OPINION | This Mother's Day, Let's Abolish the 'Motherhood Penalty'

We need to make it easier for parents to work and raise children. Honoring working moms means fairly valuing their labor.

by Marcus Harrison Green

(This article is copublished with The Seattle Times.)

In life, the only thing we possibly take more for granted than a mother's love is her labor. Of course, those two things are nearly inseparable from each other.

What better time than Mother's Day to acknowledge that?

Since birth, my mother, Cynthia, has infused my life with hope. I'm aware not everyone can say that about their own mother. It's why I consider myself as fortunate as I do.

When I was much younger, before I sought treatment for my bipolar disorder, there was a time I felt demolished under the crush of depression following a terrible heartbreak.

I had previously checked into a psychiatric center in Renton to deal with the suicidal loop that played in my head. The intensity of young love coupled with the emotional vehemence of a bipolar brain convinced me it would be better to die than to live on with a broken heart.

After being released, I visited my mother in her office at what was then known as Skyway's West Hill Family Center. I told her that I was there to say goodbye to her.

I remember that she paused for a bit as her eyes grew watery. She rose from her desk, walked over, and hugged me tightly. We stood like that silently for 10 minutes. Tears poured down our faces but our mouths remained shut.

Even now, I'm racked with shame when I reflect on all that led to that moment. At 22, heartbreak was an all-consuming inferno, incinerating every other priority in my life from my hygiene to my job prospects to my self-regard. The fullness of my identity hinged on the rejection of an erstwhile girlfriend.

Finally, my mother broke the silence.

"You are worth more than the opinion of any person. You are strong enough to endure the worst days of your life. You deserve so much better than how you treat yourself. And if you left this earth, you would break my heart because you are a precious gift from God to me. And I love you with all my heart," she told me.

Though it took me too long to fully believe her, I now recognize her affirmation as the greatest gift of my life. It fashioned a rudder of self-worth that I've used to navigate the ugliness, disappointment, regret, and indiscriminate pain life unpredictably visits upon all of us.

As I've grown older, her words have become all the more powerful because they haven't just transformed me.

They have also altered the lives of my adopted brothers who she helped guide through the emotional and psychological tailspin of abandonment by biological parents collared by crack addiction. My mother's words also provided dignity and self-esteem to my adopted sister who survived physical and emotional abuse as a child.

My mother didn't just stop there. For 30 years, she spoke her gospel of self-worth to everyone who entered the West Hill Family Center. Walking through the front door, hers would be the first face seen by people in the Skyway community who were facing sexual violence, drug addiction, gang involvement, racist crimes, thefts, health scares, financial depravity, or the death of loved ones.

Although she technically wasn't a social worker, she did the social work of listening to the plights of everyone who confided in her.

I remember one young man who was involved in a gang for years. Over five years, he'd regularly visit my mom to get diapers for his children. She knew of his lifestyle, but never judged him for it.

Instead, she'd listen to him. Listen to his contrition over his misdeeds. Listen to how he felt trapped in a volley of violence. Listen to his desire to change for his daughter. With every conversation, she'd add another brick of encouragement for him to seek out more for himself. Finally, he was built up enough to forswear the gang life, eventually founding a community-enrichment nonprofit.

Her selflessness, patience, and inability to disregard anyone's significance are why the community honored her 10 years ago by renaming the building she worked at the Cynthia A. Green Family Center.

But there was a mental and emotional toll it all took on her, as well as a stubborn, hard societal cost she and other mothers faced.

The work of child-rearing and managing a household should yield $184,820 annually, according to Salary.com. Yet having children ignites a "motherhood penalty" which depresses career earnings, no matter what level of management working women with children achieve.

We'll never pay mothers their due. What we can do is vote against initiatives in November that would repeal the capital gains tax and make it harder to fund long-term care coverage.

Washington has nearly 280,000 toddler-aged children in need of licensed care, yet such care is accessible to only 26% of them, according to the Department of Children, Youth, and Families.

Voting for the initiatives would take $1 billion away from child care and education and make it that much harder for mothers in the sandwich generation who are caring for both their children and elderly parents.

Yes, taxpayers will have to bear the cost of the childcare credit and the expansion of long-term care coverage.

Still, it seems like a small price to pay for mothers we continue to shortchange.

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📸 Featured Image: From left to right: Marcus and Cynthia Green at the 2022 King County Library System Foundation's Literary Lions Gala. (Photo courtesy King County Library System Foundation.)