What Moms Really Want for Mother’s Day

By Dr. Betsy Southerland, former Director of the Office of Science and Technology in EPA’s Office of Water

When my kids were little, I worried about the normal things mothers worry about: Was the fever serious? Were they eating enough vegetables? Did they remember their homework? Were they getting enough sleep?

I did not expect to spend time wondering whether the water we used to make macaroni and cheese might contain PFAS “forever chemicals.” Or whether the air outside could trigger asthma attacks. Or whether the products I use every day to manage our home contain chemicals linked to developmental problems, infertility, or cancer.

But that’s where we are now. And like so many mothers and grandmothers today, I find it deeply frustrating.

Moms already do enough. They already carry the invisible labor of keeping families healthy, safe, organized, fed, comforted, educated, and functioning. They should not have to become toxicologists, environmental scientists, and chemical safety experts just to protect children from everyday exposures.

But we are.

Increasingly, the burden of protection is being shifted onto families and everyday people.

This Mother’s Day, the Environmental Protection Network released a new report examining how toxic chemical exposures affect moms, babies, and kids at every stage of life—from fertility and pregnancy through early childhood development.

As both a mother and someone who has spent years working at the EPA on water safety, what struck me most while reading it was just how much of this responsibility falls on families to carry alone.

Mothers Are Being Asked to Manage the Unmanageable

The report outlines how toxic chemicals show up across everyday life. In the food packaging from the local grocery store, the products we rely on and use daily, our drinking water, the polluted air we breathe, furniture, pesticides, and the list goes on and on. Many of these exposures are invisible. Most are difficult or impossible for families to fully avoid.

Still, mothers are the ones told to research ingredients, buy different products, filter the water, monitor air quality, replace cookware, avoid plastics, inspect labels on everything they buy… Adding more and more to the invisible, endless task list already running through their heads. And they’re expected to do all this while juggling jobs, caregiving, school pickups, medical appointments, grocery bills, and the thousand other responsibilities families already carry.

Are there steps people can take to reduce exposure? Of course. But these are partial solutions that require time, money, and information not every family has access to. No parent can filter their way out of systemic pollution—and none of us can afford to get sick.

The Job of Protecting Families Shouldn’t Fall Entirely on Families

For decades, Americans understood there were rules in place to limit harmful pollution and toxic exposures. That’s the role Congress assigned to EPA: to use independent science to reduce dangerous exposures at the source, so parents are not left on their own to manage impossible risks.

But many of those safeguards are now being weakened.

When that happens, the costs shift onto the mother buying bottled water because she no longer trusts the tap, managing a child’s chronic illness, paying higher medical bills, missing work and school, and carrying stress that should never have been hers to begin with.

Former EPA experts like me – who are also mothers and grandmothers – spent careers working to reduce toxic exposures and protect public health. Now we’re watching decisions unfold that we know will increase risks for families.

And we’re speaking up by being part of the Safer, Not Sicker campaign.

On behalf of all the moms and grandmothers out there, we are asking for leaders willing to make choices that leave families safer, not sicker. That requires reducing toxic exposures at their source, relying on independent science, and enforcing safeguards that protect families before harm occurs.

Because mothers already do enough. And protecting families from toxic pollution should not be another item added to the list.

To read the full report, learn more about the Safer, Not Sicker campaign and sign our petition if you also think it’s wrong to continue to allow this burden to land on moms.

---