What I Want For Mother's Day

Two weeks ago, my sister asked this season's first, “what do you want for Mother's Day?”

Mother's Day is a big business. Greeting cards, brunches, champagne toasts, jewelry, spa treatments, flowers, mugs from the paint-your-own-pottery place. The intention is valid, even admirable: to honor mothers and the work we do raising children.

Except this year, when my sister asked what I want for Mother's Day, I did not think of the potential flower arrangements, necklaces with children's birth stones, or sappy greeting cards that were supposed to celebrate the hours and attention I give to my children. It's counter-intuitive, really, given that raising children can be exhaustive work, with emotional fulfillment as its only reward. But raising my children is not what wears me out.

No, what I find exhausting is the 944 provisions introduced in 45 states in the first three months of this year that would limit women's reproductive health and rights. Arizona law now declares that pregnancy begins up to two weeks before conception, “from the first day of the last menstrual period of the pregnant woman.” So in Arizona, life begins before an egg is even fertilized, which by extension then means every woman in Arizona is pregnant the first two weeks of her monthly cycle. This is purely to limit abortion rights, but it just made Sex Education taught in public schools that much more confusing. No matter though, because while the most effective way to reduce teen pregnancy and abortion is through education in the public schools, several states introduced bills that would forbid anything but abstinence education or stipulate that certain “facts” must be taught, even if these “facts” aren't facts at all or have no medical or scientific basis. Abstinence education (as we know) is very good at telling women not to have sex or get sexually abused or raped. It's also good at perpetuating sexist and traditional gender roles. When an unplanned pregnancy happens, it's the woman's life impacted and her education that gets derailed. Abstinence education is lousy at educating or empowering men to take responsibility in preventing rape, sex abuse, or unwanted pregnancies.

In Wisconsin, Gov. Scott Walker repealed the comprehensive sex education laws only to replace it with an abstinence only platform. He signed legislation to restrict abortion rights in health care exchanges and require doctors to “investigate women” seeking abortions to make sure they aren't being coerced (because it's such a big decision – surely a woman can't work this one out by herself). Then Walker signed a bill to nullify enforcement of the federal Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay for Women Act. Walker's form of government is typical of so many around the US, and decrees unplanned children must be born and legislates a higher likelihood they're born into poverty and the ensuing cycle of disadvantage. It's like they're breeding dependents on the states on purpose.

I also thought of how many friends that since becoming mothers were passed over for promotions and raises – all because of the perception, that their family life made them less “available” or “committed” or “reliable” or “serious” at work, even though all solid evidence points to the contrary. Not to mention, that men who become fathers rarely face this perception in the workplace. Or the women who receive inadequate maternal leave and go back to work after two or six weeks, as if they were out for vacation rather than the life altering process of having or adopting a baby. I thought of how women, on average, make 77 cents for each dollar that men make, while that number drops to 73 if a woman is a mother. If that mother is single, the number drops further to 60 cents. Mothers are also 79% less likely to be hired compared to non-mothers with the same education and experience. Given that having a baby is one of the leading causes of poverty for a family in this country, it seems we might want to put our attention on empowering women to provide for the children politicians are so adamant they should be having.

Then I thought of how every 90 seconds a woman dies from a pregnancy related death. This translates to 1,000 women a day. 90% of these are preventable and 50% of these happen in the first 48 hours after delivery. The US ranks 50th in the world for maternal health, yet ranks first for defense spending. With the US spending 30 cents of every dollar on the military, it spends only 4 cents for education. So while the US has figured out how to monetize the killing of people, and even the incarcerating of people, we haven't figured out how to monetize the raising and education of people, and therefore, it falls to the bottom of the financial priority list.

I could go on about the recent injustices aimed at mothers and women, but I don't know that I need to. You get the idea. There's an average of over 10 provisions per day for the first three months of the year. We live in a country that so actively limits the rights of women and mothers that it makes Mother's Day feels like a last-minute-cheap-drug-store-bought consolation prize of an acknowledgment.

A champagne toast brunch is a tempting way to spend a May Sunday morning; a boat ride on the lake in Central Park is an exquisitely tempting way to spend a morning having my mothering energies acknowledged. But I don't want it, because it's meaningless in a culture that only pays lip service to its values of mothers, women and families.

No, what I want for Mother's Day is to live in a culture that values women and mothers and empowers them to be the best mothers they can be, and that means empowering them to decide for themselves when and how to give birth and how best to provide for their families, instead of leaving it up to a bunch of white guys to decide for them. Until then, I have no interest celebrating a holiday that essentially is a band-aid for the rest of the year.