Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett is the mother of seven children, and a handful of senators can’t seem to stop talking about it. During the first hearing to confirm Barrett’s judiciary nomination on Monday, October 12, several Republican senators went out of their way to praise Barrett for the sacrifices she has made as a working mother, but the shower of appreciation left many women feeling frustrated as Congress continues to ignore the plight of millions of other working moms all over the country.
Transcripts from the Senate hearing show Senator Chuck Grassley praising Barrett as a “tireless mother of seven” and noting that it would be a “privilege” to “welcome a justice like that to the Supreme Court.” Later, Senator John Cornyn tells Barrett that his two adult daughters “marvel at the balance [Barrett] achieved” between her personal and professional lives. He adds, “They want to know how you do it.”
Senator Mike Lee not only praises Barrett for being a working mom but also brings up the fact that she herself is one of seven children, and he credits that for her leadership skills. “You are the oldest of seven children, which means that long before you had your own seven children, you were also the de facto mother to many others,” Lee says. “The way things often work in large families is such that the oldest children often takes on responsibilities at an early age.”
While it’s certainly no small feat to parent seven children while excelling in your career, the heavy praise rings false for working moms who’ve faced serious hardships due to the abysmal lack of support for working parents in the U.S. and Congress’ failure to offer meaningful aid to families during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“You know who else has several children? Women who have to go back to work without mandatory PAID maternity leave,” journalist Melanie Schmitz writes on Twitter. “Women seeking asylum here who’ve been called parasites and criminals. Women working three jobs to feed their kids because these dudes refuse to acknowledge that the current minimum wage is criminally low.”
“If only the bombastic blowhards praising Barrett’s role as a mother during the SCOTUS hearings cared this much about moms who can’t feed their kids thanks to a relief bill the senate is ignoring,” another person, tweeting under the handle GoldenGateBlond, adds.
Several reporters point out that many of the same senators praising Barrett for her accomplishments as a working mom have failed to ensure women’s access to quality healthcare, and many of them seek to penalize women with children when they need government assistance.
“America has the highest maternal mortality rate among developed nations,” writes journalist Lyz Lenz. “It’s 3x worse for Black mothers and all these senators who suddenly care about Coney Barrett’s motherhood are working to repeal what few healthcare protections American mothers have.”
Journalist Bryce Covert adds, “As Amy Coney Barrett gets lauded for being a mother of seven, I’ve been reporting a piece about welfare policies that explicitly punish poor women for having more children.”
It’s true that the U.S. has the highest maternal mortality rate among industrialized nations, and there is no mandatory paid leave policy for parents in the U.S. Additionally, it is believed by some that a driving force behind the rush to confirm Amy Coney Barrett’s judiciary nomination is her apparent support of Republicans’ desire to repeal the Affordable Care Act, which could eliminate protections for pre-existing conditions and leave millions of Americans uninsured.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, families in the U.S. have been in crisis. Working parents are straining to meet the demands of their jobs while access to school and child care is severely limited. Nearly 13 million Americans are unemployed, one in three families are food insecure and thousands of people have been evicted from their homes. Meanwhile, Congress has failed to pass any additional COVID-19 relief bills to aid struggling families.
There’s no doubt that Amy Coney Barrett has accomplished a great deal in her life, but the focus on family and motherhood during her confirmation hearings only highlights the huge disparities in how our society views working mothers. Women who are highly educated and privileged get to be touted as heroes, while those who live in poverty, work minimum wage jobs or need access to paid leave and affordable child care are frequently ignored or painted as burdens on the system.
Government leaders have all the power they need to improve the lives of working mothers. Until they choose to actually do it, it’s hard to see their praise of Amy Coney Barrett as a “tireless mother of seven” as anything but lip service.
