Should Mother’s Day just be about nice cards and pretty flowers? Or should it be about giving the people who care for us, and the essential work they do, real worth? How did we do this Mother’s Day?

Mother’s Day Tea in the East Room of the White House, May 10, 2012. (Official White House Photo by Sonya N. Hebert)

In our wealthy nation, millions of mothers – largely women who devoted all or part of their lives to taking care of others – face an old age of poverty. U.S. Census data show that they are twice as likely to be poor than older men. We would all agree that they deserve better, that mothers should be rewarded rather than punished for caring for others. Yet despite all the rhetoric about motherhood and apple pie, our present economic system does not reward this essential work in any way that helps us put food on the table or a roof over our heads. We need a more caring economy

The work of caregiving in families, whether it’s done by women or men, is not even included in measures of economic productivity such as Gross Domestic Product (GDP) – which instead count work that destroys rather than nurtures life such as making and selling cigarettes, the medical costs and the funeral costs as “productive.”

This makes no sense. We need new economic measurements that take into account that caregiving is essential for children’s welfare and development, that there would be no labor force without this work, and that both our short and long-term economic health depend on the work of care. We need Social Wealtheconomic indicators.

Women are still the main caregivers both at home and in the labor force. And why would men want to do this work when it is given so little value? Professions that entail caregiving such as child care and elementary school teaching, where women predominate, are lower paid than jobs that do not involve caregiving, such as construction work or plumbing, that are predominantly male.

Even though over half of mothers are now in the labor force, in the U.S. there is no government supported paid parental or sick leave and only a small number of businesses have policies that support caregiving. By contrast, in all other industrialized democracies, there is paid family leave. Not only that, there are also government subsidies for childcare and home elder care, not just tax credits. It is sometimes claimed that such policies will encourage people to stay home and not take outside jobs and will lead to a high birth rate. But nothing of the sort has happened in nations with such mothering-friendly policies. For example, Scandinavian nations have a low birthrate, a high rate of women in elected positions, no huge gaps between haves and have nots, and prosperous economies.

The lesson from this is that when caregiving is valued, everyone benefits. And only when caregiving is valued can we realistically expect more caring social policies.

That is why Congress recently introduced the WORK Act, for Women’s Option to Raise Kids, to allow low-income mothers on public assistance to provide the essential work of full-time caregiving for children during their first three years.

Investment in caregiving will pay for itself in less than a generation — and make a huge profit in the bargain. Consider the enormous community expense of not investing in good childcare — from crime, mental illness, drug abuse,and lost human potential to the economic consequences of lower quality “human capital.”

What is, or isn’t, economically valued and rewarded is a matter of values and policies, not of any fixed economic laws. Let’s take a good look at our values and policies this Mother’s Day, and see to it that our policy-makers do the same by valuing the work of caregiving and our true social wealth. We need to join together in a Caring Economy Campaign. This is the real gift we should give mothers – and fathers and children – this Mother’s Day.

Riane Eisler is president of the Center for Partnership Studies , and author of the international bestsellers The Chalice and the Blade and The Real Wealth of Nations. Shireen Mitchell is founder of Digital Sisters and Vice Chair of the National Council of Women’s Organizations.

So for all those candidates and elected officials interested in the women’s vote and eager to prove their support for motherhood and families, here’s a sampling of what mothers want and need, not just one day a year but every day:

The right to care for a sick child or personal illness without losing our paychecks or our jobs. Moms need leaders to actively support the right for workers to earn paid sick days and champion local, state and federal policies that would guarantee this protection. Make sure no one has to choose between being a good parent and being a good employee — and that no one has to serve you flu with your soup.

The right to coverage under the Family and Medical Leave Act. Half of private sector workforce employees aren’t covered by this law because they work for an employer with fewer than 50 workers, haven’t been on the job for at least 12 months or work less than 25 hours a week. Moms need Members of Congress to work to expand FMLA to cover all employees after 90 days of employment.

The ability to afford leave under the Family and Medical Leave Act. Many who are covered under FMLA can’t afford to take the time without pay. As a result, nearly three million eligible workers a year who need leave to care for their health or the health of a loved one don’t take it, according to a 2000 Labor Department survey. And nearly 9 percent of those who do (including 20 percent for low-income families) are forced to rely on public assistance to keep food on the table, according to a 1995 Department of Labor report. Moms need leaders to voice their support for policies to create family leave insurance funds like those that are working in California and New Jersey so that caring for a new or seriously ill child doesn’t trigger financial catastrophe.

The right to care for one’s partner regardless of their gender. Being able to marry who you love — and being able to care for one another in sickness as well as in health — shouldn’t be a gift, it should be a right. Moms are glad to see more of our leaders standing up for the rights of all families by supporting marriage equality legislation and bills to expand FMLA access to same-sex partners.

The right to attend children’s school activities. Far too many children in this country never see their mom at a school play or sporting event because employers won’t let them take off work or rearrange their schedules. Mothers need leaders to support the right to use family leave to do what’s best for raising our children.

A recognition that men are parents, have parents and also need time to care. All the policies listed above are gender-neutral. Moms — and dads — need leaders to end on-the-job punishment of men who want to be good fathers, sons and husbands. That will also boost women’s efforts to get men to share the work at home.

This list flows from deeply held American values: that no one should have to risk a job to be a good family member or put a loved one at risk in order to keep a job. Mothers want basic standards that guarantee these rights to everyone.

And candidates, if you don’t believe me, check the polls. More and more voters — from all political perspectives — say they’re more likely to support candidates who’ll make sure family values don’t end at the workplace door, and who understand that for the economy to recover, we need policies like these to help people stay employed and have money to spend at local businesses.

Doing the politically smart thing for moms is also doing the right thing for families and for our nation.

Cross posted with author permission. This post originally appeared at the Huffington Post.

Consider how our nation’s policies currently play out.

DeeDee, who is 22, has a job on the janitorial staff of a local community center. Her son is three weeks old and she is back on the job full time. She feels lucky since, unlike many of her friends, she got to use her one week of vacation when the baby was born. The two weeks of unpaid leave were tough. While she wanted to breast feed, her doctor says the stress from her financial worries was a key reason she did not produce enough milk. DeeDee would like to spend more weeks at home with her son but she just can’t afford it. She’s found a neighbor to watch him while she’s at work, but she worries about her son’s care. She knows it’s the best she can do, though; she visited other family and local child care centers before her son was born but they were just too expensive.

The reason DeeDee (a hypothetical mother) faces this situation is that in the United States, no federal law provides for paid family medical leave for workers. This despite the evidence that paid leave helps babies get the immunizations and check-ups they need to be healthy and is associated with longer duration of breastfeeding. We have some funding to help low-income parents pay for child care, but only one in six children who qualifies gets any help. The lowest income families pay on average up to 40 percent of their income on care. Infant care is the most costly of all child care and is hard to find. With average costs of infant care exceeding public college tuition in many states, even middle class paychecks are no match for the child care bill.

We could be a smarter nation. If we give moms and dads paid family leave they can care for their infants in their earliest months. We can then fund quality infant care in later months. Lining up supports in this way, we can get our babies off to a much stronger start for becoming productive adults and workers. That’s a smart deal.

Right now, the U.S. sits far in the back of the class when it comes to paid family leave. America is an exceptional nation alongside only Swaziland and Papua New Guinea as countries without a paid maternity leave law. The Family Medical Leave Act permits up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave to care for a new child (or address a serious illness), but even this is available to less than half of the nation’s workforce because of the law’s eligibility rules. DeeDee was able to use her vacation time for maternity leave. But, fully 40 percent of low-income working parents (those earning up to about $38,000 annually for a family of three) have no paid leave whatsoever. That’s no vacation days, no sick days, no personal days.

As a country, we also pay too little attention to the child care options available to new moms and dads when they go back to work. Much of the available infant care is low quality. Quality care that is nurturing and responsive to a baby’s needs matters, giving kids from families with the least resources a solid foundation for skill development and learning. Care that fails to meet quality standards can have the opposite effect.

There is some good news. On paid parental leave, state insurance programs in New Jersey and California are demonstrating the idea is doable; businesses can implement paid leave policies without much headache; and dads, along with moms, want this time to bond with the baby. Federal policymakers also have recognized the importance of building the parent-child relationship by including funding for early childhood home visiting services in the recent health care reform legislation. Far more resources and improved policies are needed to improve the quality of infant care for families.

This Mother’s Day, when you pick out that special card or place your bouquet order, consider the working mom at the register. She too needs a gift. It’s time for us to unify around more than our purchases and realize that what moms (and dads) want and what our nation needs is for their children to thrive. It turns out that if our infants do well, our nation does well too. By packaging paid family leave and quality affordable infant care, we can give babies a strong start in their first year of life. That’s a package of policies ready for wrapping.

Cross posted with author permission from The Huffington Post.

A Rachel’s Network report entitled “When Women Lead: A Decade of Women’s Environmental Voting Records in Congress,”  compares the environmental voting records of Congresswomen and Congressmen from the 107th through the 111th Congress.  The conclusion:  in both houses of Congress, whether red or blue, women are greener!

Here’s Annie’s personal account of a moving conversation:

How did a girl raised and hardened on the streets of New York City become a passionate environmentalist, geeky master gardener and full-fledged compost queen? I read Rachel Carson’s bestseller, Silent Spring.

Overnight, I became a Rachel Carson groupie and went searching for my teammates. I found them at Rachel’s Network, a nonprofit that builds productive alliances among women funders who care deeply about the environment and women’s leadership.  These impassioned leaders and agents of change have collected the latest statistics showing that women are uniquely positioned as environmental stewards and that women in policy-making positions will vote to protect the environment more than their male counterparts.

This is all swell, you may be thinking. We can stop worrying about clean water, safe food and the ubiquitous barrage of industrial and agricultural chemicals. But American women account for only 23 percent of state legislators and 17 percent of Congress, and the United States ranks 73rd in the world in gender parity in governance.

I contacted Laurie Syms, co-director of Rachel’s Network, to ask how both women and men could earn some badly needed extra-credit points from Mother Earth.

To read Laurie’s answers to Annie’s thoughtful questions, see their interview in the Huffington Post, or learn more about ways The 2012 Project is propelling women into the political pipeline here.

And as you celebrate Mother’s Day, consider the influence you could leverage by running for office yourself.  Whether you’re most moved by education issues, toxic chemicals, family-friendly workplaces, or health care for kids, there’s no more effective way to effect lasting change than by setting the policy agenda yourself.

Don’t get me wrong:  breakfast in bed is dandy.  But a seat at the decision-making table is invaluable!

The answer is, as soon as you have a baby, YOU ARE MOM ENOUGH!

TIME is sadly out of touch with what Moms really want. It’s time to ask, “Are we Mom-friendly enough?”

In my circle of “Mom” friends, we largely think that the “Mommy Wars” are over. Until, of course, some stupid news outlet uses the Mommy War to try and sell magazines. We trust that the choices that you made about parenting your children were made based on the information that you had at the time. “We do better, when we know better” is a phrase we often share with each other as we gather new information and work to improve our lives and the lives of our children.

But the question is not the only insult. The cover photo is also offensive. Not because the mother is breastfeeding an older child, but because the picture does not represent the actual relationship that this mother has with her child.  To the many mothers, physicians, and public health advocates, who have strived to bring breastfeeding back into the mainstream, it is offensive to have such an exploitative and staged photograph become emblem of what is a normal part of motherhood.

In my 12 years of motherhood, having breastfed all my children into preschool, I have never seen another mother of a toddler or preschool aged child, pull up a chair, stand like a mudflap girl and nurse her child, while gazing off into the knowing eyes of the camera. I wonder how this picture would have looked if there was a little girl standing on that chair, as opposed to a very boyish boy?  Typically, mother’s who are extended breastfeeding an older child, reserve their nursing for the needs of the child, not the needs of the photographer.

I have seen mothers, whose children have fallen down, with a bloodied knee, comfort their children with nursing. I have seen mothers of children with severe diarrhea, comfort and hydrate their children with nursing. I have seen mothers of children, who have been scared and frightened, comfort and love their children with nursing.

I am not opposed to the beautiful pictures of women nursing older children, as was represented within the article and video, but the cover photo that TIME chose was intended to inflame and misrepresent.  TIME’s use of this inauthentic representation of what extended nursing “looks like” is simply a lie.

Some families choose to breastfeed beyond infancy because of the evidence-based health and neurological benefits. Yes, I said families, because very frequently, it is the fathers that see, support and promote the nursing relationship.

But the reality is that many women never breastfeed beyond the first weeks of life, because of the many barriers that prevent them from achieving their dream. Women need accurate and timely information, not hypersexualized hyperbole.

TIME, here are the questions you should have asked:

-                Where can we get the best information to make an informed choice?

-                Are we supporting a Mom’s choice to breastfeed for 1 minute, 1 day, 100 days or 1000 days?

-                When are we going to get paid maternity & paternity leave?

-                How can we get more flexible work options?

-                How can we ensure our children are educated?

-                How can we get health care?

-                When will we expand lactation accommodation rights for all working women?

-                Are we providing Moms with real food to feed their children?

-                Are we supporting families in the workplace to parent their children?

If you are ready to opt out of the Media-Industrial Mommy War Complex, please join us here.

Here’s a hilarious Mother’s Day fantasy just for you!

Click here: http://www.momsdaycard.com/index2.php

Happy nearly Mother’s Day!!!

- Kristin, Joan, Monifa, Elisa, Ashley, Nanette, Sarah, Julie, Sarah, Anita, Ruth, Claire, Donna, Mary, and Gloria

We are powerfully, substantially, fully “Networked Moms.”

Increased Internet access, coupled with new communication technologies–like Facebook, Twitter, blogs, and even emails– allows women to reach dozens, hundreds, thousands, even millions of other women at one time with a quick press of a button.  It’s an unbelievably fast moving tool that significantly accelerates communication, education, organizing, and impact.

One example of these rapidly growing networks is the fast growth of MomsRising due to networked friends telling friends: We started with just a handful of members in 2006, and we’ve grown to over a million members today.  MomsRising’s highly trafficked blog and social media networks have also grown at a fast pace. We’re delighted to share that MomsRising now has over 700 bloggers, including Congresspeople, Cabinet Secretaries, moms with amazing personal stories, policy experts, and more. There’s an amazing variety of well-written perspectives, resources, and action links in ONE place: The MomsRising blog. 

Networked moms are powerful and we’re everywhere.  And we Networked Moms are creating our own new media online– and are bringing forward topics that have too long been ignored in traditional media outlets.

So in celebration of the growing power of Networked Moms to bring forward critically important topics, for Mother’s Day we’ve gathered together the most popular recent blogs posted on MomsRising right here (Scroll down this page to check it all out).

Click here!

How to Make a Superhero Cape by Lara from HowDoesShe

Food Revolution! A Blog Carnival On School Food and Fighting Childhood Obesity, Diabetes by Monifa Bandele

Mother Takes on Monsanto, Wins Global Prize by Kristin Schafer ***Shared over 1,000 times on Facebook!

The Real View of Free Formula Samples—Open Your Eyes by Melissa Bartick, MD ***Shared over 1,000 times on Facebook!

The Story Behind My Film “Entre Nos” by Paola Mendoza

Coke Turns 125: Why I’m Not Celebrating by Mike Jacobson

130 Death Row Inmates Have Been Found Innocent Since 1973: Troy Davis’ Execution is Set for Tomorrow  by Monifa Bandele ***Shared over 1,000 times on Facebook

Wal-Mart’s Sick Sick Day Policy by Katie Bethell

It’s Not a “Mommy War,” It’s a War on Moms by Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner

The Execution of Troy Davis–A Mother’s Story by Martina Davis-Correia

TIME: Ask the RIGHT Questions! by Genevieve Colvin

All of this made me jump at the opportunity to see the French presidential candidates (the runoff between President Nicolas Sarkozy and Socialist candidate François Hollande will take place on Sunday) speak on women’s issues during an event co-sponsored by my school and ELLE magazine. I was curious about the topics that interest French women – would they diverge from American women’s concerns or are some things universal?

The short answer? A bit of both. French women face a wage gap of 20% [1], compared to 23% for American women [2], which surprised me in a country that dedicates so many resources to support mothers as they transition in and out of the workforce.

Another concern that the candidates sought to address: childcare. The main concern here, however, was not cost – as is often the case in the US – but space. The cost of education in France is largely shouldered by the state and daycare is no exception: for the American equivalent of a preschool or daycare center, parents pay between 3-6% of their income, depending on the number of children they have. [3] Recently, however, due to budget cuts, there has been a shortage of available spots in these public daycare centers and parents, forced to go with other, more expensive options, are struggling to make ends meet.

The difference that I found most striking, though, was in the debate surrounding contraception. The French long ago resolved the debate about whether contraception should be covered by health insurance; apparently, there was little debate on the issue at all and now the vast majority of the population considers access to insurance-covered contraception to be a matter of course. The latest debate was on whether minors should have access to contraception and if so, how best to make it available to them. But even this question didn’t raise as much debate as I would have expected: centrist candidate François Bayrou said, “Contraception is prevention” and nearly all of the candidates were in support of giving minors access to it.

It’s easy to complain about French bureaucracy (why do I always seem need three copies of stamped, signed, and sealed documents to get anything done?), but it just makes sense to support mothers and families through policies on childcare, healthcare, education, and more – the US could learn from this. I just hope that the next president (both in France and in the US) will make real some real progress on closing the wage gap.

[1] http://www.inegalites.fr/spip.php?article972&id_mot=146

[2] http://www.nwlc.org/our-blog/state-wage-gap-data-show-little-or-no-improvement-2008

[3] http://www.famili.fr/,combien-ca-coute,643,16774,3

by Rachel Sarnoff, Executive Director & CEO
Healthy Child Healthy World
www.healthychild.org

Happiest Babies Are Soothed by 5 S’s

Can simple soothing take the place of sugar? That was the takeaway from a new study published this week in the journal Pediatrics. In a study involving more than 200 infants, researchers found the “5 S’s” baby-calming tactics worked better than the sugar-water supplements traditionally given to infants after experiencing pain, according to ABC News. The 5 S’s tactics were developed by Dr. Harvey Karp, a founding board member of Healthy Child Healthy World and author of “The Happiest Baby on the Block” book and video series. Yet another reason to “shh-shh-shh”!

Carcinogens in the House

On Wednesday, the U.S. House of Representatives will hold an investigative hearing on the Report on Carcinogens of the National Toxicology Program, a government program that identifies cancer-causing chemicals. The Subcommittee on Science, Space & Technology will meet to assess the impact of the Report on small business jobs. Healthy Child has signed on to a group letter urging the Committee to continue funding the Report; we’ll share more information as it emerges.

The Story’s Not Over on BPA

The FDA’s recent decision not to ban BPA has been criticized by scientists who are concerned that low-dose exposures may be linked to health problems, according to the Washington Post.

Earth Week is for Mothers

Earth Week started Sunday and there’s nothing more powerful than moms doing their part for the Earth. In addition to the awe-inspiring “Mom on a Mission” finalists and all the incredible hosts teeing up for Healthy Child Party Week, we wanted to take a moment to recognize…

Lori Popkewitz Alper of Groovy Green Livin’, who took on P & G with a petition that’s racked up nearly 75,000 signatures encouraging the company to strip carcinogenic 1,4 dioxane from its Free & Gentle detergent.

Jenna Elfman, Kelly Preston and Laila Ali, who kicked off the Healthy Child Party campaign with a bang and showed the world ALL moms fight for children’s health.

And green living leader Sara Snow, who recently launched a petition to get cancer-causing flame retardants out of Graco baby products—for her baby daughter’s health and the health of children everywhere.

Go team!

Wow.

So many readers of my last blog post thought I was endorsing Rick Santorum, his policy prescriptions and all the anti-gay and anti-women statements he has made when I wrote that I’d miss him in the Presidential contest.

Not at all.

As I wrote, I don’t agree with his policy prescriptions, but I wish that we had people in both presidential campaigns who are forcing our country to confront the hard issues of how we raise our children and support our families at a time of growing single-parent households and growing childhood poverty.

Case in point:  The inane media debate over who works harder—stay-at-home mothers or mothers who work outside the home—and the fact that less than a week later, it seems to be over.

Remember how this started: Mitt Romney deferred a question from the audience about women struggling in this economy, saying that his wife, Ann, has been hearing more from women than he has, creating the impression that as the Republican’s likely presidential nominee, he didn’t have an independent thought on the matter.

Hilary Rosen then stepped in and threw gasoline on the long-smoldering debate about the value of stay-at-home moms versus “working” mothers, by suggesting Ann Romney was hardly an expert on the issue.  President Obama’s response?  All mothers should be respected and Presidential spouses should be off limits (even when they are out there campaigning).

So, does this mean Romney and Obama are now debating what we should do to enable more women to stay at home?  Are they debating how to better support women who must, or choose to, enter the workforce? Are they debating what we should do to provide greater economic security for women who still face a pay gap in our country?

No, no, and no.

They are trying to get away from these issues as fast as possible while their surrogates are out there talking about who values mothers more.

To be sure, President Obama has released a report on his accomplishments in supporting working women.  And there are parts of it that do help women in their dual role as breadwinners and caregivers.  The most significant are improved economic security through greater access to health insurance and increases in federal child care funding for more children and families.

But the report ignores a fundamental problem that our country is facing—how we support low and middle income single mothers and married mothers who must work to provide income for their families while providing care for their children.

Consider these three facts:

• Twenty-four percent of children in the United States are raised in single-parent families.  On international tests of reading, U.S. children in single-parent households score 23 points lower than their peers from two-parent families, even after accounting for socio-economic background. Yet other countries with similarly large populations of single-parent households, such as Chile, Switzerland, Portugal and Austria, don’t see significant differences in the educational performance of children from single-parent and two-parent families.

• Both parents work full time or more in more than half, or 51 percent, of all middle-income families, but have no access to subsidized child care offered to low-income families and little access to the type of workplace flexibility offered to professional mothers and fathers.

• The majority of working single mothers—62 percent—work in low-wage jobs, such as retail, service and administrative. These are the jobs that are least likely to provide time off for pregnancy and recovery from child birth, let alone paid sick days or paid family leave to care for an ill child.

So have President Obama and Mitt Romney offered up solutions to these problems?

Candidate Obama in 2008 suggested that he’d fight for paid sick days and paid family leave, but his list of accomplishments on workplace flexibility merely note that his Administration wrote a report on the issue and hosted conversations around the country.  More than conversations and reports, we need legislation and an insistence that we try to get in line with the rest of the developed world in offering paid family leave.

Also, we need to ensure that stay-at-home mothers receive credit toward Social Security so that they are not destitute in their senior years for staying out of the workforce to care for their family.

Mitt Romney?  Well, he has said little other than he thinks low-income women should “learn the dignity of work” and that he’d support providing them with more child care support to do so.

The time has come to address these significant problems. Here’s one approach:  Kristen Rowe-Finkbeiner, co-founder of Moms-Rising, a group that fights for policies that help mothers and families, provides a great “to do” list for our Presidential candidates.

I have a few ideas for the Presidential candidates, as well, summarized in a report released last week by the Center for American Progress endorsing a policy package that provides real support for both working mothers and stay-at-home mothers.  With my an accompanying report authored by my colleagues Heather Boushey and Sarah Jane Glynn, we recommend updating Social Security to include paid family leave to allow women to be out of the workforce for short periods of time to deal with the most pressing family issues, including the birth of a child, a seriously ill family member or a worker’s own serious illness.  And I recommend coupling this proposal with Social Security caregiving credits that would allow women to earn credits toward retirement security even while staying at home to care for their families. These policies truly value women’s work, both in the home and in the labor force.

It’s time to stop talking about who cares more about mothers and start putting policies in place that value women’s work, no matter where it’s carried out. That’s going to help children derive the benefits of time and attention from their parents, far more than cynical debates that serve little purpose other than to score political points.