Dear John,
This Sunday, I expect we’ll be thinking about the moms in our lives even more than we usually do on Mother’s Day.
We’ll think about the moms who — like so many of us — feel overwhelmed trying to get their kids through each day of this pandemic. We’ll worry about the moms whose health might be at risk. We’ll miss the moms who are too far away or no longer with us.
I’ll also be thinking about the moms who — in the midst of this pandemic — we’ve realized are so essential and so often under-appreciated. The nursing home attendants. The grocery store employees. The bus drivers.
More than ever, I’ll be thinking about the moms working as child care educators.
They take care of the kids of doctors, nurses, and others on the front line of the coronavirus battle. We expect them to be there when parents are ready to go back to work and rebuild the economy. And as our babies and toddlers are going through the critical early years of brain development, we count on them to give millions of little kids across Texas the love, attention, and stimulating activities they need while their parents are at work.
Yet, they’re usually underpaid, under-supported, and undervalued. Those who are working right now are putting their own health on the line. As we illustrated earlier this week, under current Texas policy, many child care educators and other low-wage women can’t get health insurance or adequate health care except during their pregnancy — and then the state normally cuts off their Medicaid insurance just two months after childbirth.
So as we celebrate the moms in our lives, and as politicians share their annual public messages to moms on Sunday, let’s commit to ensuring that moms are valued in our public policies, not just in our Mother’s Day tributes.
Wishing you a happy and healthy Mother’s Day,
