‘Impossible to be a mom’: new film shines light on how America fails its mothers

Reshma Saujani speaking at the No Country for Mothers premiere in Minneapolis. Photograph: Jeremy Bloom View image in fullscreen Reshma Saujani speaking at the No Country for Mothers premiere in Minneapolis. Photograph: Jeremy Bloom ‘Impossible to be a mom’: new film shines light on how America fails its mothers Documentary No Country for Mothers details how US moms lack support, paid leave and childcare help – and hopes to inspire push for action When Reshma Saujani set out to make a documentary, she was clear from the outset: it would not be released on streaming platforms, or at film festivals. Instead, No Country for Mothers – a new movie about how moms across the US are being failed – is being screened by hundreds of the subject themselves, nationwide, in person. Brittney Walker is hosting a screening at a community poolhouse in Arizona. Joanna Carolina Berry rented out a theater in Georgia. Stephanie Valdez booked a library room in Nevada. Saujani, the film’s executive producer, and the founder of advocacy organizations Moms First and Girls Who Code, said moms will often watch or read something at 10pm, after work and chores and parenting, by themselves, then get “pissed off in isolation”. But not this movie. She wanted people to watch together, and get inspired to take action. “We’ve been intentionally divided and distracted through culture wars, and mostly I think a lot by politicians, and now I would say influencers and tech companies,” Saujani told the Guardian at a screening in Minneapolis in June. “And so I think that the only way to beat back the culture wars is to get moms to come together.” View image in fullscreen The premiere of No Country for Mothers in Minneapolis. Photograph: Jeremy Bloom The documentary – focused on how mothers so not have adequate support, leave or childcare – calls for a unified push for paid leave and childcare funding. It walks through decades of failures to enact policies for families, featuring women across the political spectrum. Hillary Clinton notes in the film how Congress passed a childcare bill in the 1970s, only for then president Richard Nixon to veto it. The priority is childcare and paid leave, according to Saujani. Much of the country is increasingly acknowledging childcare as an economic issue, and some states have stepped up to create paid programs, she said. Still, Trump recently said it was “not possible” to address funding at the federal level, and cut off access to payments to blue states over fraud concerns. “We can’t take care of daycare,” he said in April. “We’re a big country. We have 50 states. We have all these other people. We’re fighting wars. We can’t take care of daycare. You [have] got to let a state take care of daycare, and they should pay for it, too.” In another scene, Saujani herself asks Trump about childcare funding , an answer he bungled. “They had no fucking clue how to answer that question,” she says. Introducing the film in Minneapolis, Saujani told a crowd of doze