If you search “working mom routine” on TikTok, you’ll find moms talking about their 5-9/9-5/5-9 schedule, with no rest or breaks. Moms will be waking up early to work out, then ping-ponging between making lunches, doing their hair and make up, school drop-off, work, then pick-up, cooking, cleaning, and eventually, by 9 or 10 pm, relax for an hour or so before bedtime. What’s noticeable is that husbands are entirely absent from these videos. The comment section is full of other moms saying things like “working moms are supermoms” and “then we get up and do it again the next day!” Working moms are supermoms, but it’s a problem that capitalist society expects mothers to “do it all.” 

Despite massive gains made by the womens’ rights movement over many decades, a majority of housework is still taken up by women, a burden felt disproportionately by working-class women. Studies show that moms do 65% of physical labor for household management and childcare and 75% of cognitive labor (managing schedules, making appointments, making playdates for kids, and the like). The average working mom works a combined 98 hours a week, the equivalent of 2.5 jobs. Mothers in the US return to work sooner than other countries; 70% of mothers return to work before their child’s first birthday, the majority returning only 12 weeks postpartum.

But this isn’t a problem that will be solved by men just “doing their fair share.” This is a deep systemic problem with the family under capitalism, that puts the burden of this labor on individual families, which in turn largely falls on women. The subordination of women and the nuclear family (the family structure of a husband, wife, and kids) is one of the oldest tools in the maintenance of capitalist social relations and inequality. This family structure under capitalism serves in providing domestic and reproductive labor for free and ensuring inheritance of family wealth. 

The capitalist class requires domestic labor to raise the next generation of workers, and the oppression of women means they don’t have to pay for it. Women’s unpaid labor at home is valued at a staggering 3.6 trillion dollars a year! Humans didn’t always live in patriarchal families. Before there were estates and private property to be inherited, families were matriarchal. The family included the extended family with grandparents, aunts, and uncles playing major roles in childcare, and property was communal. With the advent of agriculture, food surpluses, and the emergence of private property, the newly emerging ruling class destroyed this communally-based family system in order to create a system of inheritance, which was passed down through men. This ensured that wealth was no longer shared by the whole community but was kept in small family groups, allowing for wealth accumulation.

This Mother’s Day, instead of glorifying the unequal amount of work mothers do by calling us “supermoms” we must fight the whole capitalist system that relies on this outdated and oppressive family model. 

Capitalism vs Motherhood

Chappell Roan recenting sparked controversy when she said in an interview “every mother I know is miserable.” She faced intense backlash, but she was also pointing to something real. Despite the joys of motherhood and watching your kids grow up, mothers as a demographic face a deep mental health crisis because of the crises of capitalism. One in five mothers are suspected to have postpartum depression or anxiety. That number shoots up to 50% of mothers when looking at low-income mothers. The capitalist system is incompatible with happy and healthy families for all because it doesn’t provide working-class mothers their basic needs.

Many women who would like children decide against it because of the astronomical cost of raising a child under capitalism. From the cost of doctor’s appointments to housing, many working people cannot afford to live, much less take care of a child too. We need to fight for a society that is truly pro-choice, meaning free on-demand abortion and free on-demand childcare. Millions of mothers are stressed, overworked, socially isolated, and unsupported. Many working-class women stay in unhappy or abusive relationships because they are financially dependent on their partners, especially men. Affordable housing and accessible childcare would help millions of women escape domestic violence. 

We don’t need to organize society this way; we have examples from history how motherhood can be supported. Under a society democratically controlled by workers, much of this social reproductive labor can be socialized—meaning the burden of this work can be shared not just by two parents, but by society. After the Russian Revolution of 1917, the Soviet workers’ state socialized domestic labor by creating programs like state-run communal kitchens so families could go eat hot prepared foods rather than cooking at home, communal laundry services, and robust child care programs. The new workers’ government immediately granted women the right to divorce, take maternity leave, and receive child support. The programs were freely accessible to everyone, not luxuries. Eventually, many of these gains were rolled back under Stalin’s counter-revolution, but the legacy of the original Russian Revolution stands. Under capitalism, mothers today can only access this kind of support for thousands of dollars a month. 

There has recently been a growing push from Trump and the right wing to return to more traditional family and gender roles. A large part of this is the drive towards war all over the world, which requires nationalism and an increased reliance on strict family and gender roles. Additionally, birth rates are falling in industrialized nations, which is alarming for a capitalist class that needs an ever-increasing amount of workers to grow. The Trump-backed pronatalist movement (a movement to encourage childbirth) has gained increasing influence, with JD Vance saying “I want more babies in the United States of America.” 

But these “pro-family” forces have no real interest in actually making life manageable for mothers. Right-wing, pronatalist activist, Simone Collins, said, “there’s a big difference between family friendly policy and policy that will actually help families have more children. It has been clearly shown that free childcare, maternity leave, and welfare programs don’t encourage people to have more children.” Her husband Malcolm added, “the less money you have the more kids you have.” The right wing wants to make birth control, abortion, and divorce harder for women to access, forcing motherhood and traditional gender roles on women. 

Fight for Mothers—Fight Capitalism!

Within the second-wave feminist movement of the 1960s and ‘70s, many forces raised strong concrete demands that pointed to capitalism as the root of gender-based oppression and fought for the rights of women as workers’ rights. Demands like 24-hour, free, high-quality, community-controlled, drop-in childcare, flex-time for working parents so childcare and household work could be shared evenly by parents, and a minimum guaranteed income for stay-at-home parents of children up to Pre-K instead of a patchwork of welfare programs were all common. Feminists fought for the right of women to have the choice to work, be supported financially by a partner, or the state, recognizing domestic labor as a necessity for the state and that they should be compensated for this labor. Today, the labor movement needs to take up the fight for all working parents as the fight for workers’ rights, because the burden faced by mothers only benefits the bosses, not workers. Ultimately, though, we need to be crystal clear that the full change we need cannot be won under capitalism and that a society run democratically by workers, a socialist society, is necessary. 

We need to bring back the strong economic demands of the second-wave feminist movement and expand on them. The labor movement must take up demands for working families like flexible scheduling, paid family leave, universal childcare, fully funded public education, comprehensive mental health support for PPA/PPD, and a $4,000 monthly guaranteed income for mothers. In August, 1970, there was a one-day domestic labor strike; the tagline of the strike was “Don’t iron while the strike is hot.” This was the largest feminist protest action in the U.S. since the suffragette movement of the early twentieth century. This domestic labor strike shows the type of militant action we need today but it must be broadened out. The labor movement should call for a one-day strike of all workers against the reactionary attacks from Trump and the right wing, with a real pro-working class program that fights for all workers, including mothers.

From the start, capitalism was built off gender-based oppression. We need to build a militant socialist feminist movement in our workplaces and communities that can win the demands that working families need. Every family, every mother, and every child deserves a life free from food and housing insecurity. They deserve a life full of opportunities for education, career growth, and lots of quality family time. This Mother’s Day, let’s fight for the world we and our children deserve—fight for socialism!