Latest news with #FourMothers
Yahoo
27-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
She compared motherhood in four countries. The US isn't looking good
When Abigail Leonard saw the news that the Trump administration was considering handing out $5,000 'baby bonuses' to new mothers, she realized that she had already received one. A longtime international reporter, Leonard gave birth to three children while living in Japan, which offers a year of parental leave, publicly run daycare, and lump-sum grants to new parents that amount to thousands of US dollars. But it was not until moving back to the US in 2023 that Leonard grasped just how robust Japan's social safety net for families is – and, in comparison, just how paltry the US net feels. Not only is the US the only rich country on the planet without any form of national paid leave, but an uncomplicated birth covered by private insurance tends to cost families about $3,000, which, Leonard discovered, is far more than in most other nations. The federal government also spends a fraction of what most other wealthy countries spend on early education and childcare, as federally subsidized childcare is primarily available only to the lowest earners. Middle-class families are iced out. Leonard traces the effects of policies and disparities like these in her new book, Four Mothers, which follows the pregnancy and early childrearing experiences of four urban, middle-class women living in Japan, Kenya, Finland and the US. Published earlier this month, Four Mothers provides a deeply personal window into how policy shapes parents' lives. And it has emerged as an increasingly rightwing US seems poised to embrace the ideology of pronatalism and policies aimed at convincing people to have more kids. Related: Give birth? In this economy? US women scoff at Trump's meager 'baby bonuses' Pronatalism is deeply controversial, in no small part because its critics say pronatalists are more concerned with pushing women to have kids than with ensuring women have the support required to raise them. 'Being 'pronatal' – designing policy to increase the birthrate – is not the same thing as being pro-woman,' Leonard notes in Four Mothers' introduction. A $5,000 check would not have been enough to help any of the moms profiled in the book. Instead, the women relied on – or longed for, in the case of the US – extensive external support, such as affordable maternity care, parental leave and access to childcare. 'The book is an implicit comparison of the rest of the world to the US, and parenthood is so much harder here in many ways,' Leonard said in a phone interview with the Guardian. 'People are so accepting that things can be privatized and that government can be torn down and that there won't be any repercussions to that. We don't think about how integral government policy is to our lives, and for that reason can't imagine how much more beneficial it could be.' In the US, resistance to increasing government aid in childrearing has long gone hand in hand with a commitment to upholding a white, traditional view of the American family. At virtually every juncture, rightwing groups have been galvanized to stop sporadic efforts at expanding support. During the second world war, Congress allocated $20m to a universal childcare program that could help women work while men fought in the war effort. The program was so popular that people protested in the streets to keep it even after the war ended, according to Leonard. But the program was dismantled after political disputes over how to run the program, as southern states demanded that the daycares be segregated. In 1971, Congress passed the Comprehensive Child Development Act, which would have created a national system of federally subsidized daycare centers. Inflamed by the idea that the bill would encouraged women to work outside the home, church groups organized letter-writing campaigns against the bill. Rightwing pundits, meanwhile, claimed the bill was 'a plan to Sovietize our youth'. Richard Nixon ultimately vetoed the bill, calling it 'the most radical piece of legislation' to ever cross his desk. Related: Trump is trying to pay his way into a US baby boom. Experts say it won't work Today, Leonard writes, corporations have an entrenched interest in keeping childcare from becoming a public good in the US. Private equity is heavily invested in childcare companies. Wealthy corporations, especially big tech companies, can also use their generous paid leave policies to lure in the best talent. 'I talked to a congressman who was telling me he was trying to get some of these companies on board to back a national paid leave policy, and they were saying: 'We don't want to do paid leave because then we give up our own competitive advantage.' It's so cynical,' Leonard said. 'These are companies that have been able to create this image around themselves of being feminist and pro-family. Like: 'They're great places to work for women. They help fund fertility treatments!'' She continued: 'They've feminist-washed themselves. They're working against a national policy that would benefit everyone and that ultimately would benefit our democracy, because you wouldn't have this huge inequality of benefits and lifestyles.' The US has become far more accepting of women's careerist ambitions over the last 50 years – especially as it has become more difficult for US families to sustain themselves on a single income – but balancing work and family life is still often treated as a matter of personal responsibility (or, frequently, as a personal failing). To improve mothers' lives, Leonard found, a commitment to flexible gender norms – in the home and at work – must be coupled with a robust social safety net. Each of the women in Four Mothers struggled with male partners who, in various ways and for assorted reasons, failed to provide as much childcare as the mothers. Sarah, a teacher in Utah, was married to an Amazon delivery driver who got zero parental leave. Sarah was entitled to three months of leave, at partial pay, but only because her union advocated for it. Although Sarah and her husband chose to leave the Mormon church, she found herself longing for the community that the church provided because it offered some form of support and acknowledgement of motherhood. Being 'pronatal' – designing policy to increase the birthrate – is not the same thing as being pro-woman Abigail Leonard, reporter Finland perhaps fares the best in Leonard's book. The country, which gives parents about a year of paid leave, invests heavily in its maternal care system and has some of the lowest infant and maternal mortality rates in the world; it even offers mothers prenatal counseling where they can discuss their own childhoods and how to break cycles of intergenerational trauma. (The US, by contrast, has the highest maternal mortality rate of any wealthy country.) Finland is also the only industrialized nation on the planet where fathers spend more time with their children than mothers do. (The difference is about eight minutes, 'about as even as it can be', Leonard wrote in Four Mothers.) Parents are also happier than non-parents in Finland – which is routinely ranked as the happiest country in the world – while the inverse is true in the US. Still, the birth rate is on the decline in Finland, just as it is in Japan and the US. It is not clear what kinds of pronatalist policies, if any, induce people to have kids. Nearly 60% of Americans under 50 who say they're unlikely to have children say that's because 'they just don't want to'. 'The pronatal argument here – that's really focused on people who make the choice not to have children. That is not only cruel and mean, but it's also ineffective, because people who don't want to have kids probably aren't going to have kids and none of this stuff is going to make a difference,' Leonard said. That said, had she been building her family in the US rather than Japan, Leonard doesn't know if she would have had three children. Given the cost of US childcare, 'it would have been more of a grind'. 'I just think it's harder and more expensive here. So it was somewhat easier to have that third child there,' Leonard said. 'It's not because they gave me a $5,000 baby bonus.'
The Guardian
27-05-2025
- Business
- The Guardian
She compared motherhood in four countries. The US isn't looking good
When Abigail Leonard saw the news that the Trump administration was considering handing out $5,000 'baby bonuses' to new mothers, she realized that she had already received one. A longtime international reporter, Leonard gave birth to three children while living in Japan, which offers a year of parental leave, publicly run daycare, and lump-sum grants to new parents that amount to thousands of US dollars. But it was not until moving back to the US in 2023 that Leonard grasped just how robust Japan's social safety net for families is – and, in comparison, just how paltry the US net feels. Not only is the US the only rich country on the planet without any form of national paid leave, but an uncomplicated birth covered by private insurance tends to cost families about $3,000, which, Leonard discovered, is far more than in most other nations. The federal government also spends a fraction of what most other wealthy countries spend on early education and childcare, as federally subsidized childcare is primarily available only to the lowest earners. Middle-class families are iced out. Leonard traces the effects of policies and disparities like these in her new book, Four Mothers, which follows the pregnancy and early childrearing experiences of four urban, middle-class women living in Japan, Kenya, Finland and the US. Published earlier this month, Four Mothers provides a deeply personal window into how policy shapes parents' lives. And it has emerged as an increasingly rightwing US seems poised to embrace the ideology of pronatalism and policies aimed at convincing people to have more kids. Pronatalism is deeply controversial, in no small part because its critics say pronatalists are more concerned with pushing women to have kids than with ensuring women have the support required to raise them. 'Being 'pronatal' – designing policy to increase the birthrate – is not the same thing as being pro-woman,' Leonard notes in Four Mothers' introduction. A $5,000 check would not have been enough to help any of the moms profiled in the book. Instead, the women relied on – or longed for, in the case of the US – extensive external support, such as affordable maternity care, parental leave and access to childcare. 'The book is an implicit comparison of the rest of the world to the US, and parenthood is so much harder here in many ways,' Leonard said in a phone interview with the Guardian. 'People are so accepting that things can be privatized and that government can be torn down and that there won't be any repercussions to that. We don't think about how integral government policy is to our lives, and for that reason can't imagine how much more beneficial it could be.' In the US, resistance to increasing government aid in childrearing has long gone hand in hand with a commitment to upholding a white, traditional view of the American family. At virtually every juncture, rightwing groups have been galvanized to stop sporadic efforts at expanding support. During the second world war, Congress allocated $20m to a universal childcare program that could help women work while men fought in the war effort. The program was so popular that people protested in the streets to keep it even after the war ended, according to Leonard. But the program was dismantled after political disputes over how to run the program, as southern states demanded that the daycares be segregated. In 1971, Congress passed the Comprehensive Child Development Act, which would have created a national system of federally subsidized daycare centers. Inflamed by the idea that the bill would encouraged women to work outside the home, church groups organized letter-writing campaigns against the bill. Rightwing pundits, meanwhile, claimed the bill was 'a plan to Sovietize our youth'. Richard Nixon ultimately vetoed the bill, calling it 'the most radical piece of legislation' to ever cross his desk. Today, Leonard writes, corporations have an entrenched interest in keeping childcare from becoming a public good in the US. Private equity is heavily invested in childcare companies. Wealthy corporations, especially big tech companies, can also use their generous paid leave policies to lure in the best talent. 'I talked to a congressman who was telling me he was trying to get some of these companies on board to back a national paid leave policy, and they were saying: 'We don't want to do paid leave because then we give up our own competitive advantage.' It's so cynical,' Leonard said. 'These are companies that have been able to create this image around themselves of being feminist and pro-family. Like: 'They're great places to work for women. They help fund fertility treatments!'' She continued: 'They've feminist-washed themselves. They're working against a national policy that would benefit everyone and that ultimately would benefit our democracy, because you wouldn't have this huge inequality of benefits and lifestyles.' The US has become far more accepting of women's careerist ambitions over the last 50 years – especially as it has become more difficult for US families to sustain themselves on a single income – but balancing work and family life is still often treated as a matter of personal responsibility (or, frequently, as a personal failing). To improve mothers' lives, Leonard found, a commitment to flexible gender norms – in the home and at work – must be coupled with a robust social safety net. Each of the women in Four Mothers struggled with male partners who, in various ways and for assorted reasons, failed to provide as much childcare as the mothers. Sarah, a teacher in Utah, was married to an Amazon delivery driver who got zero parental leave. Sarah was entitled to three months of leave, at partial pay, but only because her union advocated for it. Although Sarah and her husband chose to leave the Mormon church, she found herself longing for the community that the church provided because it offered some form of support and acknowledgement of motherhood. Finland perhaps fares the best in Leonard's book. The country, which gives parents about a year of paid leave, invests heavily in its maternal care system and has some of the lowest infant and maternal mortality rates in the world; it even offers mothers prenatal counseling where they can discuss their own childhoods and how to break cycles of intergenerational trauma. (The US, by contrast, has the highest maternal mortality rate of any wealthy country.) Finland is also the only industrialized nation on the planet where fathers spend more time with their children than mothers do. (The difference is about eight minutes, 'about as even as it can be', Leonard wrote in Four Mothers.) Parents are also happier than non-parents in Finland – which is routinely ranked as the happiest country in the world – while the inverse is true in the US. Still, the birth rate is on the decline in Finland, just as it is in Japan and the US. It is not clear what kinds of pronatalist policies, if any, induce people to have kids. Nearly 60% of Americans under 50 who say they're unlikely to have children say that's because 'they just don't want to'. 'The pronatal argument here – that's really focused on people who make the choice not to have children. That is not only cruel and mean, but it's also ineffective, because people who don't want to have kids probably aren't going to have kids and none of this stuff is going to make a difference,' Leonard said. That said, had she been building her family in the US rather than Japan, Leonard doesn't know if she would have had three children. Given the cost of US childcare, 'it would have been more of a grind'. 'I just think it's harder and more expensive here. So it was somewhat easier to have that third child there,' Leonard said. 'It's not because they gave me a $5,000 baby bonus.'
NDTV
13-05-2025
- Business
- NDTV
How Trump Offended Women With 'Baby Bonus' For A 'Baby Boom' Policy
Quick Reads Summary is AI generated, newsroom reviewed. The Trump administration's pronatalist push faces backlash from women citing economic and social challenges. Proposed policies like $5,000 baby bonuses are criticised as insufficient amidst rising childcare costs. The Trump administration's push for pronatalist policies has given rise to women having strong thoughts against it mostly because of economic, social and personal reasons. At the heart of this movement is the desire to reverse the country's declining birthrate through policies like cash "baby bonuses" and government-funded fertility education programs. However, per a report by the Guardian, women argue that these efforts are contradictory to the administration's actions, which reduce access to basic reproductive healthcare. Savannah Downing, a 24-year-old Texan actor and content creator, expressed skepticism about the proposed $5,000 "baby bonuses." "Maybe people will want to have children more often if we weren't struggling to find jobs, struggling to pay our student loans, struggling to pay for food," she said. "Five thousand dollars doesn't even begin to even cover childcare for one month. It just seems really ridiculous." Trump officials have always spoken in favour of making America procreate again. JD Vance, in his first address as the vice-president, said, 'I want more babies in the United States of America.' However, raising a child in the US is incredibly expensive. A middle-class family with dual incomes can expect to spend between $285,000 and $311,000 raising a child, not including college tuition, per a 2022 analysis by the Brookings Institute. Childcare costs alone can reach up to $70,000 annually for some families. Moreover, just giving birth in the United States is more expensive than any other country in the world. A simple uncomplicated birth covered by private insurance tends to cost about $3000, according to Abigail Leonard's new book Four Mothers. Many women shared their thoughts with the Guardian, highlighting the inadequacy of the proposed policies. One stay-at-home mother of four said, "Five thousand? That doesn't go very far! It costs 200, 300 bucks just to buy a car seat for these kids. I just feel like it's really just insulting. If you want people to have more kids, make housing more affordable. Make food more affordable." Paige Connell, a working mom of four, emphasised the need for practical support: "They want to incentivise people to have children. I don't think they have a real stake in helping people raise them." Countries like Hungary have invested heavily in boosting birth rates, about 5% of its GDP, and exempting women who have four children from paying taxes, but their efforts have not yielded desired results. Hungary's birth rate remains below the replacement rate of 2.1, hovering at 1.6. Similarly, Scandinavian countries with comprehensive government programs to support families have not seen significant increases in birth rates, and in the case of Sweden, dropped even further. Per a 2024 Pew survey, adults under 50 who say they are unlikely to have children, have either of these two reasons: 'concerns about the state of the world' or because they 'can't afford to raise a child'. Republicans are exploring ways to make more parents stay at home with their children, such as through policies that expand the child tax credit from $2,000 to $5,000. On the other hand, they have also proposed to slash Medicaid, a proposal that would hinder the pronatalism cause, since Medicaid pays for 40% of all US births. There are potential racist and eugenic undertones, coupled with authoritarian governments of the pronatalist movement, which seems to prioritise white couples having more babies. Nazi Germany and the Stalinist Soviet Union were known to give out medals to women who had many children. Downing feels that the movement is focused on pushing white women to have babies: "Women are realising that they're more than just birthing machines."
The Guardian
06-04-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Four Mothers review – a put-upon writer is run ragged in Irish comedy charmer
A frazzled, thirtysomething gay novelist, Edward (James McArdle) is preparing for a tour of the US to promote his latest book, a hotly tipped coming-of-age story. But there's a problem: Edward is the primary carer for his elderly mum, Alma (Fionnula Flanagan). Alma is recovering from a stroke that has robbed her of her speech but not the ability to make her many opinions on Edward's life forcefully clear. Edward's situation is further complicated when his three friends decide to take a weekend break to Gran Canaria for Maspalomas Pride, unceremoniously offloading their mams on the doorstep of the boxy Dublin semi Edward shares with Alma. Co-written by director Darren Thornton with his brother Colin and loosely based on Gianni Di Gregorio's hit Italian comedy-drama Mid-August Lunch (2008), Four Mothers is a charmer of a picture that lures us in with Edward's angst but hits its stride when it digs into the dynamics between the four women who run Edward ragged with their catering requests and incessant bickering. What could have been a sentimental plodder gets a pleasingly acerbic tang from the bracing cattiness of the dialogue. In UK and Irish cinemas
Axios
03-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Axios
Twin Cities weekend: International film fest, romance book fair, Dylan concert
The Minneapolis-St. Paul International Film Festival is in full swing, with over 200 films showing at venues around the Cities now through April 13. Here are three we're looking out for this weekend. 🤣 " Anxiety Club": Director Wendy Lobel follows top comedians like Marc Maron into their therapy sessions in this intimate, humorous documentary feature examining mental health. Thursday at 7:05pm, Friday at 4:20pm. $19 🏠 " Brooklyn, Minnesota": This warmhearted Minnesota-made film follows teenager Maise and her father Kurt on a trip to rural Minnesota to meet extended family — but while Kurt is eager to return to Brooklyn, Maise wants to stay. Cast and crew will be in attendance. Note: Both screenings are rush only — aka, no presale. Friday at 7:20pm, Saturday at 4:30pm 💓 " Four Mothers": When up-and-coming Irish novelist Edward's friends leave their elderly mothers on his doorstep, he must care for four "eccentric, combative and wildly different" women in this uplifting comedy drama. Friday at 1pm, Sunday at 5:20pm. $19 Bonus: For those in search of familiar favorites, the Parkway Theater's Studio Ghibli month kicks off Saturday afternoon with a screening of "Spirited Away." $8.95 in advance, $10 at the door for ages 13 and up More things to do ... 🎶 Hibbing native Robert Zimmerman (also known as Bob Dylan) will make his sole Minnesota tour stop in Mankato Friday night, and plenty of tickets are still available. Note: It's a "phone-free" show with no electronic devices allowed in the performance space. $152+ 🔮 If you didn't already sense it, the Spring Psychic Fair returns to Linden Hills on Saturday with the Cities' top psychics and mediums offering insights and advice. Additional programming includes aura photographs and free workshops to learn more about your own psychic power. Free entry 🌷 Prepare for spring gardening at the Minnesota Tool Library's Seed Bee on Saturday. The St. Paul branch will host workshops by local horticulturalists and master gardeners, plus share information about all the outdoor tools available to borrow. Free 📚 Find happily-ever-after at Inbound BrewCo's Romance Book Fair on Saturday, featuring local bookstores and crafters, "A Court of Thorns and Roses" trivia, author readings and more.
