I hope you’re having a good Mother’s Day, and if this holiday hits you hard, my heart goes out to you. I’m thinking about my mother today, and I’m thinking about a time when she dug deep to take care of our family. After my daddy had a heart attack, he couldn’t work for a while. Bills piled up. We lost our family station wagon. It looked like the house would be next to go. At night, I’d overhear my parents talk, and that's when I learned words like “mortgage” and “foreclosure.” One day, I walked into my parents’ bedroom. My mother’s face was red and puffy. A dress was laid out over the bedspread — the dress that only came out for weddings, graduations, and funerals. "We are not going to lose this house,” she kept saying. “We are not going to lose this house.” She’d never worked outside the home. She was terrified. But she knew what she had to do. I watched her while she pulled it together, put that dress on, put on her high heels, blew her nose, walked to Sears, and got a minimum wage job. And that minimum wage job saved our house, but more importantly, it saved our family. This is a story that’s written on my heart. I’m remembering my mother’s courage this Mother’s Day — and I’m thinking about all the mamas out there fighting for their families. I’m also thinking about all the ways the deck is stacked against mothers and families like ours today. A mother in the same situation as our family today would not be able to work a minimum wage job and keep everyone afloat. Today, the federal minimum wage is $7.25 per hour — a wage that has not increased in about 15 years. With that, a family living on minimum wage today is living in poverty. And, without quality, affordable child care, mothers have been shoved out of the workforce. They will feel the consequences — in lost earnings, in lower Social Security benefits — for the rest of their lives. And, notably, most women who get abortions today are already mothers. Many are working multiple jobs that don’t pay enough to support their children. Abortion bans make it even harder for those families to make ends meet. I’m going to keep up the fight for higher wages, affordable child care, paid family leave, and reproductive freedom to honor my mother and mothers everywhere. And, look: I’m sure that social media right now is chock-full of Republican politicians waxing poetic about how much they love mothers. But I don’t want to see any tributes from them today unless they’re actually going to do something — anything — to improve the lives of mothers tomorrow. Thank you, for being a part of our grassroots movement to make real change — to put our government on the side of mothers and families. Elizabeth
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