Mothers, Politics, and Public Policy

These two books are a kind of shadow pair. The Motherhood Manifesto: What America's Moms Want—and What to Do About It, by Joan Blades and Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner, appeared in 2006, presenting a six-part mothers' policy program. The Maternal Is Political: Women Writers at the Intersection of Motherhood and Social Change, by Shari Macdonald Strong, with a foreword by Rowe-Finkbeiner, followed in 2008, with a collection of short essays demonstrating the need for new family supports. The connection between the two is not explicitly stated, perhaps because they were brought out by different publishers, but they are linked by Rowe-Finkbeiner's involvement in both and by her foreword, which repeats the Manifesto program, although not naming it as such. In any case, the linkage of the books is clear in their common purpose: to move mothers of the country to political action that supports the needs of families.

Specifically, the authors of both seek to build among mothers a consciousness of common obstacles to sustaining secure, healthy families. Further, they identify a social system that generates these obstacles, placing mothers in the position of dealing with overwhelming problems individually. And they seek to convince mothers of the possibility of changing the system through a consolidated movement behind political solutions outlined in the Manifesto and affirmed in The Maternal Is Political—paid leave, maternity and paternity leave, flexible work arrangements with fair wages, child care and child health care, good schools and after-school programs, and controls on television programming for children.

For raising political consciousness, both books employ storytelling. Dozens of stories make up the text in both books and it is the stories, taken together—with some editorial comment—that reveal as systemic the blockages mothers confront in both home and work and the relentlessness of their economic and emotional costs.

In The Motherhood Manifesto, Blades and Rowe-Finkbeiner tell the stories themselves, having collected them from a wide circle of women and some men. They include:

a mother rushing to get a balky child to day care so she won't be late to work, which starts at 8:00 a.m. and late arrivals mean a reduced paycheck or a lost job;

a mother returning to work three days after giving birth because her employer does not provide paid maternity leave and her family budget cannot support two weeks, let alone a month, without her full salary;

a single mother spending hours on buses taking a sick child to a free clinic because she does not have health insurance and cannot meet the charges at a nearby hospital;

a couple trying to decide whether to have a much-desired second child when they know their income will not cover the inevitable reduction in work time and income;

children watching hours of TV in the afternoon because after-school programs are unavailable or unaffordable; and

professional women able to take paid leaves or arrange flexible work hours but at the cost of reduced opportunities for advancement.

For political action, the authors adopted the Internet-based advocacy model of MoveOn.org, the political organization that was cofounded by Blades and that backs progressive candidates and policies through rapid contact with thousands of like-minded members. Adapted for a mothers' movement, a dedicated website, www.MotherhoodManifesto.com, provides a base for mass circulation of information and for mass mailing to legislators or others dealing with issues of concern to mothers. Each chapter in The Motherhood Manifesto outlines legislative and other programmatic goals and directs readers to the website to learn about current political action and ways to support it.

Doing so in 2009 switches you to http://momsrising.org, which urges signing and sending letters on the site backing congressional passage of the Healthy Families Act, providing for paid sick days; joining a state campaign...