The Radical Promise of a Universal Mother Income:

Rethinking Domestic and Parental Work, Child Care, and Economic Justice

My Universal Mother Income proposal challenges one of the most insidious myths of modern capitalism: that the work of mothering is not “real” labor. The UMI is a call to action, arguing that mothering is the foundation of all socioeconomic productive life; yet, in neoliberal post patriarchy, it remains unpaid, devalued, and taken for granted.

My proposal for a Universal Mother Income (UMI) is radical in its simplicity: If motherhood is labor, then it must be compensated. A guaranteed income for mothers would recognize, in standard economic terms, the essential productive value of caregiving; it would disrupt the obsolete patriarchal structures that still keep mothers dependent, financially insecure, and overburdened by the expectation of selfless unconditional devotion; and it would refocus feminist priorities on mothers, who are the only women neglected and left behind by the women’s liberation movement.

Motherwork was valuated through the ten millennia of patriarchy, when men had to work to pay for their wives and children. Motherhood was paid for by the recognized fathers in exchange for patrilineal rights as long as we were patriarchies in which fertile women were not actual persons. But in the mid-century transition from personal dependence to independence, women were treated as if they had always been property owners, workers and citizens, and as if they were reproductively equal to men, rather than tasked with carrying on the perpetuation of our species.

Women are +51% of the population, +70% of the poor, +83% of single parents, are doing +66% of the work, producing +50% of the food, earning just +11% of the pay, and owning just +1% of the land worldwide. This is why we still need feminism, a feminism that argues for the rights of mothers, who are the women most different from men, who can’t readily adapt in a workplace readymade for nonprocreative men.

My idea for the official monetization of the work of mothers may sound utopian, but it is not without precedent. Many feminist thinkers and activists, from Silvia Federici to the Wages for Housework movement of the 1970s, argued that capitalism survives by extracting unpaid labor from women in families. I have built on this tradition. But I don’t ask for charities or reparations. I demand our due inclusion in the workforce.

If women get paid to bear other people’s babies as surrogates, then they are due to earn an equivalent amount to gestate, birth and breastfeed their kids. If insurance companies pay them to carry babies that legally belong to others, then that sum is the current valuation for that labor. If people pay women to nurture, raise, educate and caretake their kids, then that is the proximate standard valuation for the daily work of nurturing, raising, educating and caretaking of children, our own or others’.

Why Universal Mother Income?

The economic logic of a UMI is undeniable. The unpaid labor of mothers generates trillions of dollars in value. According to Oxfam, if women’s unpaid care work were compensated at minimum wage levels, it would amount to over $10.8 trillion per year globally. That is more than the tech industry, the global military, or the financial sector.

Yet, instead of being rewarded, mothers are devalued and penalized. The “motherhood penalty” is a well-documented fact: Women who become mothers earn significantly less over their lifetime than their childfree counterparts, while men who become fathers see an increase in wages. Bosses expect that mothers will be less committed to their jobs; this results in lost promotions, lower starting salaries, and the idea that mothers will “make up for” their lost earnings through the emotional rewards of years of unpaid domestic labor. While I acknowledge that motherwork is physically, emotionally and generationally beneficial, I know that it is socially erasing for women who choose to become mothers, as the modern world will constantly ask them what they do “for a living,” implying that motherhood is not taxing nor rewarding as a career.

A Universal Mother Income would not only compensate for the financial injustice done to mothers in post feminist patriarchy, but also transform inherent societal attitudes toward married and unmarried full-time caregiving. For example, the UMI would:

• Redefine motherhood as valuable labor rather than an unpaid “choice” or accident

• Reduce economic dependence on domestic/marital partners or on the state

• Combat child poverty and femicide by giving mothers direct financial resources

• Enable genuine reproductive choice, allowing women to decide whether and when to be mothers without economic coercion or financial despair

The Backlash Against Economic Justice for Mothers

Any proposal that challenges the status quo faces resistance. Critics argue that paying mothers would discourage women from participating in the paid workforce or that it is financially unfeasible, a drain on public resources. My proposal provides answers to the objections: in my policy, every qualified mother who signs up will receive a salary, health coverage, and social security benefits for the first six years of her child’s life. Every prospective or new mother ages 18 to 36 will also qualify, by providing the baby’s birth certificate, to receive a signing bonus payment for the months of pregnancy which can go toward a mortgage as a down payment. She will then receive her monthly pay for the next six years along with access to a mandatory free education that will lead her to graduate the UMI with a College accreditation of her choosing as a bridge to another career path. The UMI will be paid for up to two children per mother since it is modeled on the Armed Forces enlistment benefits, because I see young motherhood as a service and a rite of passage into adulthood.

While it may free jobs for young men, the UMI does not replace paid employment—it ensures that the essential labor of caregiving is no longer treated as invisible and disposable. And it provides young mothers with diverse post-motherhood career opportunities that are tailored to the reproductive cycles of women rather than those of men. Far from trapping women in sequestered domesticity, it frees them from financial dependency and contractual compromise, giving them more choices and more tools with which to structure their lives, and it envelops them in the support and camaraderie and lifelong friendships of the growing UMI community. It will especially benefit young mothers, single mothers, low income mothers, at risk mothers, and mothers of color, who disproportionately bear the economic burdens of caregiving.

Finally, funding a UMI is a logistical challenge that can be met if mother pay becomes a cultural priority. Governments subsidize corporations through tax breaks, bail out failing banks, and invest billions in military spending. Governments already fund a few dozen nonprofit, tax credit, and welfare programs that support mothers and children. I aim to consolidate preexisting parental assistance and housing assistance programs into a centralized Mother Fund which is further funded by a flow of voluntary payroll contributions from donors who believe in the UMI or who do not plan to have children or who find themselves with an abundance of means.

The Future of Parental Care Work

My argument is primarily not about money—it’s about power. The UMI is not just an economic proposal; it’s a feminist intervention into our hierarchical constructs of labor, value, love, and justice. We have not yet replaced the structures of patriarchy that science and late capitalism demolished. The UMI forces us to ask: What kind of world do we want to build? One where the daily care work provided by mothers and primary parents is erased systemically, or one that recognizes this primary labor as the foundation of everything else in society?

If we take the UMI challenge seriously, we must confront the uncomfortable truth that capitalism still depends on the free labor performed by mothers. If economic security for mothers is considered a modern “luxury” while corporate welfare is considered a necessity, that is a reflection of our societal values, not of our economic constraints.

The Universal Mother Income rewrites our old standards of economic valuation and procreative relations, redistributing resources in a way that acknowledges the sacred work of maternal reproduction and caregiving as the most essential form of work.

Some will dismiss the idea as unrealistic. But then again, universal suffrage was called unrealistic. So was paid maternity leave. So was the end of child labor. Feminism has a history of making the impossible inevitable. Voluntarily inevitable.

The question is not whether we can afford a Universal Mother Income, but whether we can afford to continue as a civilization without one.