In the anticipation of yet another Mother’s Day on May 11, where we will undoubtedly see numerous discussions about the state of motherhood in the United States (hot on the heels of the tone-deaf White House “motherhood initiative” that has many people shocked and angry), comes a new timely book that gives readers an eye-opening glimpse into what motherhood looks like in four different countries.
In ‘Four Mothers’ (out May 6, 2025, Algonquin) award-winning reporter and mother Abigail Leonard offers a profoundly personal look at this transformative period for four women from Japan, Kenya, Finland, and America. She explores the commonalities of early parenting across the countries—the pain of childbirth, the challenges of early breastfeeding, and the mad swirl of joy, exhaustion, and loneliness—alongside the specific cultural pressures and varying social safety nets that dramatically affect each woman’s experience of raising a newborn.
In Japan, Tsukasa receives payments from the government to offset the costs of childcare but endures a painful labor because religious tradition holds that suffering brings a mother closer to her child. In Kenya, Chelsea returns to work at a bank with no breastfeeding accommodations until she is fired after taking time off when both she and her child get sick.
In Finland, Anna benefits from living in a country with a robust maternal care policy allowing her to support her son while working part-time as a single mother. In America—the only wealthy nation in the world without mandated paid maternity leave—Sarah struggles with similar personal and financial upheavals but she does so in a country that neglects the wellbeing of mothers and their children.
Drawing on her years of investigative journalism that has lead to policy change in some areas, Abigail weaves these immersive personal stories together with on-the-ground reporting about each country’s parental support programs, examining how they’ve evolved and why they differ so dramatically. As an international reporter and news producer previously based in Tokyo, Abigail was a frequent contributor to NPR, Time Magazine, and New York Times video. Before moving to Japan, she was a staff producer for PBS, ABC and Al Jazeera America.
Throughout her work, she frequently reports on policies that affect women: The Japanese MeToo movement for NPR News; Japanese “salary-women” for The Washington Post; caregiver wives of injured veterans for PBS; and women who gave birth in private prisons for Al Jazeera America.
In an interview below, Abigail shares more in-depth insights from ‘Four Mothers, why it is relevant now, and what the United States especially can learn in this crucial moment.
In FOUR MOTHERS, you document the first year of motherhood for women in four countries, on four continents. The differences between raising a baby in America, Japan, Finland, and Kenya are clear—but what are the similarities? What is universal when it comes to that first year?
As the women described to me their own experiences, I was surprised by how much it helped me make sense of my own. I saw many of my struggles reflected in theirs: the loneliness of new motherhood, the realignment of relationships with one’s family and one’s self. All the women after they gave birth said, as I did when I had my first child: ‘I can’t believe I’m someone’s mother now’. There’s a realization that this wasn’t just theoretical parenthood anymore, that there was a person on this planet who viewed them as “mother,” a weighty title they weren’t quite sure how to carry.
Over the next few months, they all went through a significant transformation as they became more comfortable in that role, but also grieved their former lives, and reassessed their relationships with their partners and also their own mothers. I was interested in exploring the complicated and nuanced emotional response to new motherhood, and then how local culture and policy could make the transition harder or easier.
All the women you follow come to a common realization when they arrive home with their babies: no matter the level of external support they receive, they are the ones primarily responsible for the baby. Is there anything that can be done to eliminate this overwhelming feeling so many mothers share?
Interestingly, the most successful societal methods of helping new mothers with this feeling of being overwhelmed also share characteristics. For example, Japan and Kenya had virtually identical postpartum traditions of support: Birthing mothers are cared for by female members of their community for a month after they give birth. They eat nutritious and medicinal foods, have consistent social interaction, do not do any work beyond tending to their baby—and all this takes place within their home.
In Kenya and specifically the Luo community, there also were Jocho or “soothers” who spoke with postpartum mothers to provide mental support, similar to what we understand as psychotherapy. But many of these postpartum traditions are fading now. The good news is that there are modern, public programs that have reintroduced some of those traditional methods.
Finland, for instance, provides psychological counseling to expectant mothers and there’s a pilot program to help expectant fathers become better parents. Similarly, in Japan, the government has created postpartum centers where women can go at minimal or no cost to receive support and guidance from trained medical staff throughout their first postpartum year.
So policy can help make these tried-and-true-methods widely available as community support fades–though notably that has not happened in the US, where postpartum services are typically private and very expensive.
On the individual level, I’d advise new mothers to give themselves a break, to remember that early parenthood is hard for everyone, and not to blame themselves if society hasn’t prioritized their needs. Social support is key and they shouldn’t feel bad about reaching out for help; childcare for a new baby was not meant to be a single person’s responsibility.
The four women in the book struggled to meet their society’s expectations for motherhood, which are transmitted through friends, family, people on the street—and greatly heightened by social media. What effect do these expectations have on new mothers? Is it possible to tune them out?
It’s probably impossible to completely tune it out—and too much pressure to put on new mothers to ask them to try. But I think it’s useful to remember that expectations vary widely around the world. So when I was in Japan, for example, my children’s school in Tokyo expected me to fill out a time-consuming form every day about what my children had eaten for dinner, how long they’d slept, even how many times they’d gone to the bathroom!
And there weren’t babysitters – it was expected that mothers would spend pretty much all their time with their children and be completely devoted to them and their daily care. When I returned to the U.S., the expectations were different: that women go back to work quickly so they could simultaneously parent and succeed professionally, but with none of the public support Japanese mothers have, such as a year of maternity leave and then universal daycare.
Because the expectations were so different, I realized they weren’t really all that meaningful, they certainly weren’t designed with mother’s interests in mind and conforming to them doesn’t make you a better mother.
Even more broadly, what I learned from writing this book was that when expectations feel overwhelming, it’s often because there are larger societal failures that women are expected to compensate for individually—whether it’s inadequate parental leave, insufficient child safety measures, or population-boosting policies to help the economy or even provide more citizens to serve in the military during wartime—that disregard women’s wellbeing.
Or issues of safety—like a lack of gun control measures, or adequate regulation of the food supply—that can make it feel like it’s an individual mother’s responsibility to keep her child safe, when really that should be the goal of a functioning society.
With the exception of a few Pacific Island nations, the U.S. is the only country in the world without mandated paid maternity leave. Why is that? Who is working to keep it that way, and what can be done to change that?
We take it as gospel that the US doesn’t have mandatory paid parental leave, which is often chalked up to U.S. exceptionalism, saying we wouldn’t be as economically powerful if we offered parents more support. But there have been generations of activists pushing to change that narrative and to create paid leave as early 1919 with the first convention of the International Congress of Working Women.
In the sixties, feminist leaders pushed again for paid leave, but leaders of the “pro-family” movement pushed back, saying women belonged in the home. By the 1970s, many families could no longer survive on a single income and more women joined the workforce, which reinvigorated the push for paid leave. This time, businesses opposed its realization, complaining they didn’t want to shoulder the cost, which has stifled the implementation of paid parental leave through the various administrations since.
In the last few decades there’s been an interesting shift: large businesses, especially in tech, now use generous parental leave as a recruitment tool, making it difficult for small businesses to compete—which is why many small business groups support state paid leave programs, while some of those bigger companies have opposed federal programs as a way to maintain their competitive advantage.
It could be seen as a kind of “feminist-washing”: appearing progressive while undermining universal benefits. It also creates a challenge for activists trying to build social movements because the most privileged workers already have benefits and are less inclined to join, and they can even take some pride in working for a seemingly progressive company.
But this current system increases inequality and ties workers to employers for benefits that many countries provide all citizens. Those kinds of universal systems not only offer equal protections but also seem to foster national unity and pride, something I observed in both Finland and Japan.
For varying reasons, all four women have less support from their baby’s fathers than they envisioned or wanted. How prevalent is this situation for new mothers generally? What influences the nature and amount of participation from fathers?
Both policy and culture can encourage – or discourage – more participation by fathers and partners. Across Nordic countries like Finland, the idea of paternity leave isn’t new, so there’s a cultural and legal understanding that fathers or non-birthing parents have a right to time with their children and vice versa.
Socially, the positive image of the “Latte Pappa”–hip, urban, involved dads–encourages fathers to be more active. Latte Pappa characters have actually started showing up in Nordic romance novels–they’re desirable because they’re such competent, caring partners. It’s more than that though: When fathers take leave, mothers are less likely to require anti-anxiety medication, antibiotics, even hospitalization. So involved partners are hugely important.
Japan is trying to get there. It has one of the most generous paternity leaves in the world–a full year–but hardly any men take it. Polls show men want to be more involved but worry it will derail their careers. Recently, the country started requiring companies to publish statistics about how many of their employees take paternity leave and] shame companies with low rates to get more male employees to take it. And that seems to be working: rates are going up and society is beginning to change. So this shows how responsive policy can have a demonstrable, positive impact on family life.
In the U.S. there is a group of Congressional representatives called the Dad’s Caucus, comprising mostly young fathers, that’s pushing for men to be more involved both in American family life and crafting national family policy. I spoke with its chair, Rep. Jimmy Gomez (D-CA, 34th District), who helped expand parental leave in California and he said that as more states mandate parental leave for fathers and non-birthing partners, it’s become more acceptable for men to take it and to be more involved parents.
The American father I profiled wanted to be more involved, but he’s an Amazon delivery driver and doesn’t get enough paid time off, so the family couldn’t afford for him to take leave. Without a national policy, it’s hard for individual families to make the choices that best suit them.
“Take care of yourself so you can take care of the child”: The instruction given to Anna–the Finnish mother–sharply contrasts with the messages the other mothers receive, particularly with regard to experiencing and treating pain during childbirth. What did you learn about how new mothers are supposed to prioritize (or deprioritize) their physical and emotional discomfort during early motherhood?
The differences in how societies treat new mothers and their wellbeing starts with labor and delivery. In Japan, there is limited access to pain medication for birthing mothers: most women don’t get them, though many say they want it, and many hospitals only offer it during “business hours” even though most babies are born at night.
This is partly due to a skepticism about opioids extending back to the Opium Wars, but it’s also because of a Buddhist belief that pain bonds the mother and child, and a painful birth prepares women for the pains of motherhood. That philosophy extends into child-raising with the idea that a good mother is one who is self-sacrificing.
This kind of thinking crops up in American birth and motherhood conventions, too. Sarah, the American woman I profiled, aspired to have what she called a “Superwoman” birth, natural and unmedicated. When she wasn’t able to have the kind of birth she’d envisioned, she felt bad, like she already wasn’t a good enough mom.
In Finland, Anna gave birth in a public clinic with pain medication, as all Finnish women do, and never expressed feelings of guilt about it. When Anna was told to take care of herself so she could take care of her child, that took some of the emotional pressures off and allowed her to make decisions less tinged by guilt, fear, or a sense of noble self-sacrifice.
Her decisions felt like real choices to her, and at the end of the day, that’s really what this is about: giving mothers the support they need so they feel real agency and can make these decisions for themselves.
Order your copy of ‘Four Mothers’ OUT NOW, as a great tool for education about the type of universal support mothers need. You can follow Abigail Leonard on Instagram, and learn more about her work on her website.
