Why American moms are seriously struggling

Mother's Day brings syrupy ads and greeting card platitudes. Maybe flowers, jewelry, breakfast made by someone other than her.

But there's dissonance between the ritual and the reality. 

We celebrate moms who work to meet society's demands, who overextend to fill in the gaps, who never cease sacrificing for those they love. But is this the version of motherhood to revere? 

"This ideal of what it means to be a good mom is to put your child's needs above your own. An ideal worker in the U.S. economy means being fully dedicated and committed with your undivided attention – that you can come in at a moment's notice, that you don't have anything that distracts. This doesn't work if you have kids," said Caitlyn Collins, a sociology professor at Washington University.

American mothers are struggling.  

Economic, cultural and even technological changes have dramatically altered the landscape of motherhood in recent decades, piling on new pressures and needs: 

• In 1975, more than half of mothers stayed home with their kids. Today both parents work in 70% of families with children.
• Child care costs on average $12,350 to $13,900 a year, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. In some cities, it's double that.
• Dads are taking on more parenting responsibilities than ever, but surveys show it’s still unequal in more than half of households even when both parents work full-time. 
• Nearly half of grandparents live more than five hours from their grandkids.
• Moms in 2016 spent 14 hours a week outside work on child care, up from 10 hours a week in 1965, according to the Pew Research Center.
• Social media is pervasive, and research shows mothers who frequently compare themselves to others on social media feel more depressed, less competent and less positive about their co-parenting relationships.

It’s no wonder moms are stressed, experts say. 

"People think motherhood is inherently overwhelming because we've made that idea seem natural," said Virginia Rutter, a professor of sociology at Framingham State University in Massachusetts and author of "Families as They Really Are." "We normalize the hardships of motherhood. ... This is now what's familiar."

Combine a lack of public policy with a culture that bullies mothers for everything from breastfeeding in public to sleep training, and the generosity of a single holiday starts to pale. 

America the outlier

Experts say the United States has the most family-hostile public policy of any developed country, and Collins' new research shows among Western industrialized nations, American mothers stand apart for their stress and feel the most acute work-family conflict. 

It starts the moment women become mothers. The U.S. is the only country in the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) not to offer paid leave on a national basis. 

• Paid leave is available to 17% of U.S. workers through their employer, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.
• Unpaid leave is available under the federal Family Medical Leave Act for 59% of workers, but many moms, especially those of lower socioeconomic status, can't afford to take it. 
• The result is that nearly half of women in the U.S. take less than two months of maternity leave, and nearly one in four say they return to work within two weeks of giving birth, according to the National Partnership for Women and Families.

Experts say returning to work so soon after having a baby is dangerous, jeopardizing a woman's recovery and putting her at increased risk for depression. Studies show depressed mothers have a harder time caring for their babies, and children of depressed parents may suffer academically, are more likely to have behavioral issues, and are at higher risk of developing their own mental health problems.

Once women return to work full-time, most need childcare. Of the nations in the OECD, the U.S. is one of the five least affordable nations for child care. 

More than half of Americans live in neighborhoods classified as child care deserts, defined as "a ratio of more than three young children for every licensed child care slot," according to a 2018 analysis from the left-leaning Center for American Progress.

Child care breakdowns often mean at least one parent has to miss work. Over a six-month period, 45% of parents miss work at least once because of a child care issue, according to the non-profit Child Care Aware of America. And when gaps in childcare exist, it's moms who are most likely to bridge them: 75% of working moms stay home when a kid is too sick to go to school.

Dads are doing more, but moms still do the most

Despite dads spending more time on child care than they did a half-century ago, and 40% of moms being the breadwinner in their families, more than half of two-parent households where both parents work say moms do more to manage the day to day of their kids' lives, according to Pew. 

"Even the most egalitarian couples, once they have kids, find it very different and difficult to have egalitarian division of labor," Collins said. "Marriages turn more traditional. Yes, I think policies are part of it, but I also think it's cultural attitudes about what men and women are good at and those deeply gendered aspects of who we think takes care of kids." 

Same-sex couples report more equitable divisions of labor, but research shows that even in those relationships the higher earner tends to take on fewer household responsibilities once they become parents.

Gendered attitudes are also reflected in polling on public policy. Pew found 82% of Americans say mothers should have paid maternity leave, while only 69% support paid paternity leave. Those who support paid leave for both say mothers should receive more time off than fathers.

The gender pay gap also widens when women have kids. Women are paid less than men, even in the same jobs, according to Pew, and research shows the wage gap is worse for women with children who face a steep "mommy tax." Motherhood is tied to a 4% decrease in earnings per child, while fatherhood is tied to a 6% increase, according to a 2014 study by University of Massachusetts-Amherst sociology professor Michelle Budig. The penalty for mothers is worse for low-income women who can least afford to pay it and is especially harmful to the one in four mothers who are raising children on their own. 

'It takes a village' ... so where's mine?

Even as fathers in two-parent households are more involved, families are often less so. The proverbial "village" it takes to raise a child feels increasingly rare. Forty-four percent of parents over 50 have grandchildren living more than five hours away, according to a 2012 study from AARP. Among U.S. grandparents who've helped their kids out with childcare in the past year, nearly three-in-four said they did so only occasionally, according to Pew.

"I grew up in my mother's village with her parents, her sister and brother and all the extended family," said Amber Aaron Mosley, 35, who lives in Los Angeles with her husband, 5-year-old son and 1-year-old daughter. "My mother's family helped raise me. If she needed a break, her parents lived 15 minutes away, her siblings were 30 minutes away. I'm married and my husband and I are full-time entrepreneurs with two active children but no grandparents in the immediate area and no siblings to balance it out either. It's been very overwhelming." 

Even neighbors and other families seem less likely to offer support. Gone are the days of mothers keeping an eye on neighborhood kids from the porch. Those moms are working or driving children to activities or making dinner. And if children are seen playing unsupervised, it now might end with reporting their mother to police. 

More than a quarter of new mothers experience loneliness after giving birth to their first child, but researchers say cultural expectations make it difficult for new mothers to admit to anything but positive emotions, so the scale of the problem may be even larger. 

Mom shaming 

Some moms have turned to social media for community, and they have found it. Forty-five percent of mothers who use social media “strongly agree” they get support from friends on social networks.

Last month, a mother's Facebook post went viral for its resonant depiction of the often conflicting advice moms receive, such as “Keep your mind on your work and not your tiny helpless baby” but “Enjoy your kids. THESE ARE THE GOOD TIMES.” 

But social media also creates new stresses. Mothers stumble more visibly, and the ostensible "togetherness" of some moms can make many of us feel we're not doing it right. One study found mothers who post more on Facebook report more depressive symptoms after nine months of parenthood than other moms.

Mom-shaming may be nothing new – society has long sent messages about what it means to be an "ideal mother" – but the internet and social media have created new spaces for moms to suffer judgment.

Six in 10 mothers of young kids say they've been criticized about their parenting, according to a 2017 report from the C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital National Poll on Children’s Health at the University of Michigan. 

Celebrities are no exception. Kylie Jenner was shamed for going to Coachella after Stormi was born, Olivia Wilde for kissing her son on the lips and Chrissy Teigen for holding Luna wrong. 

Mosley says that as a mother of color, she has felt a particular kind of scrutiny. 

"Sometimes we all have ... complete fail moments in motherhood – oh my goodness I dropped the ball, I made a huge mistake – and sometimes there can be a feeling [as a mom of color] that we're being judged for a lack of capability rather than just having a terrible moment," she said.

Parent educator Janet Lansbury, host of the podcast "Unruffled" and author of "No Bad Kids," says shame and pressure contribute to moms feeling more stressed these days.

JANET LANSBURY: We all want to be good moms. Here's a start

"I'm finding a lot of perfectionism in young parents right now that comes from some of the ways that they were raised. They feel they have to be perfect parents and so sometimes they want every little detail spelled out for them," she said. "I think there's a lot of fear because of that."

There is also fear due to the flood of health scares and negative news that comes through social media. Roughly 3 in 4 parents say school shootings or the possibility of one are a significant source of stress, according to the American Psychological Association's 2018 Stress in America report. This was not true of previous generations.

What's a mom to do?

Becoming a mother is an extraordinary gift, one that changes a woman in extraordinary ways. Some of those changes are welcome – the maddening love we feel for our kids. Others are more uncomfortable to navigate – the loss of identity, of the freedom to move through the world without the literal and metaphorical weight of our children.

Lansbury says part of rejecting society's impossible expectations begins with reframing the way we think about what it means to be a mom.  

"If we're feeling like we have to keep our child happy and fulfill their every desire and ride the waves of their emotions, all of those things are not going to allow us to have self-care," she said. "So my focus with parents is helping them to see their child as a whole person, so you can be in an actual relationship with them where it's not you just servicing them all the time."

Sally Lipe, a mom of a 15- and 17-year-old from Columbia, South Carolina, says it's something she wishes she would have realized when her daughters were young. 

"In hindsight, I should have made the kids do more for themselves. They could've started doing their own laundry. They could've been making their own lunches," said Lipe, who worked part-time when her children were young and now works full-time as a human resources manager. "You get into a habit of doing things all the time."

For working parents especially, Lansbury said it's important to temper expectations.

"I think if parents could normalize what life actually looks like with these challenges then I think they'd be able to survive them better and actually have more genuine joy," Lansbury said.

There are things individual moms can do to release themselves from expectations that are at best untenable, and at worst dangerous. But to change a system, Collins says mothers must recognize what they deserve – support, equity and gratitude that goes beyond a box of chocolates (even beyond that tender Mother's Day card from your preschooler). 

What's good for mom is good for ...

Advocates for family-friendly policies say one of the biggest obstacles in enacting them is their incompatibility with American individualism, which says Americans are responsible for solving their own problems

"Somehow the shame moms feel when they're facing adversity within their families makes them believe this is a problem they must own as individuals," said Sarah Fleisch Fink, general counsel and director of workplace policy at the National Partnership for Women and Families. "They don't see that these are problems all of us face regardless of race or ethnicity or socioeconomic status."

Collins interviewed 32 American mothers for her new book, "Making Motherhood Work: How Women Manage Careers and Caregiving." She says that during her conversations, moms would frequently burst into tears. So many of them felt they were failing.

"What I heard from working moms was this idea that when things were difficult, it was their own fault and they needed to try harder," Collins said. "And if they did try harder ... they could relieve the cascade of stress they were facing. They didn't expect help from partners or their government, and when they did have equal division with a partner, or when they were allowed flexibility at work, women felt abundantly grateful. We don't think of these things as rights or entitlements. We think of them as privileges, and when you think of something like parental leave as a privilege rather than as a right, it changes what you think you deserve." 

The majority of paid-leave supporters across the political spectrum say paid time off should be provided by employers rather than the government. 

"A lot of people say, 'I don’t want to pay for your kids.' I’m confused by that," Collins said. "We already know this is good for kids and families, good for businesses and the economy. The hurdle we face is people don't want to pay into a system to support everyone. But we have a public education system for kids 5 to 18 that’s publicly funded. We're already doing that for kids, raising them in some collective sense of knowledge and values."

The U.S. Department of Labor said in a 2015 report that paid maternity leave would increase women's participation in the workforce. The absence of such a policy, it said, costs the country more than $500 billion of additional economic activity per year. The Center for American Progress says nearly $29 billion in wages is lost when working families don't have access to affordable childcare or paid family and medical leave.

A body of research has found paid leave and flexible workplace policies benefit employers because it allows them to recruit talent and then keep it, which reduces turnover. These policies have also been shown to make workers happier and more productive, according to a 2014 White House report. 

A survey of 253 employers affected by California’s paid family leave found over 90% reported either no effect or a positive effect on productivity, profitability, turnover and morale.

Research also suggests expanding paid leave would reduce public assistance spending, according to a 2014 report by the Institute for Women's Policy Research. 

"Women have been making things work a long time, but it takes a big toll," said Melissa Boteach, vice president, income security & child care/early learning at the National Women’s Law Center. "Somehow everyone figures out how to make it work, but what is the cost of that? Not moving up in a job? Getting fired because you didn't have paid leave? Not being able to get the degree you want because you couldn't find stable childcare? When you add up the losses, the cost of inaction is higher than the cost of providing parents what they need."

Where are the politicians?

The paid leave plan many Democrats support, reintroduced in February by 2020 presidential hopeful Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) and Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), is called The FAMILY Act, which would create a national fund to provide workers with up to 12 weeks of partial income when they take time off for the birth or adoption of a child, their own serious health condition or one of a family member, or certain military caregiving. The proposal would be funded by employee and employer payroll contributions, averaging less than $2 a week for a typical worker. 

Every Congressional candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination is a co-sponsor of The FAMILY Act. When Beto O’Rourke was in the House, he was a co-sponsor, too, according to the women and families partnership group.  

Republicans have introduced their own proposals. During his State of the Union in February, President Donald Trump expressed support for paid family leave, which his daughter Ivanka Trump has long championed. His 2020 budget proposes providing paid leave to new mothers and fathers, including adoptive parents.

Florida Senator Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Rep. Ann Wagner (R-Mo.) proposed a family leave plan where new parents can pull from their Social Security benefits to take time off.

Advocates say they are encouraged more lawmakers on both sides of the aisle recognize the value of paid leave, though sorting through the details remains a challenge.

"There's disagreement around what the policy looks like, what it contains and how it's paid for, but it wasn't that long ago that we didn't have agreement on the existence of a problem. It was an integral part of the last election cycle and we expect it to be the same for the next one," Fleisch Fink said. 

The issue of family and medical leave got its first hearing in the Democratic-controlled House Ways and Means Committee on Wednesday. Lawmakers from both parties expressed enthusiasm for acting.

"It’s critical that we find a way to do this and do it together," said Rep. Vern Buchanan, R-Fla.

The NPWF's annual report found significant variations in leave policies across the country and only a handful of states with paid family leave for private sector workers. Currently, California, New Jersey, Rhode Island, New York, Washington, D.C., and Massachusetts have all enacted paid family and medical leave programs. Of those seven, California, New Jersey, Rhode Island and New York plans are fully in place and paying benefits. 

Being a mother isn't supposed to be easy. But it's also not supposed to feel impossible. Motherhood involves sacrifice. It's a complete reworking of our lives and our selves. But the research shows again and again that mothers are better parents and better workers when they have support. It's time, advocates say, they come to expect it.  

"We should be outraged as a nation about this and we’re not," Collins said. "We think this is inevitable. It’s going to take a revolution in terms of our cultural attitudes for women to get what they deserve. And everyone deserves more. All of you deserve support, not just those who can negotiate. All workers across the socioeconomic spectrum. Getting people fired up, getting them angry, getting people to realize that this truly is something they're entitled to, is the only way things will ever change."