A few months back, Gwyneth Paltrow said something ill-advised, and I fired off a wise-ass response in the form of an open letter. I didn’t think much of it at the time; I’m a writer, so I write stuff and it gets published and most of the time it generates a few Facebook “likes” and nice emails from my parents. But this time, my piece went viral, and suddenly I was going on TV shows and radio shows and giving interviews about what I’d written. The letter was even written about in the Corrierre della Sera, which made me think that Italy must have been having a really slow news day. People wrote parodies of my open letter, and some even wrote open letters to me, telling me how much I sucked.
I loved getting these emails and responding to them. I felt like I was having a conversation with half the country, and it was awesome. Some emails were sad and others were funny but all of them had one thing in common, and that was that people felt like they weren’t being heard. The stuff they really cared about, the stuff that made up the backbone of their day-to-day lives, was largely ignored.
It got me thinking: What is it modern mothers want? It’s something I will be addressing regularly in this new column, but to start off with, here are seven of the most important demands we should make …
We want you to accept that the 1950s are over
Whenever I write something about working mothers, I can always count on getting a few misspelled emails to the tune of “You ladies had it right when you stayed at home and took care of the kids, but noooo, you all had to ruin it by going to work and now all you do is bitch bitch bitch.” That’s right, all we do is bitch bitch bitch!
Actually, sir — and yes, I don’t like to generalize, but in my experience it is always a sir who writes these types of emails — I’ve just received a telegram stating that most American families can no longer afford to make a living for their family on one paycheck. Hell, many families can’t pay their bills earning two! You can talk about how much simpler everything was back then — I wouldn’t disagree, life is simpler when choice is limited — but times have changed. Permanently. Many mothers work. Some because they love it and are fulfilled by it, others because they are interested in paying their bills and keeping a roof over their children’s heads.
That’s the way it goes.
We would like your subway seat
We don’t want much, but if we’re pregnant, you had better believe we’ve got our eyes on your subway seat.
Giving up your seat not only earns you 9,000 Good Karma points; if you’re a single dude, it just might get you a date … no, not with the pregnant lady, but with every single woman on the train who just saw you act with empathy, kindness and consideration.
We want paid maternity leave
The United States is the only developed country in the world that does not offer paid maternity leave.
Here’s what’s so frustrating: We are a beacon on the hill, an example to other countries for human rights, tolerance and opportunity — unless you’re pregnant, in which case, you’d better hope your company has a good maternity leave policy, because they aren’t required by law to have one. That’s a pretty sad state of affairs, given that women make up half the work force.
While the Family Medical Leave Act allows up to 12 weeks of job-protected leave for parents who work at a company of 50 or more employees, “job protected” is the key term — there’s nothing in this legislation about $$$. Maternity leave should not be the sole province of women who can afford to go a few months without a paycheck.
Everyone deserves that bonding time with their newborn, not just the upper middle class.
We want flexible schedules
Give your employee some flexibility in their schedule, and they will build empires for you. Support them by showing you understand that their family life is every bit as important as their work, that they are not simply work robots, and you will have a loyal employee who would probably commit crimes for you, should it come to that.
“It’s their choice to have children, why is this my problem?” the disgruntled employer might ask. Wrong. Raising children to be good people and conscientious citizens? Encouraging happy, balanced families that are able to contribute to their communities and schools? That’s a societal good, not some individual thing in a vacuum.
We want affordable child care
Do you know why a lot of women make the decision to stay home? It’s because for many women who aren’t making mad cash, the cost of child care outweighs or evenly matches the amount they’d be earning at their job.
Don’t get me wrong, mothers should absolutely stay home if they feel it’s best for their families, but that choice shouldn’t be based on the fact that reliable child care is about as expensive as private school tuition.
We want an end to those dumb profiles of celebrities displaying their amazing “bikini bods” one week after giving birth
This one doesn’t require any further explanation.
We want to see ourselves depicted in movies and TV shows as being something other than: frazzled, clueless, overbearing, crazy, or wearing bad jeans
This one doesn’t, either.
So what else do you want to talk about? This is not just my column, it’s yours.