The film’s opening is a grabber: A young woman confides to her girlfriend that she and her partner are thinking about starting a family. Her friend looks as shocked as if the nightmarish Jason of Elm Street had just shown up in his hockey-mask, dripping blood. “What! Are you crazy?” she exclaims.
Childbirth drips in blood, come to think of it, but the shock-inducing scenes about mom in this film are more about her paycheck. The Motherhood Manifesto gives closer scrutiny of hopeful figures we’ve all heard about: American women are closing the gap between mens’ wages and their own. On average, women are now paid 80 cents to his dollar. But single women are paid 90 cents, while women with children are paid only 73 cents, and single moms getting 60.
Moms are half as likely to be hired as a single woman is, and few states make it illegal for employers to ask a woman if she’s married or has children. On average, moms get offered $11,000 a year less than other women. According to a Cornell study cited in the film, a college graduate who goes on to become a mom can expect to forfeit $1,000,000 over the course of her lifetime.
The Motherhood Manifesto; What America’s Moms Want and What to Do about It, is available online through www.Momsrising.org in both book and DVD format. The headline there? Stop discriminating against mothers! Joan Blades, one of the founders of MoveOn.org, has joined talents with Manifesto author Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner and filmmakers, Laura Pachecho and John DeGraaf – and together they just may be able to make motherhood a political issue in 2008.
Fortunately, the horrors of this film are accompanied by lots of “a-has” and laughter. The filmmakers know how to enliven stark issues with people who collectively give you a sense of new possibility. Their logo shows Rosie the Riveter with a baby in the crook of one arm, and Rosie’s can-do spirit permeates the film. The issues are organized around each letter of the word, M-O-T-H-E-R—and the film concludes with a song sung by children, replete with funny lyrics and a bouncing ball.
Motherhood without public policy makes for trouble, the film shows, regardless of the individual mom’s situation. We meet Kiki Peppard, whose husband left her, and Selena Allen whose mate plays tag-team with her, sharing childcare. Angenita Tanner runs a daycare center and loves her work, but her families often can’t afford to pay or have to bring their kids in sick. Vermont’s own Dr. Deborah Richter talks about the growing numbers of families without health insurance and the deadly health risks of the uninsured. Meanwhile, Sharon Dorsett – whose family did have health insurance, and whose husband worked two jobs – was bankrupted in the face of her child’s serious chronic disease.
In Motherhood Manifesto Lynn Woolsey, the 6th District U.S. Representative from California, bills herself “Congress’s only former welfare mom.” She recently put forward a bill called “The Balancing Act,” rooted in her experience as a working single mom. “Moms eyes light up when they hear about it,” she reports. Woolsey and other moms in this film discuss childcare, caring for sick children, the need for after-school programs, the problems of media vis a vis kids, fair wages and flexible jobs. More than one woman states that a stable economy is possible only with healthy families.
Politicians typically counter with claims the U.S. economy “can’t afford” to provide support to moms. Yet the film’s statistics claim the countries most generous with maternity leave, childcare, sick leave and healthcare tend to also be the world’s top economic performers. There’s a connection, say the mothers in this film. As one researcher asked, is it smart to shelve the talent of half your population?
The Motherhood Manifesto was just recently released in Washington, D.C, in the company of liberals Barack Obama and Edward Kennedy, but others in the film say motherhood is not a partisan issue. Copies have been sent out to 1500 state legislators across the country. If you write yours, they should know the issues. Mothers wanting time for their families are voters just waiting to be heard, according to a Republican pollster in the film. Even Jim Johnson, a business owner who believes in market forces, not legislation, says he found it smart business practice to provide his part-time workers, mostly women, with benefits and flexible hours, attracting and keeping talent he couldn’t otherwise afford.
What makes this film fun are the cartoon segues from Bev Betters, who gives working moms worn advice that comes undone by the end. Black and white films and advertisements show the old promise of dancing mothers set free by technology, and grumpy men lectured by enlightened managers about how great it is to work with a woman (no mention of her low wages). This silliness makes the real world our moms now live in, depicted throughout in contrast, all the more Technicolor and alive.
But if moms have been lied to, seduced by the dream of a motherhood that doesn’t exist, this film also makes clearer her present situation isn’t the only one possible. The U.S. is an anomaly compared to most industrialized countries in the realm of paid maternity leave. We rank with Swaziland and Papua, New Guinea, instead of our neighbor, Canada, which just extended their maternity leave to a full year. Paid leave, that is; and we’re the exception, not Canada.
Other countries provide trained and licensed childcare, unlike our own system, still out of reach for many American families, and yet paying providers an average $17,000 a year. Our poverty rate remains higher than other first-world countries; our healthcare bill too. We pay more, and get worse results. Too many moms have to make a choice between putting food on their tables and sitting down to enjoy it. Imagine national policies with real “family values.” Everyone has mothers in their family, and as one mom put it, “We’re all on the same side here.”
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Momsrising.org is promoting house-parties to show The Motherhood Manifesto. Invite in your friends, they say, and have dessert afterwards and talk—like old Tupperware parties, only better. A group of parents who call themselves Mama Says showed the film in Montpelier at the Kellogg-Hubbard Library on Dec. 4th. Vermont Woman liked the film so much, we joined them and The Family Center of Washington County to sponsor a free showing with childcare on January 23rd at Vermont College, Noble Hall Reading Room, 6:00 pm. Maybe you’ll decide to throw a party, too. Got questions? Contact Kelly Ault at kault1@earthlink.net or go directly to www.momsrising.org.
