May 12, 2016
An Open Letter to Sheryl Sandberg
Dear Sheryl,
We read your post on your struggle to raise your family as a single mother after the loss of your husband. We are so sorry for your loss, and our condolences to your family.
In your post, you shared that you’ve come to understand that there are factors that impact women that make “leaning in” significantly harder or nearly impossible. We were struck by your arrival at the conclusion that “We need to rethink our public and corporate workforce policies and broaden our understanding of what a family is and looks like.”
We agree. The rigid way that family is defined in so many policies — like sick leave, parental leave, and access to public assistance — leaves single mothers and many other kinds of families out in the cold.
America’s families are changing, yet the policies they need for support aren’t changing fast enough. The 2010 U.S. Census revealed that:
· 79.8% of our country’s families are not the nuclear family model of a married mother and father and their biologically related children.
· Approximately 1 in 4 Latinos, African-Americans, and Asians live in multi-generational households.
· 1 in 5 households in the U.S. with children include non-relatives or relatives other than the child’s parents and siblings.
· LGBTQ-identified seniors in the U.S. are twice as likely as heterosexual seniors to live alone and more than four times as likely to be childless.
So many of our policies rely on definitions of family that just don’t meet the real needs of our country’s families. So yes, we need to rethink how we understand family in public and private workforce policies. Activists and organizations across the country are working to do just that.
We crafted the guide “Lifting Economic Policies That Support All Families” to jump start conversation and action on how to center the economic needs of America’s diverse families in our elections and hold policymakers accountable.
We focus on three areas of policies that we must shift so that all families can thrive:
We invite you to join us in re-imagining a world that centers the economic needs of ALL families. Please reach out if you want to continue the discussion. We’re just up the road in Oakland.
Sincerely,
Eveline Shen, Executive Director
Forward Together
