NOW Values Mothers and Caregivers Economic Rights

Mothers Matter and Caregivers Count

NOW Values Mothers and Caregivers Economic Rights

NOW coined the slogan "Every Mother is a Working Mother" decades ago, and is continuing the fight for economic justice for mothers and others who do the caring work of our society.

While high-profile media coverage promotes false and divisive stereotypes like the "Opt Out Revolution" and the "Mommy Wars," NOW is taking action to set the record straight and win more and better public policies to support women and working families in all aspects of their lives. Join us!

The Facts About Carework in the U.S.

The overwhelming majority of women in the U.S.—over 80 percent—become mothers through birth or adoption. Mothers are married and single; racially and ethnically diverse; living in cities, suburbs, towns and rural areas; poor, middle-income and affluent; heterosexual and lesbian; well and less educated. Most mothers today are in the paid workforce, but nearly two-thirds of mothers with young children work less than full time, year round, and—like other employed women—mothers in the labor force are concentrated in lower-paid occupations and professions.

In 2004, over 40 percent of women with a child under two years old, and one-third of mothers with a child between the ages of three and five, were not in the paid labor force. Women are also more likely than men to have primary responsibility for caring for ill, elderly, and disabled family members and loved ones. Fathers today want and expect to be more involved in the daily routines of family life than their own fathers were, and men's share of domestic labor has increased in the last twenty-five years. However, even mothers in full-time dual-earner couples spend more time on unpaid caregiving than their partners do. The majority of workers in low-wage caregiving occupations—such as childcare workers and home health aides —are also women.

Today, 65 percent of American children live in households in which both parents are employed, but the way we work is still structured as if every wage earner can rely on a full-time caregiver to provide the family work at home.

And since conventional attitudes about appropriate roles for men and women still exert a powerful influence on the way we organize our families and workplaces, mothers are more likely than fathers to find themselves squeezed out of full-time employment, reducing their lifetime earnings and increasing the likelihood they will experience financial hardship as they age.

Recent media reporting has focused attention on the work-life conflicts of highly educated mothers in upscale occupations. But the grim reality is that the overall lack of workplace flexibility and miserly U.S. and corporate policies take the heaviest toll on lower-income parents.

Forty Years of Work for Mothers and Families

NOW has a longstanding commitment to advancing mothers' and caregivers' economic rights. Since its founding in 1966, NOW has fought for a national program of early childhood development and early education that's good for kids and affordable for families; paid family and medical leave; equal and livable wages; eliminating gender discrimination and bias in the workplace; ending punitive welfare and public assistance policies that fail to help women and children overcome poverty; universal healthcare for all; and the inclusion of unpaid caregivers in Social Security and safety net programs.

NOW's efforts were instrumental in the passage of the Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978 and in crafting the long, uphill campaign to establish paid family and sick leave. The Family and Medical Leave Act, which passed in 1993, provides only unpaid leave, but the fight for paid leave continues. NOW has and will continue to oppose inhumane and ineffective policies and regulations established under the so-called "welfare reform" changes in 1996.

We have actively condemned proposals for Social Security reform that would hurt women and families, and support Social Security and Disability benefits for non-employed mothers and other unpaid caregivers. NOW has also supported breastfeeding rights and caregiver tax credits on the same basis as the child care tax credit. Recently, NOW has taken action to defeat draconian proposals for U.S. budget cuts that would reduce child care subsidies for low-income workers and other essential social programs for needy families.

Our Rededication to the Struggle

Ahead of our time, in NOW's 1978 Homemaker's Bill of Rights, we called for more opportunities and financial support for continuing education and job training for homemakers and low-income mothers; the inclusion of women's unpaid caregiving and domestic labor in the national Gross Domestic Product (GDP), the measure of a country's productivity; expansion of flex-time and part-time work opportunities with pay parity and full benefits; Social Security benefits for homemakers; division of assets on divorce that accurately account for a homemaker's contribution of unpaid labor to the couple's earnings; comprehensive child care legislation, and national health insurance. And in the decades since, we have worked toward those goals, achieving some measure of success. But there is so much more to be done, and we must do it together.

Caregiving is a primary human endeavor which is essential to the well being of families and individuals, the stability of our society and the growth of the nation's economy. Because gaining cultural and institutional acknowledgment and support for the value of caring work is central to the advancement of women, NOW formally renewed its commitment to these issues by adopting a national resolution in 2005 entitled NOW Values Mothers' and Caregivers' Economic Rights and renewing our national commitment to addressing these core issues broadly, including national and local committees on these issues. We welcome your participation—write to our national committee and let us know how you'd like to be involved!