By OcJim

Most mothers never get a public forum to tell their story of motherhood.

Ann Romney, as the wife of Mitt Romney, the to-be nominated Republican candidate for President, got her forum for providing her story through an oped in last Thursday’s USA Today. It is a bitter irony that the wife of our emblematic plutocrat is the mother our media highlights. Obviously, Ann Romney is not the typical American mother; yet her story is the one told.

The typical mother in America involves an altogether different picture. Fifty-nine percent of first-time mothers are married; forty-seven percent are non-white; seventy-five percent are between the ages of 20 and 35; and the vast majority struggle to fulfill their role as mother.

As Michelle Goldberg on MSNBC’s Up with Chris Hayes noted, “They (the Romney’s) are still milking this thing … to the point of being insufferable.” Perhaps her comment was a bit snarky but the hypocrisy of the occasion tends to invite snarkiness, for, in effect, our society while denying public support or economic security to families, makes up the deficit with insipid, condescending praise. Ann Romney’s column was a thinly-masked exercise in political self-praise.

A case in point: Republicans speak family values, but, of the two parties, lead the charge in promulgating programs of all kinds that make the United States the most family-hostile public-policy country in the developed world.

Only the US lacks maternity-leave laws among 20 top industrial democracies. Only one-half of the labor force is entitled to up to 3 months of unpaid family leave, but would be under threat of losing their job if taking it. We are alone among advanced nations in offering no time off for family matters. Ninety percent of mothers report work-family conflicts. Children complain more about exhausted parents than absent parents.

Some 53% of mothers under 30 are single moms. Most likely related are 15 million children in poverty. When Aid for Dependent Children came under attack in a Gingrich-led House of Representatives, Bill Clinton obliged with a workfare-type proposal, supporting the replacement of welfare with Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), and gave it a lifetime limit of 5 years.

Mitt Romney has made it clear that single mothers should not receive the $372 per month TANF payments unless they work. He did not mention how minimum wage jobs will cover an estimated average of $13,650 per year of infant day care expenses. He only said with majestic ease, “They should have the dignity of work.” A more recent joint comment by Ann Romney with Mitt by her side was, “I made a choice to stay home and raise five boys.” Of course, Ann doesn’t need TANF.

What is the future for mothers and for families? The real story not told is about the majority of American mothers who struggle mightily against all odds in a society that provides little or no support for those without the resources to provide life-long nurture for their children. Both parties have not committed enough to these needs but Mitt Romney’s party is currently trying to take away billions of dollars of the meager resources that the middle class and the poor need for children’s opportunities, not to speak of necessities.

To add to the misery of millions of American children already in poverty, who depend on social programs, Republican Governors in about half of the states have already cut or are ready to cut additional funds from education, Medicaid, and food stamps. Republican governors in Pennsylvania, Maine, Ohio, Wisconsin, Florida and Arizona are looking at another round of cuts for Head Start which assures indigent children 3-4 years of age can compete in Kindergarten.

Mitt won’t comment on equal pay issues for women — mothers or not — like the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, but he would appoint the same conservative Supreme Court judges who voted against the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, in effect, wanting to doom women to inferior pay.

In our polarized country there will certainly be judgmental comments coming from each political side. Picking apart and ridiculing Ann Romney’s comments by one side or manufacturing outrage by citing out-of-context comments by the other side accomplishes nothing but another round of vitriol.

Nevertheless, bitterness, palpable and distasteful, still overrides real discussion of issues, and the issues are real, something that neither side seems to feature.

Other countries give more than lip service to mothers and family, not using motherhood as a political tool. Isn’t it time we do the same?

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