Documentary explores why U.S. mothers lack support systems found in other countries

By — Amna Nawaz Amna Nawaz By — Azhar Merchant Azhar Merchant Leave your feedback Share Copy URL https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/documentary-explores-why-u-s-mothers-lack-support-systems-found-in-other-countries Email Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Pinterest Tumblr Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Transcript Audio A new documentary explores the realities of motherhood in America, from the high cost of child care to the culture wars over parenting and raising a family. Amna Nawaz spoke with the filmmakers behind "No Country for Mothers" for our arts and culture series, CANVAS. Read the Full Transcript Notice: Transcripts are machine and human generated and lightly edited for accuracy. They may contain errors. Geoff Bennett: A new documentary explores the realities of motherhood in America, from the high cost of child care to the latest culture wars over parenting and raising a family. Amna Nawaz recently spoke with the film's creators for our arts and culture series Canvas. Amna Nawaz: The debate over a modern motherhood is often framed as a choice between career and family. A new documentary film called "No Country For Mothers" dives deep into the so-called mommy wars, unpacking the systems that exploit and perpetuate those divides and what it would take to end them. Here's a clip. Woman: Working moms versus stay-at-home moms. Woman: You have working moms. You have stay-at-home moms, and then you have work-from-home, stay-at-home moms. Woman: Oh my God. Woman: Everything that structurally is set up is set up to make motherhood so damned hard. Woman: Does housework count as, well, real work? Woman: Culturally, we've never really told the truth about motherhood. Woman: If we're going to win the culture war, we have to start... Audience: Now! Amna Nawaz: The film is made by the CEO of Moms First -- that's Reshma Saujani -- and executive produced by Tan France. They join me now. Welcome to you both. Thank you so much for joining us. Reshma, I'll start with you because you meet with a lot of different moms in the film. You share your own story as a working mom too. What did you find as you dug into this? Were the struggles of these moms universal? Reshma Saujani, Executive Producer, "No Country For Mothers": Yes, I mean, look, this film is an investigation into the lies we tell about American motherhood to distract and divide us from getting the things we need to make motherhood tenable in America, which is paid leave and child care. And what I found as I went across the country is we all want the same thing. But we're being tricked into thinking our choices are binary, that I got to be a tradwife or a girl boss, neither which -- like, no one wants to spend their time hustling so hard they don't see their kids or milking a cow. We all want something in between. But it's the culture wars that are preventing us from actually making America and American motherhood actually tenable. And so I ended this film with a whole lot of hope in thinking that, if we