Issues that Matter Most to Mothers
Rapid

From January through June 2024, Count on Mothers asked mothers nationwide to identify the single most pressing issue they wished policymakers would address related to their children’s health or safety. Findings from this open-ended question informed a follow-up survey conducted in July 2024 with 593 mothers across 49 states and the political spectrum. Results show striking consistency across geography, education, and ideology in the issues mothers prioritize, as well as in the underlying stresses shaping family life.

July 31, 2024
Related themes:

Shared Priorities and Cross-Partisan Alignment Among Mothers

  • Five issues consistently rise to the top:
    Mothers most frequently identified substance use or abuse, abortion and reproductive health, healthcare access and cost, food access and nutrition, and childcare affordability and quality as the most pressing issues affecting families.
  • Substance use is the top concern nationwide:
    At least 8 in 10 mothers report concern about substance use or abuse in their family or community, making it the most widely shared issue across the sample.
  • Healthcare, food, and childcare cause widespread stress:
    Roughly 7 in 10 mothers say healthcare issues have caused stress or harm in their family, nearly 77% cite food access, cost, or nutrition as a major concern, and at least 6 in 10 report stress related to childcare access, cost, or quality.
  • Reproductive health is a critical but more polarized issue:
    Nearly 80% of mothers view abortion and reproductive health as a critical issue, though views vary more by political affiliation than on other topics.
  • Financial stress is the most common underlying barrier:
    Across open-ended responses, financial stress emerged as the single most frequently cited barrier, regardless of family size, followed by challenges related to work-life balance and flexible employment.
  • Shared emotional strain across ideologies:
    Mothers across political backgrounds expressed a common feeling of falling short—financially, emotionally, or socially—highlighting shared pressure despite differing circumstances or beliefs.

This report focuses on information Count on Mothers collected from January 2024 through June 2024 — the pressing issue each respondent wished to be addressed by policymakers, the last question on every survey. We compiled the results to find out the top five issues and then designed an instrument to probe deeper into these areas in July 2024. A total of 593 Mothers residing in 49 states and from a representative sample across the political spectrum provided feedback based on their first-hand knowledge. Regarding the political background of the survey respondents, the sample closely reflects the U.S. breakdown of political ideology among women according to Gallup. 16% identified as very conservative, 20.1% identified as conservative, 33.9% identified as moderate, 15.9% identified as liberal and 12.5% identified as very liberal, and 1.7% identified as other. After analyzing Mothers’ opinions from the survey, we take this aggregate data and share it with industry leaders, policymakers, and the public so they are educated on Mothers’ firsthand experiences.

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Methodology
Count on Mothers conducts nationwide surveys and qualitative research with U.S. mothers. Findings are analyzed and reported in aggregate to inform research publications and decision-making related to families.
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