The Lie at the Heart of Modern Motherhood

Mothers are seemingly given endless choices: to work or be a stay-at-home mom. Sleep train or not, breastfeed or bottle-feed. The list is endless.

But true choice only exists when the options are genuinely possible. For millions of mothers around the world, they aren't.

Reshma Saujani’s recent documentary, No Country for Mothers, has reignited a conversation about what it means to be a mother in a society that was never designed to support it. As clear evidence of this, more than 400,000 mothers of young children have left the US workforce, the steepest decline in 40 years. While Saujani’s documentary focuses on the United States, the friction it exposes is global.

There is a design flaw at the heart of modern motherhood:

Rather than judging mothers for these choices, we need to create a society that better supports them.

Our economies rely on the assumption of an uninterrupted worker, and our families rely on the expectation of an endlessly available mother.

We have witnessed this firsthand, as the founders of Kidogo Childcare Centres and Maziwa Breastfeeding, working alongside low-income mothers in Kenya, and as women who have confronted these tough choices ourselves.

Many of the mothers we work with either work informally, receiving sporadic daily income, or are living from paycheck to paycheck. For them, returning to work is not about ambition or professional identity. It is the only way they can feed their families. A few weeks without income can push a family onto the street.

However, if a mother is compelled to return to work, how is her child adequately cared for and fed?

Globally, the World Bank estimates 350 million children below primary school age need childcare but do not have access to it. Similarly, optimal breastfeeding could prevent more than 820,000 child deaths every single year and countless cases of serious illnesses, but working mothers are not supported to maintain breastfeeding.

Unfortunately, in the contexts we work in, maternity leave, safe and affordable childcare, lactation rooms, and breastfeeding breaks are nonexistent. Yet, when a child is left in unsuitable care or weaned off of breastmilk prematurely, we shift the blame to the mother—rather than the system that has failed her.

Society cannot expect mothers to work and then treat childcare and breastfeeding as a private burden for each woman to solve alone.

As female entrepreneurs, we face these impossible choices personally as well: Sabrina, feeling like she has missed out on early childhood development milestones for her own daughter, ironically while building the largest childcare network in Kenya; and Sahar, freezing her eggs to delay motherhood, while launching Kenya’s first wearable breast pump to allow mothers to balance working and breastfeeding.

Time and time again, we see these trade-offs play out: If a mother is working, she needs to find safe and adequate care. If she stays home, she must absorb the income loss. If she breastfeeds, she must do so without support, time, space, or privacy. If she cannot breastfeed, she is made to feel like she has failed.

When all these expectations collide, we call it choice. But for many mothers, it is not a choice at all. It is a system asking them to do the impossible.

Rather than confronting this friction directly, we often turn mothers against one another. The "trad wife" and the "girl boss" are presented as opposing ideals. Breastfeeding and formula feeding become moral tribes. Stay-at-home mothers and working mothers are asked to defend their choices as if one woman’s path invalidates another’s.

This reduces structural failures into identity camps. These divisions are not accidental. They distract us from the systems that create these impossible choices in the first place.

The choices are not being made from a place of agency—nor are they taken lightly. There is an immense amount of motherhood guilt with every decision. Rather than judging mothers for these choices, we need to create a society that better supports them.

To be sure, progress has been made to better support motherhood in some countries. For example, Sweden offers 480 days of parental leave with 80% of pay. However, across the globe, women's participation in the workforce is rising faster than the policies needed to support working mothers.

No Country for Mothers has clearly highlighted how mothers have been “failed by economic policies, workplace structures, political agendas, and cultural narratives that were never designed to support caregiving or family life.”

The impossible choices mothers face are the symptom, not the cause. Rather than expecting mothers to solve structural failures through individual sacrifice, we need our systems to adapt to motherhood.