How Much Is Enough? Maternal Neglect

As a mother who left her full-time role earlier this year to be more present for her 5-year-old, I have a lot to say on the topic.

For a while, I felt unsure and unsupported to broadcast my frustration and openly call 12 weeks-maternity leave a bullshit policy created by morons who have little to no appreciation and understanding of motherhood. Right now, I still feel unsupported, but I’m doing it anyway because I’m tired of pretending that I’m ok with it.

Last week, USA Today released an article highlighting a sharp decline in workforce participation among mothers with young children since 2023. I’m happy there’s a small space in the media that supports this conversation about post-COVID return-to-office mandates, lack of flexibility, annual full-time child care averaging more than $16,500 per kid. But as much as I appreciate it, I think it’s still not enough.

This article focuses on numbers. Numbers of hours women spend task-mastering around children’s needs vs numbers of hours they’re present at work + communing vs how much value they bring to companies vs how much they make vs how much they pay for childcare, etc.

To me, it sounds like to make an effective point to persuade someone that mothers are undervalued and unsupported, these women’s lives and realities should be reduced to data. Nothing more than that. Just numbers.

What the fuck?

I’m on my 7th year of living in America, and I still get surprised by how any emotional, physical and spiritual aspects surrounding motherhood are automatically discarded as some uselessly annoying noise.

What about nurturing? What about teaching? What about mental and physical transformation women go through? Both, during pregnancy and after.

What about love?** I’m a big believer that a lot of adults who hold important decision-making positions, didn’t have a lot of love growing up**.

If they did, and if their mothers were supported enough to be present and parent them to the best of their ability, they would have made better decisions. They would have appreciated the labor of their own mothers. But they don’t. It’s all about numbers.

Ok, let’s talk numbers then.

In 2025, America ranks number one in a list of top 10 countries based on GDP. Everyone talks about its riches and economy. Amazing (even though living here doesn’t feel like it). But if that’s, in fact, the case, why does this country not care about supporting mothers? I really don’t understand.

What I personally think is that if America offered national paid leave and solid parental benefits, it could make this country even richer. Not to speak about attractive for people who care about something beyond profits.

According to this data, there were approximately 24.2 million mothers in the US labor force with children under 18 in 2021. The total US workforce is approximately 171 million people. So, mothers with children under 18 make up about 14.2%.

It’s not a big number. But it’s an important number that does the beautiful work of birthing, connecting with, learning about, caring for and loving their children. Raising them into becoming the adults of tomorrow who are, BY THE WAY, going to take over those decision-making positions in the future.

By reducing mothers to data, number, and nothing more, we are leaving these kids to grow up with minimal energetic and emotional involvement of their most important people at this very fragile age.

These kids are not going to learn to do better as adults while their mothers are continuously fighting through burnout and balancing on the edge of mental breakdown. Constantly trying to fit into unrealistic patterns set by people whose mothers were doing the same.

Intergenerational trauma is real.

“Intergenerational trauma shapes the ways parents engage with their children, often in profound and subtle ways. When parents carry unresolved pain from their own past or from the legacies of their ancestors, it influences how they perceive their role as caregivers, how they respond to their children’s emotions, and how they approach discipline and attachment. This can create patterns that perpetuate the effects of trauma, even if the next generation hasn’t directly experienced the original source of pain”.

It’s a vicious circle that needs a breaking. To break it, mothers need as much help as they can get. Especially from the government.

How much is enough undervaluing mothers? Like, really? How much?

Today, most kids are being raised by daycares and teachers who look after them while mothers are working. Working and dancing corporate dances that additionally and unnecessary drain their energy.

Why can’t mothers, whose jobs can be done remotely, work remotely? Why can’t it be a benefit they deserve? The benefit that makes the biggest difference. The benefit that is the need!

In my previous company, I was continuously pushing back on 5-days-in-office and regularly participating in conversations with my manager about flexibility that later backfired at me as “special treatment”.

I loathed those conversations because my manager, a non-parent male, kept asking me to explain what motherhood entailed so that he could better understand what was that I did on a daily basis exactly that exhausted me.

He never understood. But also, he wouldn’t be able to understand.

I don’t necessarily believe that one has to be a mother to truly understand another mother, but I do believe that those who are in positions of power should be educated enough and humble enough to accept that not everything needs to be understood. That not everything is about their ability or inability to understand. That not everything is about them. That work is just work, regardless where one does it.

Some things should be accepted and supported just because they exist. Demographics exists. Mothers exists. Children exist. Children exist because of their mothers. Children thrive thanks to their mothers. For children to thrive, their mothers need to be in a good place. They need to present. They need the support to be present.

Mothers DO need the “special treatment”. It’s not hard to understand why. And accept. Most companies just don’t want to.

Heard of empathy? Right.

Well, unlike those guys, I do understand why policy and law language is completely unemotional, especially in the US. When everything is rotating around money, what else is there really? But I do disagree that this is the way. I’m sure, Mandalorian would, too.

By the time 12 weeks pass, women are still not bounced back to the hormone level they were at pre-pregnancy. In fact, 3-4 months after labor, hair is starting to fall out. And alongside the hair, self-esteem is crushing, too.

I’m not even talking about mental state of learning to be a mother for the first time, the loneliness a lot of mothers experience during this period because women are literally a life support for their children. Healing after pregnancy and birth. Labor difficulties? C-sections? Hemorrhoids? Diastasis?

It took me 2 years to fully heal after the c-section. Before that, I was already commuting across the city to the office because the company I worked at issued a return to office mandate in mid 2021. At that time, I just got vaccinated and was pretty much running on a cultishly-strong faith into not getting COVID. Into not getting my 1-year-old sick.

Stressing like crazy. Missing my child. Numbing myself to focus on work. Not being truly present for him after. Constantly exhausted. Wishing for everyone to leave me alone.

Am I too soft? Maybe. I am what I am. As a Russian American, I have a different cultural perspective on priorities surrounding mothers and caregiving. In one of my next essays, I’ll happily share the drastic difference in policies surrounding maternity leave, benefits and support.

(Spoiler alert: Russia’s doing a much better job in that regard).

But for now, How much is enough undervaluing mothers? I’m sad that I have to keep asking.

If America decided to invest its money in mothers and their children, deliver a decent parental leave, provide affordable childcare, and make flexible work a reality, it could not just stay the world’s richest country. It could become respected and forward-looking one.

If I was given the support and the flexibility that I needed, if the legitimacy of my experience as a mother wasn’t questioned, I might have considered staying in the corporate world. I’m pretty sure I would because I would have been so grateful and I would have felt so seen.

When I think about it, mothers aren’t asking for a lot. We’re just asking to stop neglecting our social impact. To stop making us feel invisible. To stop conforming us into standards that weren’t designed for us in the first place.

There is a lot of manipulation and threatening happening on corporate and social levels. Mothers are being bullied into believing that what they’re given (or, more accurately, NOT given) is normal.

That they should accept it because becoming a mother was their personal choice. (I disagree. Individual choice doesn't erase the negative impact of governmental neglect).

That they should stop complaining, toughen up, and keep grinding like everyone else. Doing it for the children and, preferably, try and not mention those children too much. Because who cares?

Exactly. Who? Those who do, don’t have enough power and resources to be able to make a change. Those who have this power, continue living in their profit-focused bubbles of selfishness and emotional brokenness. Refusing to change the system and continuing to brainwash the nation.

When I first moved to the US, my first thought was that Americans are being conned. After living in Russia, France, Switzerland, Spain, and Belgium, and after regularly traveling to countries like Finland, Italy, and Netherlands, I was honestly shocked to see how strongly marketing doesn’t match the reality.

After all these years, my opinion hasn’t changed. I genuinely believe that the government is intentionally not raising the bar of quality of life so that Americans keep working into exhaustion and don’t have time to think that there’s something more to life than a job.

While broadcasting on social media how unfortunate those poor little EU countries are. How they have no future. How Russia is a dump.

Fortunately, I have an extensive experience with propaganda to be able to call one out when I see one. Having lived in other countries, I have also seen how mothers can be supported. How they should be supported. How the US is failing to do so. Big time.

Instead of funding generative AI and supporting mass copyright violation, this country could finally progress in mental health issues, prevent families from breaking, and reverse the generational burnout.

I like to fantasize sometimes and imagine America where motherhood isn’t ignored, and every child gets what they need to thrive. Because to some extent, I am an idealist.

Isn’t that the real progress though?

How much is enough undervaluing mothers?