By Sylvia Ghazarian
On Mothers’ Day we celebrate mothers for their strength and sacrifice. But May is also Mental Health Awareness Month, and we rarely talk about the systems that are breaking them and about policies that push them deeper into stress, instability, and silence.
Across this country, mothers, especially Black, Indigenous, and other people of color, are carrying an invisible weight. It shows up in sleepless nights, in anxiety that never quiets, in the constant mental math of survival: rent or childcare, groceries or gas, time with their children or time at work. It is the pressure of holding everything together while knowing there is no safety net if something gives.
At Women’s Reproductive Rights Assistance Project (WRRAP), we hear from mothers’ who are working two jobs or cannot take time off without risking their income or employment. Many are already stretched beyond capacity and then face an unintended pregnancy in a landscape where abortion access is restricted, delayed, or entirely out of reach.
This is not just a policy debate. It is a mental health crisis.
The data continues to tell the story. One in five mothers in this country will experience a mental health condition during pregnancy or within the first year postpartum and most will go untreated. Suicide is now one of the leading causes of death for new mothers, accounting for up to 20 percent of postpartum deaths. These are not isolated tragedies. They are the predictable outcome of systems that fail to support pregnant people when they need it most.
And like so many crises in this country, the burden is not shared equally.
Women in marginalized communities are more likely to experience maternal mental health conditions and far less likely to receive care. They are more likely to work in low-wage jobs without paid leave, more likely to face discrimination in the workplace, and more likely to be navigating healthcare systems that do not see or understand them. For many, culturally competent care is not just limited, it is nonexistent.
When a mother cannot take time off to seek care without risking her job, the stress compounds. When she cannot afford childcare, every decision becomes a trade-off. When she is dismissed or judged in a medical setting, she is less likely to return. Over time, that constant pressure erodes mental health turning stress into anxiety, anxiety into depression, and in far too many cases, despair into something far more dangerous.
And when abortion access is stripped away, that pressure becomes unbearable.
Mothers are forced into impossible decisions between continuing a pregnancy they cannot afford and risking the well-being of the children they already have. Between traveling long distances for care or keeping the lights on. Between protecting their mental health and maintaining their livelihood. Mothers also grapple with raising families in safe and sustainable communities.
The impact does not stop with them. It reverberates through entire families. Children absorb instability. They feel the weight of stress in their homes. When a mother is pushed beyond what she can sustain financially, emotionally, physically, it shapes the trajectory of the next generation.
We celebrate mothers for enduring what they should never have to endure. We praise their strength while ignoring the policies that demand it. If we are serious about mental health, we must be serious about dismantling the conditions that are driving this crisis.
That means investing in affordable or free high-quality childcare so mothers are not forced to choose between work and care. It means guaranteeing paid family and medical leave so no one has to risk their livelihood to protect their health. It means addressing wage inequities so working two jobs is not a requirement for survival. It means ensuring access to culturally competent healthcare, where every mother is treated with dignity and respect. And it means restoring access to abortion care nationally because reproductive freedom is not separate from mental health.
When mothers can make decisions about their own bodies and futures, they are better able to care for themselves and their families. They are better able to plan, to stabilize, to breathe.
At WRRAP, we work to reduce these burdens by funding abortion care. We meet them in moments of fear and exhaustion and help create a path forward.
We cannot continue to celebrate mothers while ignoring the conditions they are forced to survive. We cannot talk about mental health without acknowledging the policies that are actively undermining it. And until we change that, the weight they are carrying will only grow heavier.