The presidential campaign has been consumed in recent weeks by a series of manufactured political battles over motherhood. These conflicts, however, obscure the realities of what it actually means to be a mother in modern America, and how much — or how little — the government is willing to do to help parents across socioeconomic classes succeed in raising their children. In this respect, the United States diverges sharply from virtually the rest of the industrialized world.
For our show on motherhood on Sunday, we worked up a few charts which, we think, paint an especially striking portrait of the state of modern motherhood in America. In short: compared to the rest of the industrialized world, America isn’t nearly as hospitable a place for mothers as we like to think.
On Mother’s Day we exalt the cultural status of motherhood, and rightfully so. But as these figures suggest, our praise for mothers is so often mere lip service. What we actually do from a policy standpoint to make mothers’ lives easier is, in many cases, meager compared to the rest of the world.
For example, according to the annual “State of the World’s Mothers” report from the Save the Children organization, the U.S. ranks as the 25th best country in the world to be a mother.
