American Moms: Let’s Stop Feeling Guilty and Start Getting Mad
Even Planned Parenthood is mistreating its mothers in a country where they face discrimination and farcical expectations
By Katherine Goldstein
In December, I read a news article that had me cursing at the computer with rage. It was a New York Times investigation detailing allegations of poor treatment of mothers by Planned Parenthood, including not offering maternity leave, mistreating pregnant workers and discriminating against moms in hiring and promotion. So why did this get me so much more worked up than average? After all, we live in a general cascade of bad news, with no shortage of things to be outraged about. The story made me particularly angry because, in addition to being a mother myself, for the last two years I’ve been researching and reporting on working mothers. And the more I learn about motherhood in America, the angrier I get. Many thoughtful articles and interesting books are exploring new levels of anger in the public sphere — and there’s been a lot of attention on exploring our current renaissance of women’s rage. While mothers today are rightfully involved in all sorts political organizing and public protests, I think we should also make space to be truly pissed about what it’s actually like to be mother in 2019.
