In Our View: Turn praise for Mom into policies that help her

Countless tributes have been dedicated to mothers, uttered by people more eloquent than ourselves. “God could not be everywhere, and therefore he made mothers,” Rudyard Kipling reportedly wrote. “Mother’s love is peace. It need not be acquired, it need not be deserved,” philosopher Erich Fromm is credited with saying.

See? We could not have expressed it better ourselves. And yet, as we take time to celebrate Mother’s Day and express our thanks, we wonder today whether words are enough.

Mothers, we know, are the keepers of hearts and the holders of hands and the kissers of skinned knees. They are teachers and nurses and therapists all rolled into one — and that doesn’t count the work they do outside the home. According to salary.com, the work a mother does at home is worth an annual salary of more than $160,000 if she insisted on being paid in more than hugs and kisses. “When you look into your mother’s eyes, you know that is the purest love you can find on this earth,” author Mitch Albom once said.

And while we shower Mom with love and affection and greeting cards and flowers and candy today — the National Retail Federation estimates that Americans will spend $25 billion on the holiday this year — we also wonder about the disconnect between modern motherhood and the idealized perception of it.

“This ideal of what it means to be a good mom is to put your child’s needs above your own,” Caitlyn Collins, a professor at Washington University in St. Louis and author of “Making Motherhood Work,” told USA Today. “An ideal worker in the U.S. economy means being fully dedicated and committed with your undivided attention — that you can come in at a moment’s notice, that you don’t have anything that distracts. This doesn’t work if you have kids.”

But among industrialized Western countries, some analyses rank the United States last in terms of supportive work-family policies. There is no federal paid parental leave (at the state level, Washington has bolstered its Paid Family and Medical Leave Program), and this nation has the highest gender wage gap, no minimum standard for vacation and sick days, and the highest maternal and child poverty rates.

While Americans are quick to profess their love for Mom in glowing terms, we are slow to put that love into action through policies that actually help mothers with their jobs in and out of the home.

Among the biggest issues is day care. According to Support for Early Learning and Families, a local nonprofit, there are 28,084 children under the age of 5 in Clark County, but only 7,994 child care slots at licensed centers and home-based programs. In addition, child care costs have increased 25 percent over the past decade. U.S. Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler, R-Battle Ground, has introduced the Child Care Workforce and Facilities Act (H.R. 1488), and Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., has introduced the Child Care for Working Families Act (S. 1806) in the Senate. Notably, many of the issues could have been addressed in 1971, when the Comprehensive Child Development Act was passed by Congress but vetoed by President Nixon.

The difficulties of modern motherhood focus on those who choose to work outside the home. But they also touch those who choose to be stay-at-home moms and for those who have their choices limited by a lack of supportive policies.

And so we celebrate today, wishing all a happy Mother’s Day. But we also wonder if affectionate words are adequate.