Erin (00:00):

We have to get clear on how can we unite? And that requires curiosity. And there are going to be cases where we simply do not see eye to eye and we will do no harm.

Dr. Sarah (00:18):

What if the support mothers deserve was finally prioritized in America? Joining me to talk about just that is Erin Erenberg, the founder of Totum Women and co-founding member of the Chamber of Mothers. In this episode, we dive into the critical issues that the Chamber of Mothers is addressing through its three pillars, affordable childcare, maternal health, and paid leave, and how these systemic changes would benefit not only mothers, but the economy and society as a whole. We also tackle big picture questions like how do we unite mothers across political and cultural divides? What role does social media play in fueling division and how can we replace dread with hope and galvanize those who are feeling overwhelmed? Right now, Erin’s perspective is both empowering and thought provoking and offers a roadmap for how moms can join forces to lead with humanity and to reshape the future for themselves and generations to come. I’m so excited for you to hear this interview.

(01:25):

Hi, I’m Dr. Sarah Bren, a clinical psychologist and mom of two. In this podcast, I’ve taken all of my clinical experience, current research on brain science and child psychology, and the insights I’ve gained on my own parenting journey and distilled everything down into easy to understand and actionable parenting insights. So you can tune out the noise and tune into your own authentic parenting voice with confidence and calm. This is Securely Attached.

(01:54):

Hello everyone. Welcome back to the securely attached podcast. We are really lucky today we have Erin Erenberg here from Chamber of Mothers. Thanks so much for coming on the show.

Erin (02:09):

It’s my pleasure. Thanks for having me. I’m excited to be here.

Dr. Sarah (02:12):

Me too. I was joking. We were joking before we started recording. I’m slowly having all of the founding members of the Chamber of Mothers slowly trickle into the show, and it’s been so fun.

Erin (02:22):

Oh, I love that. And I’ve loved their episodes too because everybody, we’re united in what we care about, but we all have different personalities and backgrounds and I’m glad you’re talking to all of us.

Dr. Sarah (02:33):

I know it’s fun. And so for people who, I’ll link all of the Chamber of Mothers Mama episodes, we’ve done so far in the show notes, but for people who maybe haven’t listened to those, go back, listen to them. But for right now, Erin, can you tell us a little bit about what Chamber of Mothers is and your role in it and how you pivoted from working with Totum into Chamber of Mothers?

Erin (02:56):

Sure. Happy to. So Chamber of Mothers, our mission statement is uniting mothers as advocates to create a better America. And this came about when a number of us, all the co-founders that you’ve spoken to, and probably a few others that you might speak to next, were really called together in conversation during the pandemic when Biden put forward the American Family Plan, and that included paid family medical leave, it was a very inclusive plan. It included affordable childcare. And so there were advocacy groups and even White House briefings who were inviting us in and saying, you all are speaking to moms all across America. All of us as founders live in different spots. We reach different communities, but these are all American mothers who are really seeking to live whole enriched lives. And so part of that, of course, is feeling supported by our government with things like paid leave and childcare.

(04:01):

And so some of us knew each other in real life. I had met Daphne Delvaux before and Alexis and a number of others, but many of us hadn’t met. We were just sort of in conversation online. And we came together and we said, wow. So we’re being asked to reach all these moms across the country, and why are we still the only nation that’s not a micro island that doesn’t have paid family and medical leave? And it was in a conversation with Daphne Delvaux who goes by @themomattorney, and I’m sure a lot of your listeners follow. And she said, it’s interesting. There’s the Chamber of Commerce that has its agenda. There’s the AARP, there’s even the NRA, where’s the Chamber of Mothers? Where is this group, this big collaboration among moms who stand for the same things and really push their hip against power and demand what they need?

(04:59):

And so that word demand, I of course think right away about Mom’s Demand and Shannon Watson, everything that she’s created with gun violence. And so we started thinking, wow, if there are 85 million moms in this country and we have between 11 and $15 trillion annually in spending power and we control 85% of the household spending decisions, everything would change if we were to number one, decide where we are united and what we really want to push for. And then number two, collect our voice and our spending power to create change and to insist upon change. And so we created it. We felt so called and so moved by that vision that we created it really quickly. We went online with a post that said it was our logo that is hands sort of forming a womb with a drop of blood. It’s quite edgy. The hashtag said something like, we won’t build back bleeding.

(06:01):

And that was just to say, moms bleed. I bled, I’ll just be super honest and personal right to the intro here, but at least six weeks postpartum with every kid. I have three children, ages 12, nine and seven. I bled for six weeks. And so the idea that we’re sending moms back to work, that one in four moms is back to work just two weeks postpartum. It’s inhumane. And it also sends this message to mothers that if we’re not able to head back into the workplace and mother at these impossibly high standards, we are the failure. And to get to your question about my pivot from Totem, I’ve done a lot of things. I am an attorney by trade, and so I practiced music law and intellectual property law, and then I worked in tech and entertainment and la. But when I became a mom, I was absolutely shocked and pretty angry that there was really no conversation.

(07:03):

This was in 2012 around what a woman goes through physically, mentally, her ambition, her relationships once she becomes a mother. And I wouldn’t have said it this way in 2012, but what I’ve come to realize now is that motherhood is really the last frontier of women’s equality. It’s the motherhood penalty is the biggest tension point in the wage gap, and it increases with every subsequent child that a mom has. And so I really changed career wise when I became a mom. And it took me a while to fully understand my place in creating change. How could I take what I learned and what I have to give to create change? And so when I started Totem, I really did, what I think a lot of entrepreneurs do is say to myself, well, what has helped me? What have I either created or learned that has helped me?

(08:02):

And how can I scale that for other moms? And it sounds silly, but one of the things that helped me go back to work was baking a lactation cookie for myself because I was sort of surprised that I had a really, let’s say, fruitful breastfeeding journey with our first child. I really knew very little about breastfeeding, and I’ve really small boobs. And so I sort of assumed this wouldn’t work out for me. And it did. It was going really well, and I actually really enjoyed it. And for somebody that’s been pretty type A, I loved that I was doing everything and more that I needed to do when I was sitting, watching Netflix and feeding my baby. It was awesome. I love that. Just kicking it in a robe every day and feeding myself and feeding my baby and then thwack back to work. And I was offered the opportunity to come back as the Chief Revenue Officer at Indiegogo, which is a tech startup, and I was employee number five there and had grown it from five employees and taken us through series A and series B.

(09:07):

And so our CEO, I mean, it was wonderful that he gave me the opportunity, called me and said, I think you need to come back as the Chief Revenue Officer, and there are these hires that I want you to explore, et cetera and so on. And so there was that ambitious woman in me that I had been for three decades that was like, heck yeah, you have to do that. And Lean In was the big book and conversation in the zeitgeist. And I felt like I am a really bad feminist and really maybe I’m not being true to myself even if I don’t accept this. At the same time, I had become acquainted with this other version of me that was always there. And I think back to my sister seven years younger than me, I think back to how nurturing I felt toward her and how I have my whole life, that mothering side of me was always there, but I really felt it obviously when I became a mother. And I loved slowing down and I loved being with my baby. I loved making friends who were moms and talking about how we could help each other at home. And so the idea that I would lose that suddenly all at once, going back to work, I couldn’t square it. I really struggled. I remember crying in my car in the driveway that first day and pumping in public bathrooms and just feeling so discombobulated and sad. And I remember our nanny brought our baby in one day and my colleague was like, this is the first time I’ve seen you smile since you came back. I just missed him and I missed that side of me. And so I ended up, one of the issues was with breastfeeding, which by the way, I think a lot of moms put so much pressure on themselves, and we sadly have this big divide, do you formula feed?

(10:57):

Do you breastfeed? What’s right or wrong? And it’s so ridiculous. And I think we torture ourselves as moms in part with the feeding thing because it’s the only metric we have. It’s the only thing where a number’s assigned. You don’t know, am I a good mom? Am I doing this right? Who knows? But then you see, you have a doctor who says, your baby’s not gaining enough weight. You are pumping maybe if you’re breastfeeding and you’re not getting the ounces that you produce before. And so that was happening to me. I was locked inside these meetings about partnerships and how we’re going to grow the company. And I wasn’t taking the time to pump, and so my supply was dropping. I was starving. Starving. I mean, anybody who’s listening in breastfed, I remember going through In and Out Burger and eating three value meals, a linebacker.

(11:42):

I was so hungry and not eating. So I was visiting my husband’s uncles in San Francisco, and one of ’em had been the CMO at Mrs. Fields. And I said, I want to make this amazing lactation cookie that actually tastes good, that I can eat it. I could eat three of ’em and then make enough milk. And so we collaborated together, made this cookie. It really genuinely worked for me. I was making them for neighbors, friends, family, colleagues, and it was working for them. They were like, I cannot believe this. I am suddenly pumping four ounces again at every one of my sessions, et cetera. So that was the first thing that I brought to market.

(12:21):

Even when I brought that to market, I actually worked with an executive coach. This was a huge pivot for me going from making a salary and feeling really good about what I was earning and running a team to going out on my own. It was extremely frightening. I worked with an executive coach and she identified like, okay, so you are not doing this because your passion is about baking or making the perfect cookie. You are mission-centric doing this. Why? And that’s when I identified I want to do everything I can to help moms live whole lives, to help women who have become mothers not lose that essence that they came into motherhood with, and to assimilate the new parts of themselves that they’re encountering and to have them feel whole and sturdy. And so totem means whole in Latin. And that’s how I came about that.

(13:14):

So I was running totem during the pandemic. I was also doing all these totem talks where I would bring in experts on subjects that I knew moms cared about. And we rotated between body, brain, ambition and relationships. But then what happened were a couple things. Number one, my son, our oldest who really invited me into this whole transition, he was diagnosed with type one diabetes at the height of the pandemic was the day after Mother’s Day that we went to the hospital and we figured it out on Mother’s Day. And so of course anybody listening who’s been through something like that, you know that you get really surgical about removing things from your life that are not priorities. You suddenly have this lifelong care load and you’re grieving. And I really took us a hard look at Totum, and I said, I love so much about this, but the cookie bit is not for me anymore.

(14:12):

I can’t do this. I would need to bring on investment capital. I’m in no state to be answering to investors. And so again, I doubled down internally on what is it I really want to create back to where I had been invited to a White House briefing on what became Build Back better. It was the American Families Plan, I believe it was the first name of it, and started working with an organization called Paid Leave Us and seeing what I could do to be helpful. And that’s when it really hit me that there’s no cookie, there’s no pair of jeans. Not that I was selling them, but a lot of other people are. There’s no workout ditto. There’s no totem talk that I can bring to a mom that is going to make things really better for her. And it’s kind of sending the signal if I tell her to buy something or come join something, it’s kind of sending the signal that there’s something outside of her. She’s not enough to be the mom that she needs to be and she’s failing.

Dr. Sarah (15:12):

Or she’s responsible for solving the problem.

Erin (15:15):

A hundred percent. A hundred percent. And so what’s really the problem here? The problem is that, and at the time it was clear to everybody that moms were being the social safety net of this entire country. It was moms who were leaving the workplace to focus entirely on care moms who were becoming teachers on Zoom overnight, moms who were having to learn what foods and drugs and whatever to give to avoid covid or not. It was all on moms. And it just struck me, this is not okay. And when I look back at my whole life always being wired for justice since I was a little girl, becoming an attorney, then feeling so changed when I became a mom, I just felt like this is it. And I was 45 at the time and felt like I finally figured out what I was supposed to do when I grew up dead serious. And so here we are running Chamber of Mothers. And to your point about mom solving the problem, we do grapple with that, that it is this movement of moms across the country. We now have 33 chapters all across the United States. These are state chapters where moms come together and advocate. We advocate at the federal level and we put together content campaigns. We’re working really, really hard and no one’s coming to save us. So it’s on us. And that’s hard and it’s not fair, and I really don’t believe it’s going to change in another way.

Dr. Sarah (16:50):

But to your point though, when you bring thousands of mothers together. When you have something that is greater than the sum of its parts because of that kind of force, that’s so different than telling a mom, if you make this exercise tweak or change your diet or read this book or block schedule that you, I think it’s, yes, women have the power and mothers together have the power to change systems, but we’re trying to change systems, not ourselves. It’s not like there’s something that if you could just change about the way you do things, you’ll have it easier. No, we need to figure out how to come together to change how the things are being set up. To your point. And can you talk about the things, they’re core pillars that Chamber of Mothers is really focused on addressing change around, right, there’s paid leave.

Erin (17:50):

Yeah. So we identified the pillars. And the way that we did that is really back to that first moment when we were saying, how do we unite? What are the issues that are really holding us back and how do we unite around them? And these are really, they’re centered on, they’re really women’s rights issues and there are human rights issues. And I am unabashed about that. We have to be able to center our needs as women, and we have for so long had trouble doing that. And so you look at paid leave, accessible, affordable childcare and improved maternal health outcomes. So these are good for everyone. And every individual should have paid family and medical leave. Every one who has someone to care for, whether it be a child or an aging parent needs time to care. We certainly need childcare. All parents need childcare. And all people who are parenting need childcare from zero to five before public school starts.

(18:57):

And our nation is saying to us, these things aren’t priorities. That’s what they’re saying. So at the end of the day, we advocate at the federal and state and local levels, and when we go and we speak to members of Congress, so many of them who do not want to move these agenda items forward, say, well, how can we pay for it? And we have a lot of different ways of answering that question, but the truth underneath it is you pay for what you prioritize. Just like you run a family, you decide what your values are, and that’s where you spend your money and those are your priorities. Our government is not prioritizing these things and they’re deciding, and this is when I say there’s definitely a women’s rights component to this, even though these support systems benefit everybody and certainly benefit our economy, they are deciding that it’s on women to figure it out, just figure it out. And so we fight for those three pillars at the federal level and state and hyper-local levels as well.

Dr. Sarah (20:01):

And so obviously there’s been a tremendous amount, there was a ton of momentum going into the election on advocating for women’s rights, women’s health, paid family leave, affordable childcare, different people ran on different kinds of platforms. And I think there are a lot of people, and I honestly think people, whether the person that you voted for won or the person that you voted for did not win. A lot of fear right now about what is going to happen to the rights of women birthing people. The mortality rate post birth is incredibly high in our country, and it’s grown more in the last few years. We’re not getting better, we’re getting worse.

Erin (20:56):

We’re getting worse and four times worse for black moms.

Dr. Sarah (21:01):

This is, there’s, I don’t know. I really wanted to have you on this show in the aftermath of the election to just give us some anchoring. Where do we go from here? I know that you guys are a bipartisan group and that your goal is to unify people and that you’re going to figure out ways to continue moving through this administration. And I’m just curious what’s anchoring you guys right now?

Erin (21:32):

Yeah, that’s a great question. We are a bipartisan by design, and we are a 501 C3, which means we do a certain amount of lobbying, but we also do a lot of movement building and other advocacy work. We have built relationships with members of Congress who are Republican, who are Democrat. We have become thought leaders on key pieces of legislation, new legislation in childcare, paid family medical leave, and existing education legislation on the mom Nobus. In order to do that, we have had to and really have grown by having conversations with folks on both sides of the aisle that may disagree or push back against this legislation. And we have brokered relationships with offices that were not speaking formerly, and they didn’t realize that this Republican senator in West Virginia really cares about childcare because she wants to bring steel business to West Virginia and she doesn’t have the workforce without childcare.

(22:45):

And so then there’s a relationship to bring in with a democratic member of Congress who we know who’s building a childcare package. So we’ve already been working in that way very intentionally, that having been said, we put out a statement the day the election results came out, and the heart and soul of that said, working in hope or working in dread, the work continues. And so I also want to say, and we just had a board meeting yesterday and I talked about how will we lead, we will lead with humanity. So we accept all of, not only our leadership’s team’s feelings about the election results and the incoming administration and what might happen at agencies. And by the way, we still, there’s still a lot of wait and see right at this point. There’s a lot of confirmations, lot of things that have to happen. We invite all of those feelings and we’re not saying to anybody, well, you need to move on. You need to get over it, or you are too happy about it. No, we invite in all of our humanity as leaders. And I think that’s super important.

Dr. Sarah (23:52):

Because you’re women running this and you guys need Yes, but I mean there’s something, I know it’s a tangent, our soapbox thing, but it’s not lost on me that when you have these very powerful, very highly educated, very successful women, women, there’s a feminine energy and maternal energy that comes even just to running the organization because it just, I don’t know. As someone who runs a women mother led company myself, our group practice is like my partner and I, we want to bring that maternal energy into our business, not just the work that we deliver, but the organization in and of itself and just, I don’t know, felt like pointing out. I love that.

Erin (24:38):

No, I think it’s super important and we are right there with you. And from day one when we were building this, we all have other careers. I mean, I still maintain private legal practice, albeit very small. I do chamber all the time because I’m obsessed with it and I see it working. But we all have different professions like doctors, lawyers, authors, journalists, et cetera. And so he said, well, how are we going to do this? And Daphne, I keep talking about Daphne, but she’s such a visionary. She said, we need to be a flock of birds. That flies in a V. And when the bird at the front is exhausted, she can fly to the back and then someone else can fly forward. We need to hold this together. And so it’s that kind of energy and that spirit to your point that that’s what we bring to our leadership.

(25:26):

And so the way in which we are leading with these post-election results, it is humanity. You feel how you feel. And we are down to talk about it because it will inform the way we respond and the way we lead and the decisions we make and the strategy we set with curiosity. Curiosity is so big, and I feel like it’s a little overused right now, but what that means to us is if our operative verb is unite. So if we’re uniting mothers as advocates, we got feedback on election day as the results came in that there are, especially among white women, there are a lot of white women and a lot of white mothers who believe that this incoming administration is the best choice for themselves and for their families full stop. So we have responsibility to understand that better, to have more curiosity around that and to learn from that.

(26:28):

And so we’re really in this moment of gratitude that we have established bipartisan relationships working together and in community and really feeling that and knowing that it’s our responsibility to get curious about those points of view. Because if we are going to unite and we are going to be 85 million mothers strong who demand what we want, we have to be on the same page. We have to understand are we thinking about things differently? Is there a different frame that we need to put on these issues? And the way we’re talking about them, is it a matter of semantics and language is, or are we really…

Dr. Sarah (27:12):

A quick question as I am hearing you talk, I’m curious because one question I’ve been playing with is the source of information, does that get played into your thought process? Who is, if a significant number of women are walking out of the polling booths feeling like the only way to get what my family needs, the only way to support my family is to vote in this way. And then there’s also all this other data that says that a lot of the policies of that administration is not really aligned with the rights of mothers and women and reproductive freedom and paid women in the work for all that stuff. Then is there something that is where is there a break in the system of information dissemination that is on your radar?

Erin (28:16):

Certainly, and I think we all have to own that we’re inside echo chambers. Of our making to a certain degree, but they’re not entirely of our making like a certain post or this. I give a friend of mine a bathing suit that didn’t fit me, and she suddenly got an ad for that bathing suit. This was like an in real life personal exchange. And then she’s being targeted. And so we are all targeted with information and misinformation and disinformation, and so much of it is to sell. Almost all of it is to sell, right? And much of it is to divide. And so this is where coming together in real life is critical and it’s so hard for moms to find that time. It’s so hard. We have no time. We are the most time impoverished people, I would argue in this country. And our moms in 33 chapters are making the time to plan that meeting, to get trained up for that meeting, to attend, to attend five meetings, to create a community action plan and then to see it through because they care so much.

Dr. Sarah (29:30):

Do you have bipartisan and participation in those meetings?

Erin (29:32):

Yes, we do. We do. And I will say that one of our goals for 2025 and forward is to invite even more diversity of participation. And I think when we think about diversity, we often think about racial diversity, and that is critically important, and it’s important to get point of view diversity. I mean, we just need people with who have different life experience, different point of view. And I think as a board member of ours, whose point of view I cherish who has done a lot of bipartisan work in the past said at this point, it’s incumbent upon white women to be having conversations among one another to figure out, I am just going to be honest, how did this happen? Where we are voting for somebody who has been very vocal about disrespecting women, quite frankly. I mean, it’s been very vocal about that. We can’t skirt that. That’s true and women are still voting for him. What is that about? And that onus and that responsibility is not on black women, it’s not on women of color. It’s among white women because it’s white women who voted that way. And so what is that about and how can we be in conversation and really, really listen and not listen to immediately persuade or flip, but really listen out of curiosity to become informed, to figure out where are we united because that’s how we create change.

Dr. Sarah (31:06):

Yeah.

Erin (31:06):

That having been said, I really want to underscore that we stand on principle and when there are areas where we completely don’t agree and a point of view is inhumane or causes harm or is damaging, we’ll walk away from that. We’ve articulated around all three of our pillars, what our core values are, what our non-negotiables are. So things like paid family and medical leave should be available to all individuals, must be available to all individuals so that this isn’t gendered. And so when you’re talking to Republican offices, you’re not going to say, so it’s not gendered, but you’re going to say, we need a policy that’s available to all. There are going to be single dads out there, there are going to be dads who are the ones who want to take the leave. We know from a mental health perspective that when dads take a leave, the mom’s maternal mental health is improved.

(32:09):

And just acknowledging that in states with abortion bans, we have already seen the maternal mortality numbers increase. We can’t pretend that’s not a fact. We stand for IVF. I mean there are lines that we hold here, we stand, we stand for all people, all forms of love, all forms of family. And so getting clear on that and being an organization who says, we are in conversation, we are receptive, we want to hear all of it, and we stand on principle. It’s not the easiest place to be. Right? Especially because you have a lot of individuals who might walk away from that meeting and say, look, well, I know how I feel, and that’s fine. But for the movement itself, we have to get clear on how can we unite. And that requires curiosity and there are going to be cases where we simply do not see eye to eye and we will do no harm.

Dr. Sarah (33:12):

I think that’s so important, this idea that being united does not mean agreeing on everything, but it also does mean you have to tolerate having uncomfortable conversations that we don’t always feel like satisfied with.

Erin (33:28):

Totally.

Dr. Sarah (33:29):

And not necessarily, like you were saying, not listening to just, okay, the job here is to flip somebody. I’m waiting for my turn to convince you I’m right and you’re wrong. But to say, help me understand how you got to this position. Because I do think if a mom is voting, if these women are coming out of exit polls and saying, this was my choice because I felt it was best for my family, that is an important thing. We have to understand that.

Erin (34:03):

We have to understand that.

Dr. Sarah (34:04):

How is that? Obviously I live in an echo chamber. I live in my own feedback loop of what I’m getting from social media and also from the people who I live and work with. They share my values or whatever. And I can see myself being like, that’s so contradictory. I don’t understand that. But it’s not contradictive for that person. It’s not, or it wasn’t contradictory enough to create a different choice.

Erin (34:44):

A hundred percent. And so there’s something here around understanding the reasoning, understanding the values, understanding the concerns to find where there is alignment even if there’s not agreement.

Dr. Sarah (34:58):

So then considering that effort, right, you’re basically saying you have not lost hope. You are still pursuing, advocating for these very important rights. And I guess can you talk a little bit, I’m not sure how much you can share right now, but where are you guys at now? I mean obviously we haven’t entered the new administration yet, but lots of things are happening already and I know that you guys are actively connected with Congress and representatives. Are you having conversations already with people?

Erin (35:33):

So we are represented by a government affairs firm called Kroll and Mooring in DC, and they represent us pro bono, thank goodness, because we’re still actively raising and growing this organization. And they are, government affairs team is comprised of folks who have worked inside Republican offices and administration’s and democratic offices and administrations, and they’ve helped us be a bipartisan organization and to do that successfully. And they have indicated to us that there is a lot of interest and appetite inside this administration in speaking with us and in understanding what our priorities are and understanding American mom’s concerns and priorities, full stop. And then our frame and our lens on that in specific. And so back to the humanity of it all, there are folks who might feel so crushed or hurt by things that were said by members of this administration along the campaign trail who aren’t ready for that.

(36:43):

And at the same time, we know that as an organization, we need to be in conversation and move things forward. We are not about to go into the next four years and just say, oh, woe is me. It didn’t go the way I want. No, no, no, no. We have to continue to push these pillars forward. We have to, when it comes to the administration and members of Congress, we’re really there to change minds and to change hearts. There’s a lot of listening and there’s a lot of persuading. There’s a lot of data really using our numbers and using our muscle to say, yes, you’re here. Yes, you won and we are holding you accountable and we will be very clear. And by the way, we did that with this administration too. It wasn’t like we were just a mouthpiece for the Biden administration by any means whatsoever.

(37:33):

I mean, when there were a pieces of legislation that didn’t look the way that we wanted, I know that I’ve shared with you offline that our first post was we won’t build back bleeding because we were not happy with a paid family medical leave solution that was four weeks long because we know how FMLA happened, we now have unpaid 12 weeks, not because data supports. That is when a mom is healthy and sturdy and recovered and ready to go back to work. It was just a negotiated term because people had fought about it for so long. And now here we are 32 years later after FMLA, it’s still 12 weeks and there’s still many, many folks who are ineligible.

Dr. Sarah (38:16):

And it’s not even paid, it’s just it’s not paid. Just you’re allowed to leave your job without getting fired.

Erin (38:22):

Yes.

Dr. Sarah (38:22):

And that doesn’t work for a lot of families because they need the income.

Erin (38:26):

Exactly. I mean, most moms across the country can’t make that choice. It’s not available to them. And so we drew a line, it was difficult to draw that line because we know that incremental change is important. At the same time, we also know that something like that becomes precedent and that’s a problem. It’s really problematic that that’s been the precedent for so long. And so we do stand on principle. We do build relationally, and that is the way we will go into this administration. I mean, just being curious about, tell us about your interest and what moms want. I’m so curious, what are you open to? Because here’s what we believe in and here are all the different arguments we have from an economic standpoint, from a family standpoint, from a mother’s standpoint, what do you need to know cause we have the data.

Dr. Sarah (39:20):

Yeah. And I think that’s really I one of your strongest assets is your data. Can you talk a little bit about how you get this information? You guys have done a lot of stats that you reference and anyone who’s listening can go to the Chamber of others’ website. It’s very good place for lots of resources. But can you talk a little bit about what’s informing the data that you guys are using?

Erin (39:47):

Sure. So we haven’t to date funded our own study. We’re financially not in that position. What we’ve done is, number one, we have a number of really fabulous journalists who are on our founding team who know how to look for accurate numbers. Lauren Smith Brody is the best at this. Her journalistic integrity is unmatched in my opinion. And so she’s really great at helping us know what sources to use. We also look to folks like Vote Mama. They’ve done a lot of research and put out a lot of really important studies that we look to. And so we look to coalition partners for that National Women’s Law Center, but we also have an internal team of journalists and researchers. And I’m an attorney. I certainly have to have integrity about the facts and the numbers that I use. Not my perimenopausal brain always gets ’em right when I talk about it, but if I’m writing it, we’ve got the integrity around there. Same with Daphne. So there’s a lot of integrity around truth telling with facts and numbers and stories among our team. And then just looking to the work of other amazing women that have gathered that data already.

Dr. Sarah (41:06):

Okay. I’m thinking of who’s listening to this podcast right now and is like some people are still reeling, some people are motivated to fight to keep these items front and center. Some people are feeling just dread and not really knowing where to go from here. That numbness that comes, what are you seeing and among the women that you’re talking to and what are you finding has been helpful for the people who are feeling dread and what’s galvanizing the people who are still motivated?

Erin (41:49):

I love that question. I don’t think social media is very helpful right now where the dread is concerned. I think it’s really important to check the echo chamber of social media, what’s being fed to you and how that’s making you feel. I think there’s such a divide on social media. And so I’ve seen a lot of folks sort of take these positions. We as a group of women won’t do this or we’ll do this, and I worry about that a little bit where we lose the sense of what we would believe or feel or know to be true if we were to go away a little bit and just get quiet and follow our inner compass. I think that’s super important. And I think being in community with real people is super important.

(42:45):

I see it as an advantage that I live in South Carolina. I loved living in la. I lived in LA for over a decade. We had all of our kids there. I really loved it. We moved to South Carolina a lot, driven by my husband, it’s closer to my family and it’s more affordable, et cetera, and so on. But it has been so good for me with my chamber mother’s work because there is a lot of diversity of thinking here. It’s certainly not the progressive echo chamber that LA was, although LA is changing too. But I was just at an event last night, like a cookie exchange, and I was hearing from moms who were telling their stories and they were talking about reproductive freedom and really sharing openly their stories about when they were younger women and how they want to parent their teenage daughters. And it was just so informative and enriching for me, and it helped me get away from that feeling of just anger and divide and dread.

(43:47):

And again, none of those feelings are wrong. No feelings are wrong, but we have to think about how are we expressing them and how are we feeling, right? And how does it make us feel when we’re just stuck in the same echo chamber of dread. The other thing that I’ll say too that I think is really important, we realize that our local chapters serve a mental health function for the women who are running them and the women that are attending, they put a function to hope. So these are women who need to and should feel powerful. They should feel agency. They should a sense of hope and that they can do something about building a country or a city or a town or a school that they care about. And so we are really actively drawing in clinicians and mental health support centers to make sure that the way we set the framework and the container inside those chapter meetings is supportive. And that’s not to say because our moms, it’s funny, when I first talked about this at a national meeting with all our chapter leaders, they were like, well, we don’t want a mom group. We don’t want a kumbaya. It’s feel our feelings. These are activated advocates.

(45:11):

And everyone needs that kind of support. It’s hard to sit across from somebody who has radically different views, and when we say political, but it’s true that everything is political these days, right? It’s hard. You wander into conversations, you’re like, Ooh, that felt crunchy. That person has a very different point of view. And so there needs to be support around that and to know where it’s personal and how to be supportive if you feel like somebody stands for a policy or said something that really hurts you on an identity level. Because a lot of this is identity level stuff for women and moms. So that’s really important to us is making sure that we have those mental health supports for moms. We know that change happens inside community and that being together in this is the only way to do it. And so I would say it’s a combination of two kind of opposite things where you need to find time alone, whether that be just in the quiet of your own home or on a walk, to really just be and to be away from all these inputs. We have way too many inputs

(46:22):

And to be in community. Those are two things that we really believe in.

Dr. Sarah (46:29):

And there are two things that I think it’s funny. I was asking you earlier of where do you think the information’s coming from that’s creating some of these discrepancies, right? I think we can all agree the answer is social media. The answer is this endless feed of random information that’s being shot at us off of algorithms that don’t understand what it’s like to be a human being in the world right now. It’s really, like you said, they’re engineered.

(46:57):

And are now decades into their own machine learning of what is the most effective way to get someone to buy something or to get someone to stay engaged longer. And that’s not usually good for us. The human on the receiving end of that algorithm, it’s not even designed by people anymore at this point. It’s self designing itself, and it’s only reinforcing the parts of it that work to keep us buying or keep us engaged, and we know that we engaged the more emotionally hot things are. And if you are feeling dread, my question or my suggestion I guess would be when you notice that dread, can you trace that dread back to some source? And is it like when was trace the line back until the moment you were not feeling dread previously? Maybe you were hanging out with your kids and then you were feeling fine, and then you got some downtime, you popped your phone open and you started scrolling and hey, guess what? 15 minutes later you realized, oh, I’m feeling a lot of dread. It’s like, well, what was it in that timeline that sort of triggered that? And that’s where I would pull back. So yeah, I think being alone and being with human community, that seems like a good antidote for a whole lot of stuff going on right now.

Erin (48:30):

Yeah, for sure.

Dr. Sarah (48:32):

Yeah.

Erin (48:33):

And I mean, as much as it’s logistically difficult to get moms together as advocates in real life, and we do in some areas do zooms in bigger cities to make sure we’re getting a diversity of moms.

Dr. Sarah (48:47):

Zoom is still human connection. It’s just on a screen, it’s real life, it’s synchronous, it’s that asynchronous quality of social media.

Erin (48:56):

Yeah. Just the hits. It used to be when you were talking about trace back where you noticed the dread, remember when we used to say, I’m just going to do a cleanse of who I’m following. It doesn’t matter now. You don’t have to be following them. It’s like your explorer tab is just like you like cats, you like things in India. I mean, it’s crazy. And you lose your sense of anchor anchoring. And I think it’s good. And it’s funny because I want to be like, everybody should take out their phone and follow a chamber of mothers because that’s what we have. Our biggest following is on Instagram. And I do believe that because the information we put out there is about, as I said, there’s a ton of journalistic integrity. There’s a bipartisan sensibility and inputs from all sides. I don’t want to say both sides of the aisle, but from all angles.

(49:56):

And it’s where we find community, it’s where you find out where is your local chapter. It’s where you find out information about legislation. But I would just, with anything, if you feel moved one way or another, you got to sort of read around it. And that’s the other thing, if you’ve done, when you’re learning how to research, you realize that you don’t just go from one source, you have to read around it and really pull it apart. We’re relying on just this one place, and we call it research, and it’s just we have to really all have some integrity around that. And we think about that a lot in terms of what we put out there.

Dr. Sarah (50:39):

I think that’s really important. And you should go follow Chamber of Mothers on Instagram. You should also probably sign up for the newsletter so you can get their information even without having to go on your Instagram. But I have one more question for you, and then I want you to tell us more about where people can get connected. But can you tell us a little bit briefly about the chapters and how many chapters do you have? How do people get involved in a chapter? What does it look like to be participating in a Chamber of Mother’s chapter?

Erin (51:05):

Awesome. Yeah. So we went from 12 chapters at the beginning of this year to now we have 33 chapters. And it’s worth saying that post-election just in the last couple of weeks had over a hundred new moms reach out to us and say, I want to start a chapter. New moms, meaning they’re new to our community, and these are folks that want to lead a chapter and be together and make sure that mothers needs are front and center in the incoming administration. So we’re in the 33 chapters in as many states. We also have an interstate military chapter, and these are really bold, safe spaces to come and to share what your biggest concerns are at a local level, at a state level, at a federal level, and then create an action plan together to create change. And so those action plans look different in every chapter.

(52:05):

One of the things that we’re really focused on in the upcoming year is setting every single chapter has now the goal of they have to have a relationship with a legislator on a federal level, on a state level, and on a hyper-local level, just at least one at all three of those levels. And because we’ve seen that happen with a number of our chapters just organically and have seen so much success from that. So when you have a member of Congress who says, oh, we’ll go to DC and they’ll say, we want to listening session with your chapter that’s full of constituents from my district. And so we can put that together. So that is very effective. At the same time, you need to know the mayor or the city council, whatever it is, who, whoever the people are who are making decisions that are going to impact your day-to-day life, you also need to be connected with them and they need to hear your point of view. And also at the state level, so much change can happen at the state level. And right now that’s going to be very critical looking at what’s possible. We advocate for a federal paid leave policy for so many reasons, continuity, and we think it provides relief to small business. But if we can be getting leave at the state level to increase the number of states that have paid family and medical leave, that certainly puts pressure around what we believe in on the federal level.

Dr. Sarah (53:35):

And I would imagine, I mean, I don’t know that this is why I need you to come on, I don’t know that much about politics, but I would imagine that with an incoming administration on the federal level that is interested in dismantling a lot of resources because they are about deregulating things, that’s kind of their core guiding thing that for at least the next four years, looking at local and state legislation is probably our best source of impact.

Erin (54:08):

Absolutely. That’s absolutely right. And where the needle can move most quickly.

Dr. Sarah (54:14):

Yeah. Well, this has been so helpful. How can people get connected? Obviously go to Instagram, but where else can they connect?

Erin (54:22):

So we’re at Chamber mothers on Instagram, really thriving community there. Our website is just chambermothers.com. That’s where you can sign up for our newsletter and really stay in the loop that way. And that’s where, if you’re curious, if you have a local chapter, we have a heat map on our site, and you can also go to info at Chamber of Mothers, if you’re looking to find your chapter or establish your own chapter or you have any questions or concerns, this is your movement. That’s the last thing that I want to say. I have just such the pleasure and privilege of co-leading this, but this movement, it’s mother’s movement. It’s not mine. It’s all of ours together. And so we want you to take ownership of this and to inform it because we need your experience and your stories to move things forward in the direction that serves moms.

Dr. Sarah (55:13):

Thank you so much, Erin.

Erin (55:14):

Of course,

Dr. Sarah (55:15):

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