Our Plan

In keeping with one of our core beliefs, “Together mothers are powerful,” the Mothers & More POWER Plan is designed to provide focus for our education, consciousness raising, advocacy and action programs. 

Our POWER Plan provides the underlying principles and focus for programs and activities at all levels of our organization.  This plan reflects the ways in which we want to realize our organization’s mission and beliefs and make them visible to society as a whole.  It reflects our goal of reorganizing and redefining work such that the work of caring for others is seen and treated as equal in value to paid work and is tied directly to three of the Mothers & More core beliefs.

Our choices are based on our understanding of the Challenge, our mission and beliefs, strong member support, and our ability to uniquely influence these areas.

Our society cannot hope to address women’s needs without addressing mothers’ needs.  And society will not address mothers’ needs until mothers get involved.

The POWER Plan

Belief: All the work mothers do – whether paid or unpaid – has social and economic value. 

To redefine the meaning of “work” such that the work of caring for others is regarded as equal in value to paid work, is accepted as work that is vital to our economy and our society, and is treated as such in both the public and private sectors, we will:

• Educate mothers about, raise public awareness about, and monitor the progress of the work of our federal government’s American Time Use Survey, which will capture data on how Americans spend their time, including time spent on unpaid caregiving work.
• Advocate that unpaid caregiving work is equal in value to paid work whenever it is implied otherwise.
• Act to create a plan for using and publicizing the Time Use Survey data and encouraging policy makers to make effective use of the data.

Belief: Mothers have the right to fulfill their caregiving responsibilities without incurring social and economic penalties.

To ensure that all mothers, fathers and others who care for their families, whether or not they work for pay, have access to basic public and private protections from economic risk, we will:

• Educate mothers and raise public awareness about the economic impact of unpaid caregiving work on the financial security of those facing disability or old age.
• Educate mothers and raise public awareness about the ways in which current tax policy affects the earnings and retirement benefits of mothers
• Educate mothers about planning to mitigate the effects of their unpaid caregiving work on their long-term economic security in old age and in the event of disability.
• Advocate that the value of unpaid caregiving work be considered and reflected in any reforms to retirement savings plans, Social Security and disability insurance.
• Seek partnerships with other organizations that work with women on issues of planning for retirement and disability.

Belief: All women deserve recognition and support for their right to choose if and how to combine parenting and paid employment.

To reshape our paid workplaces in ways that acknowledge that mothers, fathers and others who need to care for their families and work for pay are holding down two jobs, both equally important to our economy and our society, and they need more and better options for combining paid work with caregiving work, we will:

• Raise public awareness about the obstacles mothers face in balancing their caregiving responsibilities with paid work over the course of their lifetimes.
• Educate mothers and raise public awareness about the barriers businesses face in creating part-time and flexible work options, the benefits to businesses for providing these options and the disincentives mothers face to taking such work.
• Educate mothers and raise public awareness about how current tax policy affects family decisions and constrains the options available to parents for combining paid work and caregiving over their lifetimes.
• Raise public awareness by seeking partnerships with businesses, organizations and professional associations to further the dialogue about reorganizing workplaces.
• Raise public awareness by building our own organization in such a way as to model the workplaces we want to see.
• Raise public awareness by recognizing and supporting businesses that succeed in reorganizing their paid work to provide real options for employees who also have caregiving responsibilities.
• Act to support legislation at the state and federal levels that ensures proportional pay, benefits and advancement for part-time and contingent workers.

See our actions so far to further what we outline above.