Each Mother’s Day, I’m reminded that every mom wants the best for their child. Decades of working with families coping with poverty taught me that. But not every mom and/or dad can afford the best, or even the bare minimum.
That won’t change until a critical mass of Americans decide to insist upon good things for other people’s children too. Sound utopian? It’s already happening in some places.
Raziya Hill struggled to afford diapers to keep her son clean, dry and healthy. Once the single mom’s paycheck grew a bit, she started buying diapers for other families on hard times. Eventually Raziya founded the Buffalo-based Every Bottom Covered, a nonprofit diaper bank that serves families throughout western New York.
Rachel Alston stood stock still in a grocery store realizing that she had enough money to buy milk or diapers — but not both. She reacted much like Raziya. Rachel founded the PDX Diaper Bank, which has been helping Portland, Oregon-area babies since 2012.
The National Diaper Bank Network (NDBN) supports more than 300 basic needs banks around the country, many founded by moms like Raziya and Rachel, who know diaper need first-hand. They already knew what research has since validated: that diaper need poses health risks to babies and their caregivers and that parents who cannot provide diapers are turned away from child care and so miss work or school. These organizations distribute nearly 200 million diapers annually. That is amazing, life-changing work. But our annual national survey, The NDBN Diaper Check 2024, reveals that nearly half of young U.S. families (46.7%) experience diaper need. We would need to multiply our efforts more than 10 times over to fill that gap.
A problem of this scale won’t be solved by nonprofits alone. We need policy change. Early childhood is the most common period for a person to experience poverty. More than 11 million of our children live in poverty, and that suffering is disproportionately visited upon youth of color.
Myriad factors drive this. Many children would be lifted out of poverty if their mothers were paid as well as male workers. Children living in households headed by a single woman experience poverty at more than twice the rate of their peers. Regardless of gender, pay has failed to keep up with the cost of living. Raising the minimum wage would reduce child poverty on a massive scale.
Unsurprisingly, child poverty is highest in states that have not raised that base wage. There are so many other reforms that would cut child poverty: public investment in child care that raised quality while lowering cost; a return to the refundable child tax credit that reduced child poverty by half during a pandemic and economic crisis; and my personal favorite, government investment in children to help families afford diapers.
Why don’t we have these things — good things that research has repeatedly shown to have broad societal benefits? Because we are not a country of Raziyas and Rachels. Far too many of us lose the urge to nurture when the child is not our own. Instead, we blame parents who, often heroically, raise families on scant resources.
When the first federal bill to provide diaper assistance was introduced in 2011, radio commentator Rush Limbaugh was quick to ridicule. “I am not making up the diaper bill, folks,” he opined. “I’m not making up anything I said about it. Free diapers for every mother who has a kid in daycare … Just absurd.”
Outrageous hyperbole was Limbaugh’s schtick. Unfortunately, many of our elected officials also believe that investing in the material basic necessities that children require to thrive is somehow unwarranted. During the Congressional debate on extending the Child Tax Credit, a sitting U.S. senator privately expressed fears that if the child tax credit were extended, parents would use it to buy illegal drugs. Now that’s “just absurd.” Research consistently shows that low-income parents use extra resources to buy things that benefit their children, like healthy food.
On this day, when we celebrate moms with brunches and bouquets, let’s make a start at something less traditional. Let’s recognize that most moms, and dads, want the best for their children.
And so should we all. Creating environments where children have their basic needs met, and parents do not work themselves into towers of stress to fulfill those needs, gives every child a chance to thrive. This in turn will create a more stable and prosperous society for everyone.
The impact will last much longer and be more meaningful than Sunday’s Mother’s Day Brunch.
Joanne Samuel Goldblum is CEO and founder of the National Diaper Bank Network and coauthor of Broke in America: Seeing, Understanding, and Ending U.S. Poverty.