Mother of the Decade Award

(crossposted from the PathWays PA Policy Blog)


Thank you to our friends at MomsRising for putting this award together.

Sunday is Mother’s Day, a day when moms deserve an award. Do something special for your mom and all the mothers you know by sending them this great award!

Motherhood is one of the hardest full-time jobs, yet mothers in the US are grossly undervalued. Women make 73 cents to every dollar an equally qualified man makes at the same job. Single mothers make only about 60 cents to a man’s dollar. And, according to Salary.com, working mothers should earn $71,860 above their regular salary for their “mom job functions,” while stay-at-home moms do work that would pay $117,856 in the private sector. (“Mom job functions,” if you’re interested, are a hybrid of laundry machine operator, janitor, van driver, computer operator, housekeeper, day care center teacher, cook, chief executive officer, psychologist, and facilities manager, and are based on the salaries paid by small companies.)

Simply becoming a mother by having a baby is the leading cause of poverty spells in the United States. This is largely because 51 percent of new mothers are working outside the home and do not have any paid leave, meaning new mothers either have to go back to work right after giving birth or lose pay. The United States is one of only four countries that does not offer paid leave to new mothers -- the others are Papua New Guinea, Swaziland, and Lesotho.

So, in honor of all that mothers do, please be sure to thank your mom and any moms you know for simply being a mom. Then call your member of Congress and ask them to support paid family leave and paid sick days so that moms and families can ensure their economic security.

Image courtesy of: http://www.wilpf.org/pv_moms_rising