Motherhood

All women should have the right to choose if or when to be mothers, and to have the economic and social support to do so. This choice has been restricted across time and place due to discriminatory legislation against mothers and pregnant people, lackluster social safety nets and anti-abortion/anti-birth control movements.

‘After-School Care Was Helping Me Work’: A Mississippi Mom on Raising Children, Running a Business and Navigating Cuts to Support

PUBLISHED 10/8/2026 by

Front and Center is a groundbreaking series of op-eds created in partnership with the Magnolia Mother’s Trust, which aims to put front and center the voices of Black women most affected by the often-abstract policies currently debated at the national level. The series highlights the success of Springboard to Opportunities’ trust, which since 2019 has given $1,000 per month for 12 months to about 100 families per year, all headed by Black women living in federally subsidized housing.

What possibilities could open up for low-income families if financial survival weren’t always top of mind? What dreams would these mothers and families be able to pursue? What activism and community leadership might arise? The series will answer these and other questions, by placing one mother’s story front and center.

Karlonda is a cosmetologist, mother of two daughters with a son on the way, and the recipient of one year of guaranteed income from the Magnolia Mother’s Trust. She runs her own business from home and has also worked in dental assisting and childcare.

“I have a dental assistant certification and a personal assistant certification. I have also worked in childcare. … I was never offered paid time off or benefits in those jobs. … When I had my daughters, I did not get paid parental leave. I had to save money while I was pregnant because I knew I was not going to get any paid leave. I took six weeks off, but I was penny-pinching because I still had to provide and pay bills.

“Six weeks is not a long time. I feel like I missed out on bonding with my babies because I had to go back to work so quickly.

“Every job should offer maternity leave. Most jobs do not really care about people who are pregnant or what they may be going through. …

“My SNAP was recently cut by about $400. At that time, it felt like everything was getting cut: vouchers, SNAP and other help. Sometimes you do not know what is going on unless you go up there and ask for yourself. Normally, you might get a letter in the mail, but I did not get an explanation.”

In ‘Lotus Leadership,’ Kamini Ramani Explores What Immigrant Daughters Owe the Mothers Who Taught Them to Be Strong but Quiet

PUBLISHED 9/25/2026 by

Before any of it, there was a girl on a bus. Kamini Ramani grew up in Bombay, trudging through knee-deep monsoon water to board the Number 122 red double-decker while watching for men who would try to grope girls in the crowd. She was also raised on stories about goddesses—fearsome women who fought back.

Ramani is clear about what came with those stories: pressure to achieve, expectations that women be humble and meek, and rules about whom they could marry or love. Every Indian daughter is handed two things at once: goddesses who fight back, and a warning never to be one of them. Her new book, *Lotus Leadership*, treats the two as separable.

In the interviews I’ve done for this series and for a book of my own, the story that surfaces is often about a mother: whether she made a single refusal or still resents that she never did. Either way, the daughter is the one who finds out what it was worth—and which parts of that inheritance she wants to carry forward.

(This piece is part of an ongoing series, Redefining Power: How Indian American Women Are Rewriting the Rules of Leadership, Identity and Care. The series explores what it means to modernize without losing our roots—through candid conversations with Indian American women reshaping culture, power and possibility.)

‘Survivors Have Answered Enough’: The Epstein Reading Room Takes Survivors’ Fight on the Road

PUBLISHED 9/11/2026 by | UPDATED 10/5/2026 at 12:16 P.M. PT

Attorney General Todd Blanche came to Dallas last week to deliver a “law and order” message at Trump’s midterm rally, where he praised the president and promised accountability for people who break the law. His central line was: “To evil men and women in this country, know this: President Trump will hold you accountable.”

A few miles away, survivors of Jeffrey Epstein’s abuse and their family were asking why that commitment to accountability had not extended to them.

They gathered inside the Donald J. Trump and Jeffrey Epstein Memorial Reading Room, surrounded by 3,437 bound volumes containing nearly 3.5 million pages released by the Justice Department. The books weigh about 17,000 pounds and stretch across hundreds of feet of shelving, turning a sprawling digital archive into something visitors can see, walk through and begin to comprehend.

The scale of the files is staggering, but survivors said releasing millions of pages is not the same as delivering justice. They are still waiting for the Justice Department to release the remaining records, protect their identities and investigate viable leads involving alleged co-conspirators and enablers.

“Justice that stops when it reaches power is not justice,” survivor Sharlene Rochard said.

The thousands of bound volumes make that unfinished work impossible to ignore.

After completing its Dallas run, the Trump-Epstein Reading Room is back on the road.

Keshia Golden’s Plea Deal Kept Her Out of Prison—But Don’t Mistake It for Justice

PUBLISHED 8/31/2026 by

Keshia Golden’s attorneys say that in October 2022, while she was eight-plus months pregnant, her then-boyfriend Calvin Sidney hit her, grabbed her hair and slammed her head against a kitchen counter. Golden grabbed a kitchen knife and stabbed Sidney in the leg. Golden only intended to make him stop, she has always insisted. But she hit the femoral artery. Sidney died at a Chicago hospital.

Keshia Golden was charged with first-degree murder and held in jail, where, weeks from giving birth, she was transferred to the medical unit to recover from her injuries. Four years passed.

Then, on Aug. 24, 2026, just before Golden’s trial was to begin, the Cook County state’s attorney Eileen O’Neill Burke offered Golden a last-minute deal: If she pled guilty to involuntary manslaughter and underwent two years of community service, drug testing and probation, she would serve no prison time.

All evidence points to the fact that Golden acted in self-defense and should never have been charged in the first place.

Nonetheless, she accepted the plea.

Her acceptance of this lesser charge is not an admission of guilt. It’s also not justice.

Golden is a single mother who was forced to make an impossible choice to ensure she would be able to raise her 3-year-old daughter. “All she has is me,” Golden said in court. 

Now, the only remaining path to justice for Golden is a pardon from Gov. JB Pritzker. Such a pardon would send a clear message: No woman should have to die to prove that she was a victim. No one should be punished for surviving abuse, defending themselves or protecting their child.

The Deportation of 5-Year-Old Liam Tadeo Signals a Darker Era for Immigration Policy

PUBLISHED 8/31/2026 by

Five-year-old Liam Tadeo and his dad, Victor Martinez Nieto, planned to spend the last day of summer before kindergarten playing soccer. Instead, on Sunday, Aug. 16, on the way to Liam’s game, ICE agents pulled them over, arrested them and sent both father and son to a family detention center in Dilley, Texas. 

Victor begged ICE to release Liam to his mom, but according to their attorney, Kate Lincoln-Goldfinch, ICE ignored the request. (ICE did not respond to a request for comment.)

It became clear that if Victor—who does not have legal status in the United States—chose to fight his detention or deportation, he risked losing Liam. DHS would likely treat Liam as an “unaccompanied minor” and send him to the Office of Refugee Resettlement for placement in a shelter or foster care, despite the presence of his mother and other family members ready and able to care for him. 

The family decided to accept the deportation order, despite the wrenching consequences of taking Liam from his family and his home. At least, this way, he will be with his dad in Mexico. 

ICE deported Liam and Victor on Aug. 28.

According to Lincoln-Goldfinch, Liam wasn’t able to say goodbye to his mother.

Such cruelty has become the norm in Trump’s immigration regime, but it is carried out quietly and with brutal efficiency. ICE arrested more than 46,000 people in July alone; for the first time, arrests of people without a criminal record surpassed the number of individuals arrested based (however tangentially) on a past criminal arrest or conviction.  

Change didn’t come in time for Liam and his family, but hundreds of thousands of children, regardless of their immigration status, can still be protected. Restoring a fair and just system demands political courage, public outrage, and major policy reform. But it begins by exposing the subtle, despicable tactics that turn children like Liam Tadeo into pawns of immigration policy.

‘Everybody Needs Somebody’: A Single Mother on Guaranteed Income, Community and Making It Work

PUBLISHED 8/27/2026 by

Front & Center, a series from Ms. magazine and Springboard to Opportunities, puts the voices of Black women most affected by today’s policy debates at the center of the conversation. The series highlights the Magnolia Mother’s Trust, which provides Black mothers living in federally subsidized housing with $1,000 per month for one year.

Candace, a 33-year-old mother of three from Jackson, Miss., received one year of guaranteed income through the trust. She is working toward her life insurance license and dreams of starting a business helping people with cancer find high-quality wigs—all while building a more secure future for her children.

“Motherhood is hardest when you’re doing it by yourself, period,” Candace writes. “I want people to understand that the only way this works is if we help each other. There is no way around it. Everybody needs a community. Everybody needs somebody.

“Everything I do is based around my kids. Don’t invite me if my kids can’t come.

“The help that is supposed to be available for working mothers through government programs can be iffy. Unless you are completely unemployed, it can feel like you do not receive anything. But we are still struggling. We still live paycheck to paycheck, and people expect us to provide food out of that too. It is not realistic.”

Beyond Abortion: How the ERA Could Transform Pregnancy, Work and Family Life

PUBLISHED 8/26/2026 by

On March 31, 1776, Abigail Adams wrote a letter to her husband, John, beseeching him to “remember the ladies” as he and his peers were drafting the Declaration of Independence. She warned, “All Men would be tyrants if they could” and urged him to “not put such unlimited power into the hands of the Husbands.”

He ignored her warning when she wrote: “If particular care and attention is not paid to the Ladies we are determined to foment a Rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any Laws in which we have no voice, or Representation.”

Now, 250 years later, women are still fighting for inclusion.

The potential for state ERAs to advance the rights of women and girls is tremendous, but only if we have the will—and the resources—to push for favorable state supreme courts and to use ERAs to challenge discriminatory government policies.

While we fight for a Congress that will publish the federal ERA and a U.S. Supreme Court that will robustly interpret it, feminists are building an ERA jurisprudence that will one day achieve Abigail Adams’ dream: for women to finally, truly, be equal citizens and live freely, safely and empowered throughout the United States.

How Abortion Restrictions Exacerbate America’s Affordability Crisis

PUBLISHED 8/25/2026 by and

Few decisions carry more weight than whether or when to have a child. Women who decide to end a pregnancy are making an intensely personal, at times deeply emotional, decision. They deserve quality care, compassion and respect. Instead, under the Trump administration, abortion restrictions are expanding and options for care are disappearing.

Four years after the Supreme Court’s  Dobbs ruling, abortion care comes with a maze of logistical and financial hurdles.

A new study from the Institute for Women’s Policy Research (IWPR) concluded Widespread abortion restrictions across numerous states and the rollback of federal funding and protections costs our country $140 billion annually. And the 16 states with the most restrictive abortion policies cost the national economy nearly $68 billion annually in lost earnings.

In the U.S. today, abortion is increasingly reserved for those who can find and pay for it.

We urge new thinking: Instead of a return to the  Roe v. Wade era ripe with restrictions and hurdles, let’s govern expansively. We envision a supportive government that makes abortion accessible to anyone who needs it.

Back to School Means Back to Sex Ed. Fathers Need to Be Part of the Conversation.

PUBLISHED 8/22/2026 by

For generations, patriarchy has conditioned women to view motherhood as their ultimate calling and primary responsibility, placing the burden of raising healthy, mature adults squarely on their shoulders. Despite hard-won progress toward gender equality and a more equitable division of domestic labor, we know that society still disproportionately places the weight of parenting onto mothers. 

While modern fathers are more involved than previous generations, the equity gap remains: In most heterosexual partnerships, men shoulder significantly less of the daily labor of parenting. This persistent imbalance has led to high rates of maternal burnout.

As families settle into the back-to-school season—and teenagers encounter new classes, friendships, relationships and pressures—the work of guiding adolescents through questions about sex, consent and relationships becomes especially visible. Too often, that work still falls primarily to mothers.

To disrupt this gendered imbalance and foster healthy sexual development for adolescents, we must actively engage fathers in the work of talking to their teens about sex, consent and relationships.

What the Lindsay Clancy Trial Reveals About America’s Failure to Support Mothers in Crisis

PUBLISHED 8/21/2026 by

News of Lindsay Clancy’s triple-murder trial is flooding the Internet, and with it, conversations about postpartum depression. In January 2023, Lindsay Clancy killed her 5-year-old, 3-year-old and 8-month-old children before attempting suicide, which left her paralyzed from the waist down. The facts of their deaths are not up for debate in this Plymouth trial, but whether or not the severe postpartum psychosis, clinical depression and bipolar disorder Clancy was experiencing meant she was criminally insane. 

Clancy’s mother-in-law explained Clancy was “begging for help” right before she killed her children. In December, just weeks before, she told her mother and then-husband Patrick (the couple are now divorced) that “she had thoughts of harming the children.”

The case has laid bare the failures of a U.S. mental healthcare system that did not protect Clancy or her children, and still leaves countless new mothers without adequate care.

While Clancy stands trial, people are mourning the loss of Hayden Panettiere, a child star who had long struggled with postpartum depression following the 2014 birth of her daughter, Kaya, and experienced domestic violence from her ex-boyfriend Brian Hickerson. This week, news outlets revisited Panettiere’s allegation that Neutrogena (one of her long-time partners) attempted to end her contract after she spoke honestly about her postpartum depression.