The Surgeon General’s advisory is a wakeup call: Here’s how you can get involved to push for parental well-being

As I read the U.S. Surgeon General’s recent advisory about how dangerously stressed and burned out parents are because of issues like a lack of access to affordable childcare or any type of paid leave and increasingly demanding hours at work, I felt a range of emotions.

The first was frustration: these are not new issues that parents have been struggling with. Paid family leave legislation has been introduced many times before on Capitol Hill, but there has been no progress despite the mountains of evidence that paid leave benefits moms and the entire family. Childcare isn’t considered affordable in any US state and this isn’t the first time that alarms have been sounded over how the stress around childcare causes burnout in parents.

The second was anger: How has it gotten this bad? So bad that 41% of parents are so stressed that they can’t function? 

The third was hope: that having such a prominent voice talk about these issues could mean actual policy changes may be around the corner. 

And the fourth was determination: The Surgeon General’s advisory sadly likely won’t be enough to constitute real change on its own, but continuing to draw attention to these issues will. Groups like Chamber of Mothers, Moms First and MomsRising give moms easy ways to get involved to help push for the changes they want to see—and the ones parents so desperately need.

It’s time for moms to mobilize 

“The more voices there are, the harder it is to ignore us,” says Sarah O’Leary, CEO of Willow Breastpumps and a mom. O’Leary and her team at Willow recently announced a partnership with Chamber of Mothers, a bipartisan non-profit group that’s focused on bringing moms together to fight for change. Their raison d’être?  “Moms united are powerful.”

O’Leary recognizes the importance of mobilizing moms as a group in the fight for change. “Our individual voices can get lost against more concentrated interest groups because our constituency is so fragmented across millions of individual mothers and individual families,” she says. “The most important thing we can do is to help bring those voices together so that the power of our collective voice becomes louder.”

“Mothers in our vast online and in-person community want to take action,” adds Chamber of Mothers’ cofounder Erin Erenberg. You can get involved by joining one of Chamber of Mothers’ 33 local chapters (or starting a new one!) or donating to the cause. “But one thing we are encouraging every mom to do is ‘Vote Like a Mother‘ this election season. We’ve made it easy with our friends at I Am A Voter: Text MOTHER to 26797 to check your status, register, and get up to date information about your polling place and dates,” Erenberg says. “We have also launched a voter education site so moms can quickly get the voter education they need. Let’s unite to make this country one we are proud to live in and pass on to further generations.”

Moms First is another non-profit organization banding together moms eager for change. Before the first 2024 presidential debate, they successfully collected 15,000 signatures to petition CNN for there to be a question on how candidates would make childcare more affordable.

Founder Reshma Saujani tells Motherly they’re now focused on a new campaign called ‘Get Childcare on the Record’ ahead of the election. “We’re mobilizing moms across the country, because we literally can’t afford for childcare to be ignored this election season,” she says. 

There are three low-lift ways that the non-profit is asking for moms to get involved, including writing a letter to the editor of a local publication, getting loud on social media by sharing their childcare story and tagging candidates to ask them their plans and attending an event where candidates will be. Their weekly newsletter gives tips for how to accomplish each of these asks. 

“We want to get as many moms as possible across all 50 states to ask their candidates if they will prioritize child care in their first 100 days in office,” says Saujani.

If you want more easy ways to get involved, consider signing MomsRising’s current petition for the upcoming presidential debate on ABC to get moderators to ask candidates their plans for lowering childcare costs if elected. They also have a postcard writing campaign where they’ll send you 20 pre-addressed, pre-stamped postcards and tips on what to write, and hopefully the nudge that recipients need to go out and vote. 

It will take all of us to make a change

It’s hard to feel like change can happen after so many years of talking about the same issues. It can be hard to feel like you as an individual can have any control over the outcomes on Capitol Hill, but joining an advocacy group and taking any action will help the collective cause. I have to believe that at some point policy makers won’t be able to ignore moms and the struggles families experience every day.
“Getting involved in advocating for solutions with other moms—both locally and nationally—is a way to take back that sense of control and the feeling that we have power together,” says O’Leary. “There is power in the broader community of moms, and when we come together to demand better we help drive systemic change.”

A version of this story was originally published on Aug. 30, 2024. It has been updated.