Dear CEOs:
American Moms Don't Trust You
The 2024 Edelman Trust Barometer found that businesses are the most respected institutions in the world, with 53% of Americans trusting businesses more than NGOs, government, or media.
But simultaneously, 59% of Americans do not trust business leaders, believing that they are likely to be telling purposeful falsehoods in an effort to purposefully mislead the population.
Count on Mothers found an even more striking number in our July pulse poll. Out of 650 American mothers polled, over 80% of mothers who participated in the qualitative section had a negative sentiment towards business leaders, while only 5% had a positive sentiment.
Around half those respondents explicitly stated they felt that business leaders put profits over consumers' health and safety. And almost a quarter of those Mothers from a range of ideologies and regions stated they felt as if corporations were intentionally harming consumers.
At an even higher rate than the general population, mothers look at CEOs and see liars.Thanks for reading the Count on Mothers Report!
"Moms are waking up to the subtle (and not so subtle) ways you prey on our kids,” one conservative Mother from Georgia wrote.
“You consistently value profits over people in every decision you make and yet you expect me to trust you enough to consume your products,” wrote one liberal Mother from Ohio. “You make me sick and angry.”
Both conservatives and liberals wanted to impress upon business leaders that they, along with Mothers and children, are all part of a single collaborate society and should behave with that in mind. “We have a shared responsibility for keeping our kids safe and healthy and well,” said one liberal Mother from California. “Concern for future generations should be more important than being a billionaire,” concurred a conservative Mother from New York.
Some Mothers were angry, including one very liberal Mother from South Carolina who said, “You making money is in direct contradiction to my primary job of protecting my children. I will do whatever I have to to make sure government regulates you since you won’t.”
Other Mothers were plaintive, simply asking for help in a complicated world. “As a working class parent, there’s only so much that I can control in my child’s life, and that scares me,” explained one moderate Mother from Ohio. “The things that will largely impact my son's health are controlled by corporations who prioritize profits. What’s in his food, what is in his water, what is in the air he breathes, what is in his medicine. All beyond me.”
A moderate Mother from Indiana hoped that her words would convince business leaders to recognize the effects advertising had on families. “You don't realize how influential everything in the world is to kids,” she wrote. “Please be mindful of your messaging.”
And many conservative moms took specific issue with messaging that they saw as politicized. “Stop poisoning our children, whether that be physically by what they eat/consume or mentally,” insisted one very conservative Mother from South Carolina.
“The health of our children isn't a toy in your hands,” a moderate Mother from Florida said, putting it simply and clearly: “The health of our children must be as important to you as the health of your children.”
Count On Mothers polled 650 Mothers from 47 states. Regardless of political ideology and region, Mothers overwhelmingly expressed a deep distrust of business leaders.
Of the 621 Mothers who identified politically, 9.3% identified as very conservative, 19.5% identified as conservative, 39.5% identified as moderate, 20.0% identified as liberal and 9.8% identified as very liberal, and 1.9% identified as other.
Responses to the open-ended question were categorized by overall response sentiment into three categories: positive, neutral, and negative. Responses with a negative sentiment were further categorized into seven groups:
1. Comments about harmful ingredients (14% of responses)
2. Profit over consumer safety (31% of responses)
3. Comments that products are unsafe or wanting safer products (13% of responses)
4. Wanting lower prices (12% of responses)
5. Wanting improved quality (7% of responses)
6. Wanting businesses to have more accountability/better regulations/more transparency (19% of responses)
7. Comments about getting politics out of business/pushing ideologies and certain agendas (5% of responses)
Other than the sentiment to keep political ideology out of business, which was confined to conservative responses, the data shows that while language differs among differing ideologies, the sentiment among mothers was the same. They believe that when corporations have a choice between the bottom line and consumer safety, business leaders will choose the former.
As confidence in the truthfulness in business leadership continues to decrease year to year, if the Edelman Trust Barometer is correct, the anger of mothers may drive that decrease. As mothers go, so goes the nation.
