What The Hell America!

It’s not just a lack of childcare. It’s a lack of care—period.

If a woman dies as a result of her pregnancy, it is over 50 percent likely to occur postpartum. Yet, insurance companies have decided that postpartum, despite bearing equal risk to the mother, intensive care ceases to be necessary. “I get 12 visits when a mom is pregnant,” Dr. Rachel Blake, an ob-gyn, explained. “I get one visit postpartum. That’s what insurance covers.”

Women find themselves at their most vulnerable and in need of care after giving birth. More than a third of women experience lasting health problems long after birth. Beyond the risk of death, postpartumwomen face a number of critical risks: excessive bleeding, high blood pressure complications, perinatal anxiety and mood disorders—just to name a few. “Many postpartum conditions cause considerable suffering in women’s daily life long after birth, both emotionally and physically,” said Dr. Pascale Allotey, director of Sexual and Reproductive Health and Research at the WHO, “and yet they are largely underappreciated, underrecognized and underreported.” 

The way the U.S. understands, or refuses to understand, maternal health makes even asking for care a baffling proposition. Dawn Huckelbridge, founder of Paid Leave for All, recounted the moment she truly became “fired up and fed up” after giving birth to her first child. Huckelbridge was prepared in every sense: She had a supportive partner, health insurance and parents who could help her out. Upon delivering her baby, what she recalls as a traumatic experience for her mind and body, she was given even more resources for the baby: diapers, blankets, instructive care literature. 

And when she asked her doctor, “Well, what about me? What do I have to do to take care of my body?” he replied, “Things just have a way of healing.” That was the official prescription for a mother who had been carrying a baby for 40 weeks and had only given birth a moment ago.

Earlier this month, I attended a “power breakfast” hosted by the Chamber of Mothers, an organization and movement driving national support for mothers. I expected the bulk of the conversation to address the dearth of adequate childcare and family leave in a policy-oriented fashion. And while certainly, those were critical topics of discussion—Elliot Haspel, a senior fellow at Capita, firmly proposed a necessarily universal vision for childcare—I was shocked and frankly disillusioned by how much basic maternal healthcare was emphasized as an area of desperate need.  

The powerful and personal stories of the women who spoke painted a devastatingly moving picture of an America that has abandoned the very social safety nets, the support system for this country, mothers, because of the national belief that women’s lives are only worth the ones they care for. 

“I’d hate to believe that it’s because we don’t care about mothers and that we don’t want to see them in power. But it’s alarming to me that you can have a Dateline special about our increasing maternal mortality rate—and people watch it, and they’re alarmed, and then they move on,” said Erin Erenberg, co-founder and CEO of the Chamber of Mothers. 

As Erenburg expressed, it’s daunting to think about how not only undervalued, but deliberately diminished, mothers are in this country. But how else can we explain the persistent lack of childcare access and paid family leave, something that most other countries have? It’s clear the U.S. doesn’t value mothers, women and their basic well-being, enough to invest in action.

Beyond a perhaps more sinister desire to undermine women’s autonomy and power, the lack of support for mothers derives from a more latent assumption that women are naturally predisposed to caregiving and therefore should not need any support—even if the very act of caregiving puts their well-being at risk. 

“Pregnancy is the only health event where we expect the person recovering from the health event to push through and take care of someone else,” said one mother anonymously quoted at the event.