MEGAN GALLAGHER: Money makes everything easier. People who have money, there’s just no question in the world that having more socioeconomic power, being higher up on the socioeconomic ladder makes everything easier, makes childcare easier, makes everything easier. There’s one thing that money just can’t fix when it comes to motherhood, and it’s the guilt. You cannot buy your way out of the guilt.
GABE GONZÁLEZ: Welcome to We Disrupt This Broadcast. I’m your host, Gabe González. Today, we’re talking about a whodunit that is equal parts mystery and social commentary. The Hulu series, All Her Fault, starts off with the abduction of five-year-old Milo, unraveling the carefully curated life of his mother, Marissa, played by Sarah Snook.
The show, based on the 2021 novel of the same name by Andrea Mara, takes us through quite a few twists and turns as Milo’s disappearance is investigated. But what’s glaringly consistent throughout the series is the fact that at every juncture, the blame and judgment invariably falls on the mothers in this story.
All Her Fault effectively uses the thriller genre to explore a deeper issue that our society grapples with, the unspoken and unacknowledged burden placed on working moms. On a personal level, we see women shoulder the emotional burden and default caretaker role. They’re often juggling school events, doctor’s appointments, and play dates in a way that’s taken for granted by their male partners.
This is best displayed through the challenges the women central to this series face. In addition to Marissa, we have Jenny, played by Dakota Fanning, a fellow working mother who relies pretty heavily on the help of a nanny just to stay afloat. And then we have Carrie, played by Sophia Lillis. Uh, she’s Jenny’s nanny, who is pretty much the driving force behind a lot of the conflict in the series. Their paths converge in ways that are meant to pit them against each other, but still they find ways to empathize.
Today, our executive producer and executive director for the Center for Media and Social Impact, Caty Borum, will talk to series creator, Megan Gallagher, about drawing from her own motherhood journey to give voice to a feeling that often goes unspoken.
Then, Caty will chat with Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner, the CEO of MomsRising, an organization that looks to support moms and families on a policy level by bringing about change through education and grassroots initiatives. Don’t go anywhere. We’ll be right back.
GABE GONZÁLEZ: Welcome back. We’re talking about All Her Fault with Megan Gallagher. She’s joined in this interview by Caty Borum.
CATY BORUM: So today on the podcast, we’re joined by Megan Gallagher, who’s the showrunner, executive producer, and creator of this really incredible series, All Her Fault. When you optioned this book to become a series, what was it about the kind of unspoken struggles of motherhood and the invisible labor that we carry, and the inherent way that blame and responsibility falls to working mothers, why was it important to give this particular idea a voice in an entertainment television vehicle?
MEGAN GALLAGHER: In terms of bringing that theme to the screen, it’s absolutely in the book. I had fun amplifying it a great deal for, you know, eight hours of television. But this domestic labor discrepancy that just exists so commonly in heterosexual relationships where, you know, both mom and dad go off to work, and then both of them come home, and one of them keeps working.
You know, this idea that women and mothers are sort of the default parent. We’re the ones that do all the mental labor and mental load of keeping track of, you know, it’s not just about doing the laundry, it’s about remembering that the soccer uniform has to be clean on Saturday ’cause there’s a game, and that a week from now is the science project, so we better start now.
And it, that kind of mental load of managing everything and being the one to make lists for people, and just all of it, it’s so prevalent and so real and so pervasive in every woman I know with kids. And every woman I know with kids between the ages of about 35 and 55, roughly, has regular breakdown hysterics, and cries outside of their kids’ school, and then gets it together before they go to the office.
CATY BORUM: Yes.
MEGAN GALLAGHER: And the refrain I always hear is, I feel like it’s the same sentence, which is, “I just don’t understand how it’s all supposed to get done. I just don’t understand how it’s all supposed to get done.” It just felt like it’s so real, and it’s so pervasive, and it’s so prevalent. It’s not like something that’s going on quietly in the background. It’s massive to working mothers, but I haven’t seen it on the screen, really. I’ve seen it maybe in a scene or two here or-
CATY BORUM: Yes …
MEGAN GALLAGHER: …you know, if it’s a relationship drama, it might be one of the things that they’re arguing about or something like that. But it hasn’t really been front and center, knock you over the head with a theme like, “This is what the show is about.”
And I worry about things as a writer, I worry all the time. It’s kinda my predominant personality trait. But that was the one thing I didn’t worry about. I knew that was gonna hit. I knew that that was gonna chime with audiences because I knew we were being really, really underserved on that theme, and that that was long overdue to be on the screen.
So no, it was in the book for sure, but it was a delight amplifying it and playing with it for eight episodes and seeing those actors bring it to life.
CLIP: All Her Fault
Peter is the king of tickle time. You know, he gets down on the floor and he makes forts out of pillows, and he’s great at that stuff. But when it comes to everything else, like pick-ups and drop-offs and doctor’s appointments, you know, lunches, snacks, clothes, activities, shoes, he just doesn’t see it. It’s not on his radar. Probably shouldn’t trash my husband in the women’s bathroom. Classy, right?
CATY BORUM: What your series does, in every episode, there is a structural reality that shows itself, right? It’s not just the mother who holds all of the parenting. It’s like even in the case of the kidnapping, one thing that I picked up on was the mother is responsible for the business of the kidnapping response.
And so the genius of your series, I think, is that you actually manage to show the full structural patterned way that this kind of undercurrent of impossibility for working mothers shows itself. And so one thing I wanted to ask you is, you know, thinking about a genre like this that is crime, it’s thriller, it’s like who done it, we don’t know till the end, but what a fun series of genres to put a massive social commentary on the structural inadequacies for working mothers.
And it sort of occurred to me a little bit that in the same way that the horror movie Get Out is a horror genre, but you realize, oh, it’s actually about racial injustice and racial terror. And so I found a kind of parallel in your series that you’re watching a crime drama, it’s melodramatic, and there’s lots of emotions all the time, and the acting is incredible, but the whole thing is this commentary on being a working mother in America. And I just wondered how you respond to that kind of comparison?
MEGAN GALLAGHER: Well, I mean, Get Out is a fabulous movie, so I’m very flattered-
CATY BORUM: Yeah …
MEGAN GALLAGHER: by anything that would, uh, compare me in any way with that is, is incredibly- … flattering for obvious reasons. But we obviously have a fantastic detective character who’s a really important character. But overall, domestic thrillers are just that. They’re domestic, and a lot of the clues lie in, not in fingerprints or CCTV camera. Typically, they lie in domesticity, and they lie in the things that you notice inside a home, patterns of behavior, you know, something somebody said that doesn’t quite make sense, things that might unravel in a living room, you know, rather than an interrogation room.
And so it just felt like what a great way to use that theme. I mean, who’s more observant in a home than a mom? It really was very fun and easy to pair that theme with this crime motor, this genre motor to it, you know, that, you know, the cops are, wanna know what Milo was wearing last, and who’s gonna know that?
CATY BORUM: Yes.
MEGAN GALLAGHER: You know what I mean? The cops wanna know the names of the teachers and the teacher’s assistant. Who’s gonna know that? Right? I mean, it’s like something like minute eight or something like that, and it’s already, the divide is just so clear.
CATY BORUM: I wanted to talk about that question of blame, sort of gender-based blame and- Your thoughts on that, how you wanted to bring that out, was that conscious? Was that just something that manifested in the way that you wrote the series? Or how much was that a kind of deliberate act on your creative part?
MEGAN GALLAGHER: Deliberate for sure, and absolutely something that we discussed at length, my producers and I, when we were developing the story. That’s generally where we point blame when it comes to parenting, you know what I mean? We don’t generally point a whole lot of blame at fathers. We tend to point blame at mothers. And the part that I cared about the most, or that I found the most moving, and Sarah’s performance was so, so good, in episode three when she’s really blaming herself.
CATY BORUM: Yes.
MEGAN GALLAGHER: Because she had a work obligation during this marathon, and because of that, she left her son with a nanny, and she since realized that during that time when her son was with the nanny, he might have met somebody that was involved in the kidnapping. And if only I hadn’t been at work. If only I hadn’t been doing a work meeting, you know.
And she has sort of a hysterical breakdown, which is so beautifully done by Sarah, on the kitchen floor. To me, it’s, that’s the hardest part, is yes, society blames women and mothers, and the press will blame women and mothers, and other mothers will blame women and mothers.
CATY BORUM: Yes.
MEGAN GALLAGHER: When she’s blaming herself, I find that to be the most heartbreaking, I think. ‘Cause it’s so baked into us, this internalized misogyny, that it’s all our fault and that we should’ve done this better, and I should’ve known, and I should’ve this- and I should’ve that. That stuff was 100% mapped out and planned out and discussed at length during development.
CLIP: All Her Fault
I had a client that I knew was gonna be at the race, and I wanted to talk to them about work without Milo And so that’s why I asked Ana to be there, so I could… So I could work. And if I hadn’t had done that, then Milo wouldn’t- Oh. I’m sorry. It’s okay. I’m sorry I didn’t it’s, it’s all my fault.
It’s not true it’s- Listen to me.
Please. You’re wrong. Please, just- Listen to me. Hey … no. Please just hate me. Hey. Hate me. It would be so much easier if you would hate me.
Mar, hey.
Stop being nice to me, please.
Mar, listen to me. I’m never gonna hate you.
CATY BORUM: The other really strong theme that comes out really explicitly in this series is the strong kind of sister friendship that develops between Jenny and Mar. And that also feels deliberate to us because we often see women attacking one another, but you show this solidarity between these two women. Talk to us about how the support and genuine friendship with these two women was an important center of the story, and I will not spoil it for people that haven’t watched it, but it does end with these two women in a quite a dynamic way.
MEGAN GALLAGHER: Yeah. That’s a very special relationship, and again, was just something that I was hugely in sync with my producers at Carnival, but also the broadcaster Peacock. We all really felt the same way, that in the book it’s a lovely relationship between the two of them. Absolutely, and it’s one of the reasons why I really love the book as much as I did.
But when you’re expanding a book into eight episodes, you know, you’re always looking at, okay, what other content can we do? What other things can we do? And a big part of the series is throwing shade on multiple characters. You know, we suspect this person for a while, and this person for a while, and that’s the kind of fun genre-ness of it. We never throw any shade on Jenny.
CATY BORUM: Yes.
MEGAN GALLAGHER: Ever. And no one was interested in it. Nobody wanted to see her looking suspect and feeling cold and weird and untrusting of her. It just wasn’t satisfying and it wasn’t what we wanted to do. It felt like low-hanging fruit. It felt like, like you said, women pitted against each other. We’ve just seen it a million times.
CATY BORUM: So tired.
MEGAN GALLAGHER: What’s interesting to me about them, and again, this is me using what was in the book, so again, to give credit to Andrea, but these are two women who have every reason to not get along, not be together, and/or be fighting. Because Marissa has every reason, she’s traumatized and hysterical and all this, she has every reason to point a finger at Jenny and say, “You should have checked these references. Who is this crazy, you know, nanny that you hired? It’s your fault.” And Jenny has every reason to not go over to Marissa’s house and to avoid that woman like the plague.
CATY BORUM: Yes. Yes.
MEGAN GALLAGHER: You know, shame, guilt, and a potential lawsuit. You know what I mean? So they have every reason to not come together. But I just, I didn’t feel like it was being overly, you know, rose-colored glasses or something. It just felt honest to me. I know too many women who even in that unbelievably difficult situation would still show up as the best version of themselves. Too many women who would dig deep and do the right thing. Despite how difficult it is.
And that just felt right, and nobody ever wanted to deviate from that. And in a show that casts so many suspicions here and there, and can be cold in the sense of so many people are suspects, they were always our warm, gooey center. And we never wanted to stray from that. And those two actresses also, they’re just so fabulous together.
CATY BORUM: We really wanted to talk to you about the social class commentary. It’s interesting to see a crime thriller really have a set of through lines and commentary about social class. So tell us about the social class story that you were hoping people would get from this series.
MEGAN GALLAGHER: There’s something that I thought was really interesting, and that we were really interested in depicting in this one, that we wanted the Irvine family, Sarah Snook’s family, to have a certain amount of money. Because we needed, for various reasons, for a ransom to really make sense, right?
CATY BORUM: Yes.
MEGAN GALLAGHER: For a long time. So it wasn’t just, you know, to randomly make the family rich. It served a purpose within the plot. But what I do think is really interesting is money makes everything easier. People who have money, there’s just no question in the world that having more socioeconomic power, being higher up on the socioeconomic ladder makes everything easier, makes childcare easier, makes everything easier.
CATY BORUM: Mm-hmm.
MEGAN GALLAGHER: There’s one thing it can’t fix. There’s one thing that money just can’t fix when it comes to motherhood, and it’s the guilt.
CATY BORUM: Mm.
MEGAN GALLAGHER: And you cannot buy your way out of the guilt. You can buy a nanny and pay for a nanny, and that is gonna make your life so much easier. There’s no question about it. But there is no amount of money that gets you out of the guilt of not being there enough or feeling like you’re not there enough or feeling like you’re giving too much attention to your career and not enough to your child in the way that, you know, fathers don’t, I don’t think, typically have the same level of guilt. And so that was something that we were interested in looking at, that that’s just something money can’t fix.
CATY BORUM: Yeah.
MEGAN GALLAGHER: The mother guilt. It can fix a lot of things, and it does, but not that.
CATY BORUM: When the series starts to identify Carrie’s identity, the young nanny, and her background is clearly a lower socioeconomic status, you start to explore how class and income can influence the hurdles that parents face and the, you know, what happens to her. It feels like the social class commentary was really important, both as a way to say what you just said brilliantly, that it doesn’t erase the sort of cognitive and emotional difficulties that women face. But it is certainly a different story for women who don’t have the means to have a nanny or even have a pregnancy that’s well taken care of.
MEGAN GALLAGHER: So it’s, episode seven is when you really get Carrie’s story, and you get who she is. And, you know, there were definitely problems within her family, of course. Certainly, I don’t think the problems within her family… Or there’s problems within all the families. Yes. So I hope that was pretty evenly distributed throughout the series. But I always think about it when I was done with it, that you could tell an entire eight-episode story about what happened to Carrie. She could be the protagonist. You know, if you just reverse things, you could tell an entire television series about this woman who thought her child died in this accident, who was young and impoverished and didn’t have any way to pursue or have more questions.
CATY BORUM: No power.
MEGAN GALLAGHER: No power whatsoever. Later found out that’s not what happened, later found out her son was alive and well and with a different family, and then has no legal recourse. I mean, there’s, you can’t… If you’re Josephine Murphy, which is who Carrie is, you can’t walk into a police station and say, “I believe that child over there is mine.”
You know, no one’s gonna take you seriously. No one’s gonna grant a DNA test. The Irvines would have so many lawyers on her and a restraining order in two seconds flat, and it would be… you know. Yeah. So you have no recourse. But that’s your kid. And what would you not do for your kid? You know?
CATY BORUM: Right.
MEGAN GALLAGHER: It’s, I don’t know. There’s a… And that’s all from the book, to be clear, and that’s to give great credit to Andrea. Like, it’s this incredible story that we’ve spent six episodes assuming that this woman is crazy and assuming that this woman is evil, or God only knows what, only to find out that, I mean, her methods might be a little off, but she’s pretty darn justified in her emotions and feelings. From a storytelling perspective, I just found that so incredibly exciting to dive into.
CATY BORUM: Yeah, and actually, you know, to your point for contrasting the scene, you know, what you just sort of painted the idea that Carrie would have any power, cultural power, legal power, financial power to get justice, compared to the scene where our, our beloved detective character is propositioned with basically destroying evidence to get his kid into a school that can properly care for his son with a disability.
I mean, it’s a… Again, I felt like your show is a million scenelets like that, that are making a commentary that all come together, that weave together and are not lost on anyone watching. You don’t even have to be a viewer who’s looking for these themes, but they pattern.
And so I guess I’ll ask one final question about a detective character, Alcaras, that we all loved. He has his own kind of difficult moral choices of his own in the series, but he never blames the women the way that the other men, you know, including his partner, do. And so in part this might be because he is sort of, unlike the other men in the character, is such an active parent and a partner. But why did you feel like it was important to include a male character and a dad character who was a very present father, and also turned out to be the kind of moral voice of the case, actually?
MEGAN GALLAGHER: I know too many awesome dads, big-hearted men. They exist, and it was an opportunity to show how happy a household could be. You know, even when you’re dealing with, you know, disabilities, there can be so much joy and things can be balanced. He’s a detective, she’s a nurse, like, they’re both busy, they both have long shifts.
But like, it can be great if everyone’s just chipping in. Like, it can be cool. And I just know too many men who love their kids and who are involved and who are great parents to not include that. That felt wonderful. Just that positive male energy. We just needed some positive male energy in this series I feel like. Yeah. And no, Michael was just absolutely incredible.
CATY BORUM: You know, we champion lots of storytellers on this podcast, and we always have a special place in our heart for women that are crushing it because of the historical dearth of women in charge of storytelling. And so we’re all rooting for you, and we’re just big fans of the series.
MEGAN GALLAGHER: Thank you so very much.
GABE GONZÁLEZ: Thanks again to Megan Gallagher and Caty Borum for kicking off today’s episode. Even though All Her Fault leans into the thriller genre in a way that feels familiar, at least structurally, it’s imbued with so many elements that are timely and urgent and expand our idea of what a series like this can do.
It’s also really great and honestly refreshing to see a series not only center a friendship between two moms, in this case, Marissa and Jenny, but to also show us that their relationship might be the healthiest one these women have. When their partners or coworkers can’t be bothered to empathize, they turn to each other for support.
The solidarity between the women in this series comes from a shared knowledge that they are, as Megan alluded to, expected to show up as the best versions of themselves in all situations, even the most extreme. So don’t go anywhere. When we come back, we’ll be talking to Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner, CEO and executive director of MomsRising.
GABE GONZÁLEZ: Welcome back. Now that we’ve spoken to Megan Gallagher, showrunner and creator of the series All Her Fault, it is time for our next guest to join us. Here’s Caty Borum talking to Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner.
CATY BORUM: We are talking today to Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner, who is the CEO and executive director of MomsRising, an organization that has been tackling the most critical issues facing mothers and families in the United States through education and grassroots actions. It’s just a huge effort, and Kristin is the true expert on the many challenges that face mothers in the United States. And so we’re just delighted to have you join us, Kristin.
KRISTIN ROWE-FINKBEINER: Thanks so much for having me.
CATY BORUM: So this show, All Her Fault, it kind of lays bare all of these structural and cultural inadequacies that really face mothers in the United States. And so what we’re looking at is the invisible emotional labor and physical labor that so many mothers have to carry in their homes. How is this something we can address as a society, and what is MomsRising doing to approach this ongoing challenge?
KRISTIN ROWE-FINKBEINER: That’s such a big question. And fortunately, there’s big solutions that we can all do together. First, let’s start with the show title, All Her Fault. In the United States of America, basically, politicians, on the whole, over time, have made a lot of the problems that moms are facing seem like they are all her fault. They are not.
When this many people are having the same types of struggles at the same time, we don’t have an epidemic of personal failures. We don’t have an epidemic of moms at fault. We have national structural issues that we can and must solve together. And the things that we can do are things that many other countries have already done. So solutions include access to paid family medical leave when a new baby arrives or a serious health crisis strikes.
We’re one of only six countries on the actual planet Earth without that policy in place. Other things we can do is universal childcare. We can also do access to sick days. 166 countries have access to earned sick days when you need it. We do not. We can also do things like making sure that people have access to nutritious food and fair pay.
But there’s a lot of solutions, and those solutions together add up to something even bigger, which is helping to narrow the motherhood wage gap, which is extreme, and helping to lift our economy as a whole. So these solutions don’t just help moms, they help everyone. They boost our whole economy.
CATY BORUM: When you’re traveling around the country and doing advocacy work and talking to so many working mothers and, you know, all kinds of folks, do you feel like people are aware that this is a kind of a cultural problem also, that we sort of have given in to this idea that, “well, it’s just always gonna be harder for working mothers”?
KRISTIN ROWE-FINKBEINER: There is such a heaviness, a weight, on moms across the United States of America, both moms who are in the paid labor force and moms who are out of the paid labor force, because motherhood is work. So when you are doing the work of two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11 jobs at the same time, you’re doing the work in the paid labor force, three-quarters of moms need their wages to make the roof over the heads of their kids stay there, to keep their family’s finances afloat, to put food on the table. We need the paid labor of moms.
But moms are also being the ad hoc pediatrician. Moms are often being so many job titles in the household at the same time in an unpaid way, and it takes a toll. And the one thing that’s happening right now is the main way that society is showing the toll is in the negative.
We know that being a mom is a greater predictor of wage and hiring discrimination than gender, and that because of that, motherhood, the maternal wall, is so solid. Moms, on average, make 73 cents to the dollar that dads make. And you go to look at what happens across different communities of moms, and you see that due to structural racism, Black moms are making 51 cents to a white dad’s dollar, and Latina moms are making 47 cents to a white dad’s dollar.
What’s happening? Well, part of this is actual, for real discrimination. In a Cornell University study of equal resumes and job experiences, moms were hired 80% less of the time, and dads were actually hired more and given $6,000 more starting salary, while moms were given $11,000 lower. So what does this mean?
This means that the acknowledgment, the main acknowledgment of the unpaid labor of moms is to devalue the pay of moms in the actual labor force. That is not okay. And there is a dawning recognition of that as we see a rise of a movement, including at MomsRising, we have 3.7 million cumulative members, 1.2 million active members, and we’re growing quickly, who are pushing for the policies that help make life possible for everyone.
We have one of the highest maternal mortality rates of any developed nation, and it is getting worse. And that’s because instead of shoring up the policies that allow us to be able to make life work, be able to parent, be able to put that roof over our kids’ heads and the food on the table, Republican leaders in Congress have been rolling back those policies. They have been undermining moms.
So the answer to your question of is there recognition that there is a disaster, yes. There’s recognition in the negative with the motherhood wage hit that we’re getting right now, and then there’s recognition in the positive with the growing movement of moms, mom organizations, not just MomsRising, there’s other organizations of moms starting, and that’s a really good sign that a movement is growing. So there’s good signs in response to some terrible signs.
CATY BORUM: Can you just contextualize the United States versus our global neighbors with regard to treatment of working mothers and mothers who also don’t work outside the home?
KRISTIN ROWE-FINKBEINER: We stand out among developed nations as horribly awful when it comes to motherhood. And that’s the bad news. Here’s the good news. Many, many, many other countries, pretty much most every other developed nation, have passed these policies. They have paid family medical leave, they have earned sick days, they have access to universal healthcare. They have these policies in place.
It has not hurt their economy. In fact, it has been so successful that many countries have done something that’s really interesting. They’ve said that paid family medical leave when a new baby arrives is so important to not just being able to recover from childbirth, be there when it matters, and start your family.
It also is important to making sure that maternal wage gap is lowered because our economy needs our wages. Many other countries, they’ve found that lowering the wage gap is so good for them, and that they have said that if dads take paid family medical leave, then the whole family, as a bonus, as an incentive, is offered more weeks of paid family medical leave.
Because when we have equal genders, or approach equal genders, taking paid family medical leave, then that motherhood wage gap starts to narrow in a bigger way. And that, in fact, is not only helping moms, it’s boosting their economy as a whole, so they’re offering those incentives.
CATY BORUM: So in the show All Her Fault, we see this range of different portrayals of different kinds of mothers. When there’s a show that helps reveal the structural things that you spend a lot of time talking about with statistics and stories, is that helpful for you? So in other words, how valuable is the role of culture to help bolster the kind of work that you’re doing?
KRISTIN ROWE-FINKBEINER: Culture is critically important because right now we take moms, the work of motherhood, the work of momming, which should be a verb, for granted. So shows like All Her Fault who show the crisis are critically, critically, critically important to actually moving legislation. And we’ve been talking about some of the legislation that needs to move, but to move it, we need to build that public will. We need to build that public understanding. We need our elected leaders to understand what it is to be a mom in America right now.
And one of the things I love about the All Her Fault storyline is it shows the disaster of motherhood, of parenting, of momming in America from many different angles. Let’s just take childcare out of that. Showing that there is a crisis in all aspects of childcare is super important. Parents need access to childcare to be able to go to work.
Kids need access to early learning so that they can thrive. But importantly, childcare workers need fair pay and need consistent jobs in order to stay in the profession, and when we have childcare workers who right now are some of the lowest paid workers in the United States of America, we have high turnover, we have crisis, and the whole system goes down.
So it’s really important for shows like this one to show the full cycle of the crisis, ’cause it’s not just one type of mom or person in crisis right now. And at MomsRising, in response to shows like this one, we’re having more people be active, more people be engaged, and more people know that they’re not alone. Because when you look out at what has happened with motherhood in America, as we start out talking about, many people have framed it literally as all her fault, and when you feel like it’s your fault, then you often get pushed out of being engaged in change.
So shows like this one that show that you’re not alone, that give some empathy about what’s happening, that clarify that the situation is actually an emergency, are deeply helpful, not just for helping politicians who have the power to make the change that we seek understand what’s happening, but also to helping people who are coming together to raise their voices to push for those changes know that they’re not alone, and that their crisis isn’t literally their fault.
CATY BORUM: Yeah, beautifully said, Kristin. Thank you so much. So what inspires you, Kristin, about what comes next, particularly because the people that you work with the most are moms?
KRISTIN ROWE-FINKBEINER: Oh, I am so inspired by the activism of our members. We just had a national project where moms saved their receipts and gave them to us, the receipts for the rising price of gas. Coffee is up 33%, so we got a lot of coffee receipts. We got receipts for steaks. We got receipts for childcare. We got receipts for the rising cost of healthcare, and then we delivered them to Congress, and there was the first-ever mom-centered congressional hearing on the affordability and health crisis facing parents in America right now.
We had moms testifying and sharing their stories. There wasn’t a dry eye in the room. Over 11,000 people have shared their stories with MomsRising in the last year. Those stories, like this show, are helping to shift the narrative, are helping to make change, and are inspiring other people, including me, to keep going and to take action.
So I’m inspired also by the wins. We just have had several wins, I’ll name just one or two, that are completely unprecedented. In West Virginia, which has a super majority of Republicans in the House and the Senate and a Republican governor, we just passed a very strong childcare bill. And so we’re seeing a lot of movement at the state level.
We’re also making some progress in places like Florida. In red, blue, and purple states, we are making progress. Virginia, another big win recently. Hello, moms helped elect a mom to be a governor, and she just signed into law paid family medical leave and earned sick days for the state of Virginia. That’s a big win, you all, and that did not happen on accident.
And so again, what’s inspiring me is the people taking action, the leaders stepping up, and also the policies that we’re passing at the state level, again in red, blue, and purple states, that are marching exactly us toward big changes in our nation’s capital. Because what we need is universal policies like these that are accessible to everyone, no matter where you live or who your boss is. And I think that because of the rising power of moms and the persistent push forward, that it’s no longer a question of if but when we’ll finally have those policies, as long as we don’t give up.
So to all of your audience and listeners, I just urge you to get involved with an organization. Doesn’t matter which one. MomsRising is always welcoming, but any organization working on these policies, and keep pushing. Avoid reading the headlines of the daily news and getting stuck in a cynicism cycle, and keep pushing for these changes. Because we have seen miraculous changes happen in the past, and we will see these changes as long as we don’t give up.
CATY BORUM: I love that, Kristin. You have ended on my favorite note that I like to hit every day, which is joy and optimism can be the ways forward. We cannot give up. We cannot get tired. I really appreciate that. And I just wanna thank Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner, the president and CEO of MomsRising, once again for joining us to tell us really what all of these issues actually mean and why they’re so important to all of us, whether we have children or not. Thank you, Kristin.
KRISTIN ROWE-FINKBEINER: Thank you so much.
GABE GONZÁLEZ: Thanks to Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner for joining us and helping us frame some of the story elements from All Her Fault in a very real world context. I’m certainly not a parent, and if you aren’t, it’s probably difficult to get a sense of the weight placed on moms in the United States, not just in terms of childcare, education, and healthcare for their kids, but the discrimination they are more likely to experience in the workforce or the judgment they might face while struggling to balance work and parenthood.
Maybe one of the most important realizations from learning about Kristin’s work with MomsRising is that this is a systemic issue. Our country does very little to help with the responsibilities of parenthood, especially when it comes to working class parents. But if we’re living in a place where our government simultaneously encourages people to have children while shaming them for falling into poverty when the cost of school and food and healthcare become insurmountable, something has got to change.
We see these realities explored on a deeply personal level throughout All Her Fault, how people sometimes feel crushed by the weight of wanting to be a good parent even when there isn’t enough time or there aren’t enough resources for them to be able to do it all the way they’d like.
To be fair, it’s right there in the title, All Her Fault. While the name of the series might initially seem to refer to Marissa’s character, after watching, you get the sense it’s about all the moms in the series who face criticism and blame for not looking or sounding like what we’ve been told a good mom should. But parenthood, much like a good mystery, is a pretty twisty road with a lot of things you can’t see coming. From the outside, it’s easy to oversimplify, but once you know the details, there’s always more to the story than you might assume.
GABE GONZÁLEZ: Thanks again for joining us on We Disrupt This Broadcast, and this next segment is all my fault. It’s time for our Most Disruptive Moment.
MEGAN GALLAGHER: I know too many women who, even in that unbelievably difficult situation, would still show up as the best version of themselves.
GABE GONZÁLEZ: Join us next time on We Disrupt This Broadcast, where we are talking to TV legend Mara Brock Akil, creator of Girlfriends, The Game, and most recently, the Peabody Award-winning series Forever, based on the iconic Judy Blume novel.
MARA BROCK AKIL: I wanted to honor the privilege of translating that book by really holding true to translating the essence of that book, which is giving young people their agency, but also reminding them of their own responsibility to themselves, to each other, and to their future.
GABE GONZÁLEZ: We Disrupt This Broadcast is a Peabody and Center for Media and Social Impact production hosted by me, Gabe González, with on air contributions from Caty Borum and Jeffrey Jones. The show is brought to you by executive producers, Caty Borum and Jeffrey Jones. Managing producer Jordana Jason. Writers: Sasha Stewart, Jordana Jason, Bethany Hall, Jennifer Keishin Armstrong, and myself, Gabe González. Consulting producers Jennifer Keishin Armstrong and Bethany Hall. Researcher, Riley McLaughlin. Graphic designer: Olivia Klaus. Operations producer: Varsha Ramani. The marketing and communications team: Christine Drayer and Tunishia Singleton. From PRX: the team is Terrence Bernardo, Jennie Cataldo, Edwin Ochoa and Amber Walker. The executive producer of PRX Productions is Jocelyn Gonzales.