Opinion: The motherhood tax is shaping who gets to lead

My first Mother’s Day was at the Women’s Fund SouthCoast 5K in New Bedford.

I was exhausted, balancing an infant and leadership, but I was also surrounded by something powerful: a community showing up for women and families. It showed what support looks like when people choose to build it. At the time, it felt meaningful. Looking back, it feels instructive.

Mother’s Day in the United States was never meant to be only a celebration. Early advocates like Julia Ward Howe called on mothers to organize for peace, public health, and collective responsibility. The day was rooted in a simple idea: the well-being of families is not a private matter, but a shared one.

We have not lost that belief. But we have failed to build systems that reflect it.

I gave birth to my son nearly four years ago. What I wasn’t prepared for was how much I would need a “village” to stay in my career.

I interviewed for CEO positions up until I was nine months pregnant. I pumped between meetings at my former job, then went home to care for my son while holding myself to the same expectations I had always carried.

I stepped into an executive director role with a seven-month-old at home.

I did. Because that’s what women do.

Because we understand the tradeoffs. Stepping back is not neutral. It compounds the wage gap and limits advancement.

And to be clear, those expectations do not disappear because you become a mother. If anything, they sharpen.

I also had what many would consider every advantage: a two-income household, health insurance, and the privilege that comes with being a white woman navigating systems more likely to listen to me, and keep me safe. And still, it came at a cost. I am still paying the hospital bills from the birth of my child — and nearly $24,000 a year in child care.

If this is what motherhood looks like under conditions of relative privilege, what does it look like for those navigating far more constrained circumstances?

We say it all the time: it takes a village. But in the United States, that village has been privatized. Support depends on what you can afford, who lives nearby, and how much you can carry.

The consequences are measurable: Black women are nearly three times more likely to die from pregnancy-related causes than white women. The burden is not evenly shared. Nearly half of Black mothers in the United States are single mothers, more than three times the rate of white mothers.

We call motherhood essential. We structure almost nothing around it.

This is not just a cultural gap. It is a policy design.

We have built a system that depends on mothers, economically and socially, while offloading the cost of that labor onto them. Caregiving functions as public infrastructure but is treated as a private responsibility.

It shapes who stays in the workforce, who advances into leadership, and who remains in the rooms where decisions are made.

We often call for more women, and more mothers, in leadership. But we have built a system that makes that nearly impossible to sustain.

This is the motherhood tax, the accumulated cost in time, income, opportunity, and well-being that women absorb simply for raising children in a system that depends on their labor but does not support it.

And it is not just economic. It is political. It determines who has the capacity to lead, and who does not.

If we want more women in leadership, we cannot structure society in ways that systematically exclude mothers from sustained participation.

The good news is this: we know what works.

Resourcing the “village” means recognizing caregiving as a public good and investing in it accordingly. Government, business, philanthropy, and communities all have a role to play.

As a leader, I feel a responsibility to help pave the way for more mothers to stay in the workforce and step into leadership. But leaders who share this commitment cannot do that alone. None of us can. We need infrastructure that matches the reality of how families live and work.

If we are serious about the future of our democracy, we must remove the barriers that prevent mothers from leading within it. Because when we fail to invest in mothers, we are not just failing families, we are shaping a democracy that is less representative and less capable of meeting the needs of the people it is meant to serve

Christine Monska is the executive director of the Women’s Fund SouthCoast and Vice Chair of the Massachusetts Commission on the Status of Women.