Mother's Day

If I could give my mom any Mother’s Day gift, I’d reassure her that the health care law is safe. Because, like millions of Americans, my mom has a "pre-existing condition" that her insurance won't cover. And last month, she was forced to pay $14,000 out-of-pocket for cataract surgery. She’d hoped to wait until 2014, when the health care law is fully implemented and pre-existing condition exclusions are banned, but her vision was declining too quickly to keep putting it off.

Unfortunately for the millions of Americans who desperately need the health care law, those who oppose the law for political reasons have brutally slandered it—on the news, in Congress, even in the highest court in the land. And they’ve talked so loudly and adamantly that the law’s significance—what we truly stand to lose—has largely been lost in the debate. Read more »

Happy Mother’s Day! Here at NWLC, we wanted to celebrate by bringing you some new blog posts to highlight some ways our work helps American mothers and families nationwide. We’ve got 10 great posts for you – check them all out below.

This Mother’s Day, Let’s Raise the Minimum Wage, by Julie Vogtman

As you probably know, Mother’s Day is coming up on Sunday. Here at the National Women’s Law Center, we care a lot about mothers – not only our own (although you’re totally awesome, Mom!), but also the millions of women across the country who are trying to raise kids, care for their own aging parents, climb the career ladder, save for retirement, and protect their health – often all at the same time, and often with the odds stacked against them. My work in the Family Economic Security program focuses on advancing policies that help low-income women and their families make ends meet, and if you’ve seen any of my blog posts lately, you’ll know one policy change that could really help working moms is an increase in the minimum wage. Read More >>

Investments in Child Care Help Moms, by Karen Schulman

As mothers across the country celebrate Mother’s Day with their children this Sunday, many will be enjoying their time together with their daughters and sons. But many mothers who have young children and work outside the home will be looking ahead to the work week with trepidation, worrying about their child care arrangements. Read more »

This blog post is a part of NWLC’s Mother’s Day 2012 blog series. For all our Mother’s Day posts, please click here.

My daughter was a champion breast-feeder. (These days she tries, and often fails, to be a champion rester at pre-kindergarden.) While there were a few bumps in the road – a slow start, a clogged duct, some supply issues as we closed in on the 12-month mark – breastfeeding was one of the easier things in her first year of life.

Nevertheless, I estimate that I spent over $700 on breastfeeding that year. It all adds up – a breast pump, some help from lactation consultants, renting a hospital-grade rental pump to help maintain supply those last few months of pumping at work – even for a mom-baby pair that didn’t experience many problems.

$700 is a lot of money, but it didn’t feel like such a big financial bite after I spoke to my friend Meaghan. Meaghan has spent exactly $761.90 in the first four weeks of her younger daughter’s life. That includes four visits with lactation consultants, renting a hospital-grade pump, pump parts and supplies, and supplements to help with thrush and clogged ducts. Her newborn has trouble latching, so Meaghan has been pumping and then bottle-feeding, and seeking a lot of help Read more »

This blog post is a part of NWLC’s Mother’s Day 2012 blog series. For all our Mother’s Day posts, please click here.

The new health care law does some amazing things for mothers. Before you even become a mom, the health care law will make sure women have affordable health insurance. Once you have that coverage and are thinking about having children, the health care law ensures you have access to preventive services at no additional out of pocket costs to you. These preventive services will provide an opportunity to screen for conditions and prepare yourself for pregnancy. Once you are pregnant—congratulations!—the health care law ensures you will have prenatal and maternity care. (Before the health care law, insurance companies could drop people when they got sick; and most insurance coverage in bought in the individual market did not include maternity care. What a shame!).

The health care law will make sure that, during your pregnancy you can receive the care you need to stay healthy. (In fact, the health care law will require screening for gestational diabetes for high risk mothers.) Read more »

This blog post is a part of NWLC’s Mother’s Day 2012 blog series. For all our Mother’s Day posts, please click here.

Don’t think moms talk to daughters about birth control? Check out a video of my daughter and I discussing how difficult it used to be to access birth control.

It's been nearly fifty years since the Supreme Court's landmark decision in Connecticut v Griswold struck down state bans on birth control. Read more »

This blog post is a part of NWLC’s Mother’s Day 2012 blog series. For all our Mother’s Day posts, please click here.

My whole life, whenever I would thank my mom for doing something for me (or on those few occasions when I might grumble that she was being a little overprotective), she would always respond, “that’s what they pay me for.”

What she was really saying is that picking me up from school in the middle of the day because I was sick, or helping me with homework assignments, or asking if I was eating enough calcium (yes, Mom) was all part of being a parent. But I know that no one ever paid my mom to mother, even though it is hard and extremely expensive work.

So while there was no motherhood bureau paying my mom for raising her daughters, her employer was paying her a living wage with benefits.

Unfortunately, not every mother receives a living wage or benefits like paid vacation time to attend parent-teacher conferences and school plays, or health insurance to care for themselves and their children. Between the gender wage gap, the concentration of women in low-paying jobs, and a slow economic recovery for women, too many moms are parenting on nickels and dimes.

The millions of women who lived in poverty in 2010 aren’t thrilled about it, neither are the hundreds of thousands of women who lost their public sector jobs in the last two years, but a large portion of Congress doesn’t seem to care about struggling families. Read more »

This blog post is a part of NWLC’s Mother’s Day 2012 blog series. For all our Mother’s Day posts, please click here.

In honor of Mother’s Day, I want to let you in on a little secret. Reproductive rights are mother’s rights. When women are able to make informed, autonomous decisions about when and whether to have children, they have healthier pregnancies. Planning the timing of a pregnancy can prevent a range of pregnancy complications that can endanger a woman’s health, including gestational diabetes and high blood pressure. Planned pregnancies allow women to take steps to address and ameliorate health problems such as diabetes, hypertension, or coronary artery disease which may be worsened by a pregnancy and threaten the health of the fetus. Read more »

This blog post is a part of NWLC’s Mother’s Day 2012 blog series. For all our Mother’s Day posts, please click here.

This mother’s day – I’d like to share an oldie but goodie blog post about the importance of moms in our lives, and how critical it is to provide them with the safety nets that they provide their children every day. This year, three of my four sisters are celebrating their first or second Mother’s Day. It was my mother’s desire to help others that drove me toward social justice work and the determination of my sisters that made me passionate about women’s issues. They are the moms that keep me going during the up-and-down emotional battles, long hours, and endless fights to ensure that women have access to the affordable and quality health care they need.

Lessons from My Mom: Even the Strong Need Help to Stay Secure

"I feel like I never know what to expect with life." My baby sister and I were sprawled on a makeshift bed for our "slumber party" with our mom when she said this. After our father died two days earlier in that same living room, we seemed to not want to leave it. So we just didn't. Unexpected to be sure, my mom just went to get their Tai Chi tape so they could practice together and when she came back her partner of 37 years had passed away. Indeed, my mom's life has been full of unexpected turns.

This blog post is a part of NWLC’s Mother’s Day 2012 blog series. For all our Mother’s Day posts, please click here.

Many of my friends will celebrate their first Mother’s Day being a mom this year. Others have recently expanded their families or have a first child on the way.

I’m happy that all these kids were born after the health care law was passed – because that means my friends can be secure that their kids will have access to health care. That includes my friend Robyn, whose son Jax had to have heart surgery when he was only three months old. Without the health care law, Robyn would have to worry about Jax hitting a lifetime limit on his insurance or being denied coverage for having a pre-existing condition.

The health care law also improves the health of women – like my friend Robyn and all my friends who are new moms.

Preventive Care with No Cost Sharing for New and Expecting Moms

All new health plans are already providing preventive services – such as cancer, diabetes and hypertension screenings – with no cost sharing. Starting this August, the list of preventive services will expand to cover women’s health services including many services important to expecting and new moms. These services include:

• Prenatal Care: Testing for gestational diabetes without cost sharing and a well-woman visit including prenatal care means that expecting moms will know what steps they need to take to have a healthy pregnancy.
• Breastfeeding Support and Supplies: New moms will have access to lactation counseling and rental of breastfeeding supplies without copays or deductibles. In addition to the preventive services, employers are now required to provide a clean space—that is not a bathroom—for new moms to pump.
• Contraceptive Coverage: The full range of FDA-approved contraceptive coverage, including birth control pills, rings, implants, tubal ligation and more will be provided by plans without cost sharing. This is important to new moms because birth control helps women plan pregnancies so moms can access preconception and prenatal care and space pregnancies to help have a healthy baby.

Read more »

This blog post is a part of NWLC’s Mother’s Day 2012 blog series. For all our Mother’s Day posts, please click here.

I spend a lot of time working with and thinking about the statistics of poverty – I think it is a valuable job and I love it. But poverty is more than statistics. Poverty is a personal issue and it is especially personal for me.

When my mom was a child, growing up in New England in the 1950s, she was poor. What did being poor mean for my mom? It meant that her family didn’t have enough to eat – sometimes they would divide up a head of lettuce and call it dinner. It meant that she and her three brothers had to decide who got to go to school on which day because there wasn’t enough money for everyone to have shoes – and if it was your day to be barefoot, you had to stay home.

When I think about my mom’s childhood, it pains me to think about all of the safety net programs we have now that her family could have benefitted from but didn’t have access to. Read more »