, among other things, the dearth of quality child care in this county. But, having done that, the women filed into Cubberley Community Center in Palo Alto early one evening, stopping at a snack table to grab an M&M covered cupcake or slice of strawberry meringue cake. They were teachers, entrepreneurs, software geeks, bloggers, single, married, working and stay-at-home moms in a mix of business wear and jeans.

They'd come because of MomsRising, a political action group that reaches members through cyberspace, where they can join in on their own time, when they have any. Just click and enlist. If that sounds familiar, it should. MomsRising was co-founded by Joan Blades, who created the now-famous MoveOn.org with her husband, Wes Boyd. What began in 1998 as a casual petition to fewer than 100 friends urging Congress to censure President Bill Clinton and move on to more pressing business eventually ricocheted around the Internet, gathering 500,000 signatures. The couple had stumbled onto, it turned out, an ingeniously simple but potent political tool.

Blades, called by Ms. Magazine the "mother of cyberspace mobilization," has now set her sights on a huge, diverse, some would say unwieldy group -- mothers. It's a group that has traditionally been hard to harness. But it's also a group whose members increasingly say in books, blogs and polls, whether they work or stay at home, that they are overwhelmed and, in many cases, fed up. They are working longer hours and also spending more hours with their children, research shows. Health care costs are rising and quality child care is scarce, despite talk from politicians about "family values" or "family balance." MomsRising, which is trying to build an army of citizen activists to push for paid family leave, flexible work and better access to quality child and health care, is not the first to point this out. The question is whether it can bring the disparate voices together.

"It's past due," Blades said. To her, the timing is right for a renewed motherhood movement that will appeal to mothers or, for that matter, "anyone with a mother." The Democrats control Congress, and the speaker of the House is a woman who declares herself a mother and grandmother first, and brought her children and grandchildren to the inauguration to prove it. "We loved it," Blades said. "We have a big-time mother in leadership, and we are proud of it."

Still, Blades acknowledges that the battle is a tough one. It's loaded terrain, laced with terms like finding "off-ramps" and "on-ramps" to work after having kids or "opting out," a notion that fueled an accusation that the media was depicting so-called "mommy wars" instead of the lack of work flexibility. Issues related to motherhood and feminism -- MomsRising avoids the term because "it means different things to different people," says Blades -- are guaranteed to be hot button. Recent books have talked about the financial penalties women face when they leave the workforce and of the strain they face when they remain. One, Leslie Bennetts' "The Feminine Mistake," which talks about the risk of economic dependency women face if they leave work, received some critical praise but also sparked a backlash.

Then there is the problem that "family friendly" policies in MomsRising's call to action are not usually front-page fodder. And when they are, there is sometimes criticism, says Blades, who admits that she was surprised at some of the reaction to one newspaper story about a MomsRising event that prompted a reader to comment, "Can't feed 'em, don't breed 'em." She responded in a blog with all the reasons that taking care of children makes good economic sense for everyone, including that quality child and health care mean fewer troubled kids and a generation that can pay for civic and social services in the future.

"It's a pocketbook issue," said Democratic Rep. Lynn Woolsey of Petaluma, who is preparing a legislative package that would make it possible for states to set up paid family leave laws, a key issue for MomsRising. "A great number of people, particularly women, understand we have to bridge work and family. Will that awareness reach to using taxpayer dollars?'' Will companies agree to cut into short-term profits even if it means long-term gains?

"This is a culture with a death wish if it doesn't invest in kids," Blades said one day during a hike near her Berkeley home. "I don't want to live in a place where only the upper middle class and middle class can afford children. This is, to some extent, fighting for our soul."

MomsRising is one of a number of groups reaching out to mothers, but, with more than 85,000 members joining in just less than a year, it's the fastest-growing virtual grassroots effort of its kind. Other forums also have sprung up -- or just recently achieved a place -- on the Internet. Mothers Movement Online, Mainstreet Moms, Mothers Acting Up, Mothers & More (which has been around for two decades), to name a few, offer everything from parenting advice and social networks to information about political issues and opportunities for activism.

"Most of the country is struggling," said Sarah Eisner, an organizer of the Cubberley gathering, as she welcomed the women. She joined MomsRising shortly after it kicked off last Mother's Day, drawn both by the cause and by the ease of participating. Her friends all received Christmas gifts of MomsRising T-shirts and copies of the group's education centerpiece, a book and documentary called "The Motherhood Manifesto." Then she organized this house party. By her own admission, she's lucky. She quit her high-tech job after having a second child because she couldn't work flexible hours, and joined a company that's producing polycarbonate-free baby bottles. Her work hours now suit her, even if she still feels a nagging guilt that she should be either at home more or at work more. Her schedule allows her to be part of what one blogger calls a new breed of "naptime activists" -- women with a desire to be politically active, but scant time except when the kids are napping.

"It's the old fix," said sociologist and writer Arlie Hochschild, who has written about "the stalled gender revolution." "When you're at a stage to bring about revolution, you're too young to know there is a problem. When you're old enough to know there is a problem, no one is helping you and you are too stuck to be a political activist. What's admirable here is a lot of members of MomsRising are speaking out from the fix. They are doing it anyway. There is a kind of real heroism here."

Woolsey, who is quoted in the documentary talking about her legislation called the Balancing Act, uses some of the same language. She told me she considers MomsRising "my heroes. "They are doing exactly the right thing," she said.

MomsRising mixes a can-do vibe -- its trademark image is an iconic Rosie the Riveter picture with a twist, a smiling baby in the crook of her arm -- with a practical approach. Its six-point education and action campaign corresponds to the letters in "mother" -- maternity and paternity leave; open, flexible work; TV, media and other after-school programs; health care; excellent child care; and realistic and fair wages.

Cyber visitors can sign petitions, post or read personal stories and legislative news updates or find out about giving or attending house parties like the one at Cubberley to see the documentary "The Motherhood Manifesto." It tells the stories of stressed families, like the one headed by a single mom who was asked on a job interview if she was married (no) and had kids (yes). The interviewer told her the company didn't hire women with kids because "they take too much time off work.'' She complained to the state Human Rights Commission and was told that this was perfectly legal. An activist was born. The woman is leading a fight to change the law in Pennsylvania.

Then there is the story of a woman who had to return to work a few days after giving birth prematurely. She only had a month leave and wanted to use it when her baby got out of the hospital. Other tales in the documentary are peppered with troubling statistics -- college-educated women can expect to forfeit about a million dollars over their working life after having children. The United States is the only industrialized country that doesn't offer paid family leave, putting it right up there with Lesotho, Swaziland and Papua New Guinea (a fact that brought a collective gasp from the audience), and it ranks 37th in mortality rate of children younger than 5. And it talks about the possible solutions, legislation that would, the film argues, end up saving more money than it would cost.

MomsRising, which Blades founded with Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner, a Seattle political strategist and writer, hasn't yet met with MoveOn's wildfire response, but it is gradually building its presence. The two bring their experience and combined virtual Rolodexes. At least 50 groups have "aligned" with MomsRising. National Organization for Women president Kim Gandy and Blades' friend Arianna Huffington supplied blurbs for "The Motherhood Manifesto" book. This past fall, Democratic Sens. Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Christopher Dodd and Edward M. Kennedy attended a showing of the documentary, which played to a packed room in the U.S. Capitol, no small feat on a weekday evening when Congress is in session. Blades says she was thrilled to have the senators' support but was equally pleased when someone who'd been serving food turned to her and said, "I've been to a lot of events here, but this one really speaks to me."

The Internet has opened up new ways for mothers to get involved in politics, says Megan Matson, who hatched Mainstreet Moms with friends around her kitchen table in Point Reyes, a group that has spawned local "mmoblets." "I had so many friends with so many skills and backgrounds," she said. "I noticed it at preschool fundraisers. You see these high-price talents unloading into these small events and think wow, you could turn this talent and drive loose and expand the civic arena. And that is turning out to be true." The group worked in 2004 to sign up unregistered single mothers to vote, a year later concentrated on informing parents that they could opt out of military recruitment lists for their children and now is holding "soup and solution" evenings where they screen a movie on the forced demise of the electric car.

Debra Levy, senior manager of the newly formed "power department" of Mothers & More, says she's hoping MomsRising will gain political clout, but is in a "wait and see" mode. Everyone needs an "aha moment" in order to get involved, she said, and she doesn't think most people have had theirs. She had hers, she said, when she left her job as a legal assistant because she couldn't juggle it and her two kids, then found a sense of "tremendous loss." Soon after, she started a Dallas chapter of Mothers & More, a group founded by a postal worker in Elmhurst, Ill., in 1987. The group has 6,000 members, with a growing advocacy, or power, department.

"On the one hand, I'm optimistic," she said. "MomsRising was started by someone with the experience of MoveOn. There is a potential to reach out to a great number of people. But is it the be-all and end-all? I don't know. All the organizations that have existed for longer than we have probably have to come together to make a difference."

Judith Stadtman Tucker, who launched Mothers Movement Online in 2003, said MomsRising is "promising," but any national effort will have to include women from all backgrounds. The problem, she said, is that poorer working women may be too busy to get involved.

"Mothers don't self-organize," she said. "We really have to grab them by the lapels."

Later, when asked how MomsRising will include mothers who are struggling the most, who might not have the time or resources to go on a computer at night, Blades said, "We need more funding. How can we be economically diverse (by relying) on volunteers?" But then with characteristic optimism, she added that the group is still young and members have hosted more than 100 house parties. "We thought MoveOn was just a flash campaign," she said. Though the group has its detractors -- including those who say it delivers more group therapy than political results -- 3.3 million people joined MoveOn by 2005 and the organization raised $9 million for candidates and campaigns. More recently, among other actions, it organized a petition drive and "virtual march" against the Iraq escalation and a move to raise funds for an anti-McCain commercial -- one showing the notorious clip of the senator singing "bomb bomb bomb bomb Iran" to the tune of the Beach Boys classic "Barbara Ann."

"We were naive," said Blades about the start of MoveOn. " Nine years later she is no longer so naive.

"Shall we take a walk?" Blades said, shortly after opening the door of her North Berkeley home. Her communications person had warned that she liked to "talk and walk." It's the multitasking that mothers learn, or are perhaps hard-wired to do, in this case getting some exercise while talking about MomsRising and walking the dog before the kids got home from school.

But first, Blades handed me her laptop to show MomsRising's latest outreach project -- a call for decorated onesies (one-piece baby outfits) that could be either bought or made and would then be strung together in public to make a point to the Washington state Legislature, where a family-leave act was pending. "Here, what do you think?" she asked. Then, with a click, she sent the page off to her partner, Rowe-Finkbeiner, who would post it on the MomsRising site.

During the next month, MomsRising members in Washington would send in hundreds of tiny garments for the Power of ONEsie display. By that time they had e-mailed 14,000 letters, made hundreds of phone calls and baked and sent 600 thank-you cookies to elected officials. At the end of April, the Washington Legislature passed and sent to the governor's desk a paid family leave bill giving workers $250 a week for as long as five weeks to care for a newborn or a newly adopted child. "The family leave bill would not have passed without the great work of MomsRising," state Sen. Karen Keiser, a prime sponsor, told the group afterward. If signed, it would be the nation's second, after California's pioneering measure that allows as long as six weeks paid leave.

But on that day when she looked over the project, Blades said it was an example of the kind of small, tangible action that can snowball. Then, because the dog was barking, Blades, dressed in jeans, a long T-shirt and walking shoes, strapped on a floppy sunhat and headed for the door. A slender woman with wispy hair past her shoulders, she set off briskly. She was born and raised in Berkeley and knows the terrain here.

After graduating from Berkeley High School -- a year early because she was ready to get out -- she went on to community college and UC Berkeley, then Golden Gate University Law School. She moved to Alaska, where she clerked for the state Supreme Court, then worked as a family law attorney. It was where she became interested in family mediation, a pursuit that took her to Washington, D.C. She returned to Berkeley to write what became a landmark book on divorce mediation, "Mediate Your Divorce." She also took up collage, and soccer, which is where she met her husband.

The two were frantically working on their software business, Berkeley Systems, when they had their first child. "It was a fragile time for the business," Blades said. "I remember making calls right after he was born." The company eventually hit it big with its flying-toaster screen-saver design. Blades and Boyd sold it in 1997, enabling her to work fewer hours. By the time their second child came along, they were comfortably working on educational software, no longer financially pressed. "I took more time off and I recognized that as a huge blessing," said Blades, now a full-time volunteer whose children are 10 and 17.

In 2004, six years after the creation of MoveOn, Rowe-Finkbeiner sent Blades a manuscript of her book "The F Word: Feminism in Jeopardy." Blades, who'd recently been named a Ms. magazine woman of the year, was intrigued by the book, an exploration of why so many young women don't vote or use the term feminism, despite struggling to find balance in their lives. "I was thinking how feminism, for me, had been a huge advancement," Blades said. "What would cause it to be so unpopular?" As a political organizer, she said, it was the book's data that struck her. More than 80 percent of women had kids, but they made less money than men or women without kids. "Most people would be shocked if they knew about this huge wage gap," she remembers thinking. "There is outright discrimination against mothers. They need a voice." The inequities made it harder for women to be in leadership roles, and the lack of flexibility left few options for women with kids.

"We've been told it's our choice," Blades said, walking up a flight of stairs, "but we don't have the choices we want." She paused briefly and even the dog trailed behind. "This part gets kind of aerobic," she warned.

She decided to write a brief position paper which she called "The Motherhood Manifesto" and sent it to two friends. One was Huffington. Soon after, at a gathering of "high powered progressives" at her house, Huffington talked Blades into discussing the paper. Then she turned to her, Blades recalled, and asked, "What are you going to do about it?"

Blades in 2005 asked Rowe-Finkbeiner to help write a book that would lay out the problems faced by parents, as well as possible solutions. Rowe-Finkbeiner didn't need much convincing. She was the director of an environmental political action committee until her son was born 10 years ago with primary immune deficiency. She left her job because she couldn't find adequate care for him. Once home with him, she started looking for some kind of network, but couldn't find anything. There must be other women in the same situation, she figured. So she fell back on the familiar -- doing research. "I'm a geek, a numbers person," she said. "And I had to know how many mothers there were at home. I called the U.S. Census (Bureau) and they didn't know. I said, 'How can you not know?' They said it was unpaid labor and it's uncounted."

But Rowe-Finkbeiner's research led her to other figures. She found that while women without children make 10 percent less than men, women with kids make 27 percent less and single mothers make as much as 44 percent less. "It made me think about balance," she said. "We are so far behind other industrialized countries."

Her work with MomsRising allows her flexible -- if long -- work hours, and time to be with her son, who is now healthy, and her daughter, who is 8. She and Blades usually communicate via e-mail, grabbing phone conversations when they can. As with many of the mothers I interviewed for this story, there were intermittent interruptions by kids and dogs. ("No, you can't bring the dog inside," she told her son a few times. "Yes, you can go hug him outside.")

It's the multitasking that Blades was talking about. When we got back from the walk, she went to the kitchen to turn off a pot of artichokes she'd set to boil before we'd left. She had just enough time to down one before heading off to an appointment, then spending an afternoon with her children.

When the movie ended, some of the women in the Palo Alto audience said they were struck by how many families were struggling with health care and feeling torn, as they did, between the demands of work and home. They'd grown used to juggling too many things, and were afraid to ask for help. And they were surprised at how many other countries offered benefits out of reach to them in the United States.

"This has been an unspoken issue for so long," said Jennifer Antonow, who stays at home with her two small children after leaving the software firm where she was vice president of marketing, but didn't have the flexibility she needed. "This might be the first opportunity to make a difference and get our voices heard."

There is a "certain amount of meanness in America," said another woman. "We value people who can take care of themselves."

"I've never been an activist or considered myself a feminist, but this is different," said Ann Crady, a mother of two and the founder and Chief Executive Officer of Mayasmom.com, a networking site where Eisner posted the Cubberley gathering.

The two share office space with a handful of other startup companies in a renovated garage in Palo Alto. A week after the MomsRising event, Eisner and Crady were still energized.

Eisner had made plans for another showing of "The Motherhood Manifesto" and was thinking about a local onesie campaign. There was a potential for contacting people at Stanford University, she said, and at the Palo Alto school district. The work of MomsRising had reignited her interest in political action.

Unlike Crady, Eisner was an activist in her college days, even getting herself arrested at a protest against the first Gulf War. "Finally I got sick of myself," she said. "I graduated and said, 'I'm not going to whine anymore.' "

But after earning a master's degree in engineering at Stanford and entering the business world, she started noticing that women were having kids and having trouble coming back to work. She left her own job, then while working next to Crady, discovered MayasMom and became "an addict." It seemed a perfect home for MomsRising because of the potential to reach women across political lines.

Crady left her job at Yahoo, where she ran the business department for one of the search and market groups, even though the company offered her a part-time schedule. She felt, she said, that starting her own company was "in my blood." She probably spends more time away from her kids and works longer hours than she did before, but her kids, including daughter Maya, whose artwork adorns a wall, visit often. After they go to bed, Crady said, she frequently finds herself working again.

Now that she is a Chief Executive Officer and a mother, she said, she can see both sides, how it's hard to have some people working crazy hours and others who can't put in the time. She has several full-time workers and a few who work parttime or at home. She sees the need for reasonable child care and schedules that let employees have time for their kids. And she understands the push and pull between work and home, the "mommy guilt" that still dogs her.

"The issues really resonate for me," she said. "We need to change. I almost felt like I had to apologize for having kids. The internal conflict caused me not to be the most dedicated worker. I should have been better to myself. But that's the life of a mom. You are always in conflict."

E-mail Katherine Seligman at kseligman@sfchronicle.com.

This article appeared on page CM - 10 of the San Francisco Chronicle

Some Good Mother's Day Reading

This is a great article by a local MomsRising member. Today is a good day to read it.

Happy Mother's Day!

Getting High and Rising Up on Mother's Day

I wouldn't mind a sparkly diamond and a trip to Hawaii for Mother's Day, but a big cup of coffee made with beans sold to raise up the lot of American families would make me feel pretty good too (and at a much lower price).

My favorite political organization, MomsRising, has come up with a kick ass gift idea: caffeine for a cause. I'll buy coffee for no cause at all except my own strong addiction, so buying it to help further an agenda I care deeply about is a no-brainer. MomsRising has enlisted Farley's Coffee to make a special MomsRising blend for Mother's Day. They'll use the profits for projects (including a free Mother's Day ecard) to help further the goal of bringing millions of people, who all share a common concern about the need to build a more family-friendly America, together as a non-partisan force for 2008 and beyond. This grassroots, online effort is mobilizing mothers, and all who have mothers, across America as a cohesive force for change on issues such as healthcare for all kids, high quality childcare, and realistic and fair wages for mothers. Started in May 2006, MomsRising already has over 50,000 citizen members, as well as more than fifty (and growing) aligned national organizations, working together to create positive solutions for the future.

You can order coffee alone, with a Motherhood Manifesto book (which is a great read, especially on Mom's Day). Get yer coffee now and get high off helping make positive change. What better time to start than on Mother's Day?

Why do I care?

Here are a few "fun facts" (no, really, they are NOT fun), that speak to the question I frequently get: "Why do you support the MomsRising agenda?"

Well, um, there are a few reasons, and www.MomsRising.org has a great little daily fact area at the bottom of their home page that highlights them. I'd like to see these facts more front and center because they get my motor going and I think they'll fire you up too. Here goes:

Statistics from 2001 reveal that a full one-quarter of families with children under age six earned less than $25,000. By working a 52-week full-time job without unpaid breaks, the federal minimum wage comes to $10,712 per year.

Among all of the moms in America, almost three-quarters have jobs outside of their homes (most, because they have to for financial survival).

American women now make up 46% of the entire paid labor force and 82% of all American women become mothers by the time they are forty-four years old.

All this adds up to a hell of a lot of working moms struggling desperately just to survive and provide for their kids. Can we at least PAY THEM FAIRLY (A study of hiring practices for high wage jobs in 2005 found mothers were offered $11,000 lower starting salaries than equally qualified non-mothers) and give them some paid time off for the birth of a baby (research reveals a full 25% of “poverty spells,” or times when income levels slip below what is necessary for basic needs, begin with the birth of a baby) so that they don't have to leave and then return to lower wages?

When women take time out of the workforce they face huge wage hits, or pay cuts, when they later return to the workforce (as 74% do within two years).

Naysayers of policies that help working moms may shout: "Stay home and take care of your kids for G-d's sake!" However, those lucky and/or noble moms that do stay home for three of more years to do this important work are punished. Women who stay out of the labor force for three or more years suffer a 37 % loss of earning power. The pay gap between mothers and non-mothers actually expanded from 10% in 1980 to 17.5% in 1991. A study found non-mothers made 90 cents to a man's dollar, moms made 73 cents to the dollar, and single moms made 56 to 66 cents to a man's dollar. By the way, men don’t take wage hits after having children, women do.

But here's the kicker (in case you think we're just talking about highly educated high earning working moms): If there wasn’t a wage gap, the poverty rates for single moms would be cut in half, and the poverty rates for dual earner families would be cut by about 25%.

That's where it gets me, really gets me, and where I have a hard time understanding anyone not supporting this agenda.

The "mommy wage gap" is directly correlated with our lack of family-friendly national policies like paid parental leave and subsidized child care.

Countries with paid parental leave also have lower infant mortality rates. In 2003, the U.S., which doesn’t have paid family leave, tied (38th place) with Estonia, Poland, Slovakia, and the United Arab Emirates in infant mortality rates. The U.S. is one of only five countries of 168 studied that doesn't mandate some form of paid maternal leave, putting us on par with Papua New Guinea, Lesotho, and Swaziland.
In order to maintain income levels. American parents today have to work 500 more hours a year than in 1979 just to keep up. Could we give them a few of these hours off to care for an infant for Pete's sake?

Paid parental leave often correlates with thriving children: One study found a year of job-protected paid leave is tied to 25 % fewer post-neonatal deaths.

Now let's look deeper, at what the kids are doing while their parents have to work so hard (due to no paid parental leave, the mommy wage gap (remember this gap affects a full 3/4 of the 46% of the workforce whom are women ("Among all of the moms in America, almost three-quarters have jobs outside of their homes")):

More than 40,000 kindergartners are home alone after school.

More than 14,000,000 kindergartners through twelfth grade kids are on their own after school without supervision.

Every $1 dollar spent on an at-risk youth in an after school program brings a return of $8.92 to $12.90.

By the time the average child gets to elementary school they will have viewed 8,000 murders and 100,000 acts of violence on television.

Studies show kids who go to formal after school programs watch less television, have higher academic achievement, and better social adjustment. The peak time for juvenile crime is right after school gets out, which makes a compelling case for after school program options. What else can I say? Let's get some freaking dollars spent on after school programs!

And OH! the health care issue (Gasp! I may have a heart attack just revisiting these figures):

According to the World Health Organization, the U.S. spends more on health care per person than any other nation, yet still was only tied for the 28th highest life expectancy.

Half of all bankruptcy filings in 2001 were related to medical issues. (HALF!) There was a twenty-threefold (2,300 %) increase in medical-related bankruptcy filings between 1981 and 2001.

There were forty-six million uninsured Americans in 2004.

Child care in the U.S. costs between $4,000 to $10,000 a year for each child, with the costs rising for babies and special-needs kids. AND REMEMBER, statistics from 2001 reveal that a full 25% of families with children under age six earned less than $25,000. $10,000 a year for a family making less than $25,000 a year? Can you say bankruptcy? Poverty? Disgust?

Don't even get me started on childcare facilities. Okay, I'm started:

A study of child care in four states found "child care at most centers in the U.S. is poor to mediocre," with 12% providing care that could harm "children's health, safety, and development."

A study found that after 27 years, each $1 invested in quality child care for low-income children saved over $7 for the nation in the long run. Again, forget the morality (well, don't forget it). Let's talk economic sense!

Anyhoo, these are the facts that get my fire going. Rise up, compassionate mamas. Women all over the nation could use your help.

Mommy Wars Suck (but their lessons are valuable)

This article (mostly a book review) appeared in this week's New Yorker magazine.

The review covers Bennetts'recent book "The Feminine Mistake" and tackles the pros and cons (mostly cons) of her mandate to moms (get a job or you are wasting your life and harming your children) and the alarmist nature of her threat (you never know, he might leave you or die and then you'd really be up shit creek without a paddle).

The hilarity of her edicts seems obvious. These are ridiculous blanket statements that can only serve to stir up battle between those that order mothers to "go home" and those that order mothers to "get to work". Neither of these camps is one I'd pup my tent in. For G-d's sake, don't we know yet that each mother has a different situation to assess and do the best she can with? Haven't tests proven that we can find kids on both sides of the working vs. stay at home mom rearing scale who turned out horribly and also fantastically?

Okay, so maybe these blanket statements can serve a higher purpose. As blind as they seem at first, of course they do play an important role in today's feminist and humanist debate.

First, these statements, books, articles and appearances related to the mommy wars undeniably spur debate (whether it is healthy debate might be argued but...) about what feminism and motherhood means today. We're talking again, and that's a good thing.

Second, I find it exciting that these issues are even showing up in The New Yorker and the like, even though I'd much rather see coverage of family friendly agenda issues instead of mommy warring issues. To some extent, as has been argued, the mommy wars detract from the fight for a family friendly agenda. However, if those of us fighting for this agenda can learn from the work vs. SAH war that goes on between moms, we can perhaps learn how to engage both sides as well as the middle majority in the attempt to help our children. In understanding the psychology of the mommy wars we might just understand how to appeal to all moms and parents to fight the good fight.

After all, if you ask me, this whole how to provide well for America's children issue is not about whether you are a mom, or even a parent. It's not about whether you work or stay home. It's not about whether you have health care or not, or whether you are wealthy or poor. It's not, at all, a women's issue. We need to fight, with the help of many stay at home, many working, many rich and many poor moms, dads and other human beings, for a nation that takes care of its children in a way that makes economic and moral sense for the survival and success of the United States of America, whether each of our individual children's parents are in the work force or not.

A List of Articles Detailing America's Family Un-Friendly Atmosphere

Since I started spouting off about MomsRising and making America more family friendly, lots of people have asked me what they can do, where they can get more information. I came across this great list of short reading pieces online and I thought I'd pass it along. The first three articles are widely recognized as catalysts for the current positive political atmosphere surrounding "the motherhood movement" or the family friendly agenda. Enjoy and get educated!

Mom's Mad. And She's Organized

Kara Jesella, New York Times, 22.Feb.07
(full text of article provided by Truthout.org)
"For years, mothers have been taking to the Internet to blog or post messages about the travails of motherhood, commiserating, fuming or laughing about their shared lives. But in the last year there has been a marked increase in those who are going beyond simply expressing their feelings. In a throwback to their mothers' - or was it their grandmothers'? - time, they are organizing about family and work issues."

The Opt Out Myth

EJ Graff, Columbia Journalism Review, March 2007
"The problem is that the moms-go-home storyline presents [work-life] issues as personal rather than public—and does so in misleading ways. The stories’ statistics are selective, their anecdotes about upper-echelon white women are misleading, and their “counterintuitive” narrative line parrots conventional ideas about gender roles. Thus they erase most American families’ real experiences and the resulting social policy needs from view."

The Care Crisis
Ruth Rosen, The Nation, 27.Feb.07
"For four decades, American women have entered the paid workforce--on men's terms, not their own--yet we have done precious little as a society to restructure the workplace or family life. The consequence of this "stalled revolution," a term coined by sociologist Arlie Hochschild, is a profound "care deficit." …Today the care crisis has replaced the feminine mystique as women's "problem that has no name." It is the elephant in the room--at home, at work and in national politics--gigantic but ignored."

American Prospect Special Report:
The Mother Load

Values Begin at Home, but Who's Home?
In the struggle to balance work and family, work is winning.
By Heather Boushey

The Architecture of Work and Family
To have a job and a life, we need to redesign the national household.
By Ellen Bravo

What Do Women and Men Want?
Many of the same things -- but our system contributes to gender conflicts over work, parenting, and marriage.
By Kathleen Gerson

The Opt-Out Revolution Revisited
Women aren't foresaking careers for domestic life. The ground rules just make it impossible to have both.
By Joan C. Williams

Responsive Workplaces
The business case for employment that values fairness and families
By Jodie Levin-Epstein

Atlantic Passages
How Europe supports working parents and their children.
By Janet C. Gornick

What About Fathers?
Marriage, work, and family in men's lives.
By Scott Coltrane

The Mother of All Issues
What it will take to put work and family on the national agenda.
By Tamara Draut

Related TAP Content:

Father Load
"Mother Load" authors respond to Linda Hirshman's bleak view of the role of fathers in shouldering their share of family responsibilities.
By Kathleen Gerson, Courtney E. Martin, and Brian Reid

What a Load
In the discussion about achieving work/life balance, men are getting a free pass. By Linda Hirshman

Fighting Apart for Time Together
Why is all the activism for work/life balance split along gender lines?
By Courtney E. Martin

Grade Inflation
Too many magazines and organizations set a low bar for honoring "family-friendly" companies.
By Ann Friedman

More stories on public policy and
reconciling work and family in America:

The Haves and the Have Lots
Christopher Howard, Democracy Journal, Spring 2007
The American welfare state is bigger than you think, and more unfair than you’d want. "A number of social policies make a mockery of the goal, enshrined in the Constitution, that government exists to 'promote the general welfare.' Our long-standing commitment to equal opportunity rings hollow when certain programs help people with good jobs and incomes to get health insurance, housing, parental leave, and retirement pensions, but offer little help to the poor and near-poor. We may disagree over how hard government should try to reduce poverty and inequality. Surely, however, when millions of Americans live in poverty and inequality has reached record levels, we can agree that public policies should not make these problems worse."

Small Steps for Big Problems of the Middle Class
David Nather, CQ Weekly, 12.mar.07
"The prescriptions Democrats are pursuing -- for the next two years at least -- aren't exactly the second coming of the Great Society… Instead the new majority is focused on bite-sized, narrowly targeted designed to address one part of a larger problem, or provide first steps that may lead to more ambitious initiatives down the road." Article available from Georgetown University Law Center Workplace Flexibility 2010.

How to Save the Middle Class from Extinction
Paul Krugman, AlterNet, 9.mar.07
Economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman explains in simple terms how the American economy went from having the world's most dynamic middle class to being on the verge of a rich-poor state in only 30 years.