Original article (in Bosnian) was published on 28/12/2021
US President Joe Biden commented on a new law that will allow women to return to work because they will have affordable care for their children or other family members. Several websites presented his comment almost as an attack on motherhood.
On the website Narod, an article dating from December 10, 2021, has the following headline:
Biden said that it is better for mothers to work than to raise children
The article refers to the adoption of the Build Back Better Act, which is part of a program launched by US President Joe Biden.
The article states that Biden diminished the importance of motherhood and emphasized that mothers should work.
US President Biden downplays motherhood and emphasizes that mothers should work, LifeSiteNews reports.
A few days ago, US President Joe Biden commented on Twitter on the adoption of the new law. (This is the so-called Build Back Better – a law that includes, among other things, providing care for preschool children in state institutions so that mothers can work).
He wants able-bodied women to work and others to take care of children.
He thus showed that he and other Democrats do not appreciate the role of the mother in caring for children or needy family members.
Biden does not want mothers to stay at home and take care of their children. He wants physically fit women to use their ability to work while they can and pay strangers for their children’s care.
“Nearly 2 million women in our country do not work because they have to take care of children or an elderly family member”, Biden said on Twitter. “With my new law, care will become accessible to everyone, and it will help mothers return to work”, he added. He tried to sound like he wanted only the best for American women and their families.
The article was then published on the website called Medjugorje News.
As a source of the article, the website Narod cited LifeSite News, a Canadian right-wing website that, among other things, promotes the abolition of the right to abortion and anti-vaccination narratives. Due to publishing disinformation about vaccines and pandemics, the site was denied access to Facebook and YouTube.
On this website, an article with identical claims but with a slightly different title was published on November 23, 2021. The title of the article in English is the following: “Moms slam Biden for a tweet suggesting it’s better for them to work than raise their kids”, i.e., “Moms criticize Biden because of a tweet suggesting that it is better for them to work than to raise their children”.
What are the facts?
An article on the website Narod features a link to a tweet that Biden shared on his official Twitter profile on November 23, 2021.
Biden tweeted:
Nearly 2 million women in our country have been locked out of the workforce because they have to care for a child or an elderly relative at home.
My Build Back Better Act will make caregiving accessible and affordable and help them get back to work.
The article published on the website Narod, as well as its transmission found on Medjugorje News, features a translation of Biden’s tweet, which is partly inaccurate.
In its article, the website Narod used the following translation:
(…) “Almost 2 million women in our country do not work because they have to take care of children or an elderly family member”, Biden said on Twitter. “With my new law, care will become accessible to everyone, and it will help mothers return to work”, he added. He tried to sound like he wanted only the best for American women and their families. (…)
Biden, therefore, in the tweet, did not talk exclusively about mothers or all women who do not work, but about women who cannot return to work because they have to take care of their family members. He used the term “women” and not “mothers”, as the website Narod translated in its article.
In a tweet commenting on the Build Back Better Act, Biden did not tell mothers that it is better for them to work than to raise children.
What Biden wrote is that nearly two million women who have stopped working because they cannot afford to care for children or a family member will have the opportunity to return to work because care for children or third parties will be provided through the state system. In this tweet, he addresses women who cannot work because caring for children and elderly family members is too expensive, so they stay at home.
The number of two million women mentioned in Biden’s tweet coincides with the number of women who were forced to stop working during the pandemic and whom the new law should help return to work. According to the data of the American Bureau of Labor Statistics, the number of employed women in the United States was reduced by a little more than two million in the period from February 2020 to February 2021.
Data on two million women, to whom Biden refers in his tweet, was published by the Pew Research Center in April 2021. According to such data, when comparing the numbers from February 2020 and February 2021, the number of employed women is lower by almost 2.4 million. PolitiFact, an American site for verifying the accuracy of facts, wrote about this topic:
When asked about the statistics, Allred’s office pointed to an April Pew Research Center article that found, in an analysis of U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data, a net 2.4 million women dropped out of the workforce from February 2020 to February 2021.
Bureau of Labor Statistics data from the Current Population Survey indicates 77,534,000 women ages 16 and over were in the labor force in February 2020 and 75,149,000 women were working in February 2021. The difference between those numbers is nearly 2.4 million women.
If you wanted to update those numbers, there were 75,737,000 women working in October 2021. The difference between that February 2020 value — before the March 2020 plummet — and October 2021 is nearly 1.8 million women.
So, there were 1.8 million fewer women in the labor force in October than in February 2020.
That shows a significant number of women have rejoined the workforce since February 2021, but the number of women working is still much lower than pre-pandemic levels.
The Build Back Better Act, according to the official website of the White House, is dedicated to changes aimed at improving the position of the middle class in the United States. As CNN stated in the article from December 8, 2021, Build Back Better focuses mostly on social security issues, i.e., providing funds that would reduce the cost of child care.
Bloomberg, in its article published on November 18, 2021, wrote in more detail about the changes that the Build Back Better Act would bring: from paid maternity leave to free preschool education for certain children. The same law would limit the cost of care to 7% of family income, which would mean that those with the lowest incomes would pay almost nothing.
Bloomberg’s article states:
(…) The latest version of the law proposed by Biden would allow four weeks of paid leave for all new parents, which is less than the originally proposed 12 weeks, but it is still historic for the US – one of only a few countries that do not offer paid maternity leave. (…)
The lack of access to affordable, quality child care was the main reason why women left work en masse during the pandemic. A few months after the start of the Covid-19 crisis, household surveys conducted by the Census Bureau found that young women leave work almost three times more often than men due to childcare. Even when schools resumed, women still did not return to work. (…)
Biden’s proposal limits childcare costs to a maximum of 7% of family income for most households. Those who earn very little would pay nothing. A free preschool system for ages three and four would also be provided. If the law is passed, states should ensure that care staff earns the same as primary school teachers with similar qualifications. Details would largely be left to individual states to decide. (…).
So, this is a manipulative interpretation of a tweet Biden posted regarding the Build Back Better Act. Nowhere in the tweet and the Act is it stated that it is better for mothers to work than raise children. This law offers women who cannot return to work because they care for others (children and/or elderly family members) to take advantage of the state’s affordable child and family care program and start working again.
In line with the above facts, claims from the article found on the websites Narod and Medjugorje News, suggesting that Biden told mothers that it is better to “work than to raise children”, that he diminished the importance of motherhood and stressed that mothers should work, and that he does not want that mothers stay at home and take care for their children, we rate as manipulation of facts.
