What do moms really want for Mother’s Day? Paid leave

Many brands take advantage of Mother’s Day to sell more products, like flowers and cupcakes. But 50 companies, including workwear label M.M. LaFleur, framing startup Framebridge, and stroller brand Bugaboo, are joining forces to draw attention to America’s lack of federal paid leave.

Across the country on Saturday, May 10, the nonprofit MomsRising, the Paid Leave for All campaign, and 50 brands are hosting pop-ups in New York City; Washington, D.C.; Philadelphia; Nashville; Hoboken, New Jersey; and Cleveland, offering more than $100,000 in donated goods and services. The idea is to help new moms by giving them things like formula, breast pumps, clothing, and strollers, while also giving them a little break with massages and food. For those who can’t attend in person, there is a nationwide giveaway that moms can enter or nominate fellow moms to receive things like care packages.

Ultimately, though, the goal is to show that this kind of mutual aid is not enough. What mothers and other caregivers need is paid time off after they give birth. The U.S. is one of the only countries in the world without a federal paid leave policy, and as a result nearly a quarter of mothers have returned to work within just two weeks of giving birth. (This can be unsafe: After a C-section, doctors recommend that women rest for at least six weeks as their scars heal.)

While some companies voluntarily offer workers parental leave, many don’t. For example, in Ohio and Tennessee, 72% of workers don’t have access to paid family leave; in Pennsylvania, that figure is 62%. And families lose $34 billion every year because women take unpaid time off.

As a global brand, based in the Netherlands, Bugaboo interacts with parents from around the world. Jeanelle Teves, the company’s chief commercial officer, has seen the positive impact of paid leave in other countries. “Especially when you’re having your first child, giving birth and taking care of an infant can be overwhelming,” she says. “It makes such a difference when parents don’t also have to worry about their jobs during this period.”

She also points out that in the U.S., it is often wealthier people working at white-collar jobs who have access to paid time off from their employers. “In many other countries, there is this sense that all parents deserve this time to focus on their families for a while,” she says.

“It takes a lot of flexibility to get a new life underway”

Dawn Huckelbridge, founding director of Paid Leave for All, contends that this is not just a human rights issue; it’s also a business issue. Companies that have good family leave policies are better able to hire and retain workers. “A federal paid leave policy will ensure that companies have the resources they need to give workers time off,” she says.

Susan Tynan founded Framebridge a decade ago as the mother of small children. From the start, she wanted to ensure that all workers had paid time off. Today, the company has 600 employees, 500 of whom work in manufacturing or retail stores. All of these workers receive four months of paid time off after having a baby, and one month of flexibility as they return to work. The non-birthing parent also gets a month off. “It takes a lot of flexibility to get a new life underway,” Tynan says.

She points out that this kind of generous policy is much harder for a smaller, newer startup. Most small companies don’t have enough staff to fill in for the person who is on leave, so they might have to hire someone else, which is an added expense. “Even though we all know someone who has given birth should be on leave and should be supported, the company needs to continue to run,” says Tynan. “A [federal] paid leave policy would be better for the economy because it would allow businesses to thrive and help women stay in the workforce.”

Huckelbridge notes that this campaign occurs at a time when the country is dealing with many pressing political issues brought on by the new administration, including job cuts by the Department of Government Efficiency and deportations by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. But the goal of the campaign is to ensure that the fight for paid leave continues—even though this administration may not seem particularly amenable to it—and perhaps more importantly, to provide hope that paid leave is possible. “The point of this campaign is to ensure that people feel seen,” says Huckelbridge. “We want them to know that we see their struggle and we’re fighting for a better future.”