[gentle music] The body relaxed, the body breathing, your senses open, your mind open, meeting the world.

[gentle music] The waiting room at my doctor's office in Downtown Manhattan is bright and white.

Magazines sit piled on a corner table.

Quiet conversation drifts over the receptionist desk.

My fiance Nihal and I sit in a row of chairs against the wall.

My body's here, but my mind is elsewhere, in my phone, knocking out work emails as usual.

I'm 36 years old, and I've built my life around being a hard worker.

That too is a kind of strength.

Can you share more about that? What are those penalties and how can we begin to build a system that is better for women?

Yeah.

Look, I think if you look at history, I believe that motherhood was the unfinished business of feminism.

One of my favorite speeches by Betty Friedan, she did at Smith College, really talks about how the separation between work and family.

And look, feminists were fighting for our right to vote, for our right to be in the workplace in the first place.

And so the work that's left to us now is to figure out the fact that most American women, they have to work and they have kids.

80% of women will have a child, right? And so we're constantly balancing our families and working.

Who benefits from this sort of dysfunctional way it is now with when mothers feeling like they're individually failing rather than collectively unsupported? And like, and why is the United States like one of the last countries to implement these policies?

I'm interested, you know, what kind of inspired you to make this film? And, um, yeah, like where did this spawn from?

Yeah.

I mean, look, the film is like an investigation into like the lies we tell mothers to distract and divide them from, you know, getting the real supports that we need, like paid leave and childcare.

You know, it really inspired me as I was building this movement, I would go into like rooms of moms all across the country.

And I felt like they were looking at me like I was crazy, like Rushman, we can't have those things, you know, like that's somewhere else.

And I'm like, no, no, no, that's Norway and Sweden and Canada.

And it made me realize that like, You know, as I was building the movement, I nerded out and really tried to understand the history of motherhood.

Was motherhood always a personal problem? Like, was this always an individual failure? I

Have we recovered from that yet? Where are we now?

No, we haven't.

In fact, the pandemic in some ways was a gift because it showed us what's possible.

We started increasing benefits on paid leave and childcare.

We started allowing remote work, offering mothers grace.

We recognized that often most mothers are both working and they're caregiving, and they shouldn't have to hide either one of their identities.

And so we were able to finally build a workplace that worked for moms.

We'll sell this documentary and, and, uh, it will get seen by millions." However, after hearing the importance of doing this this way, where we're doing private screenings, we're a- we're encouraging people to do screenings with their communities, it's so that women aren't watching on their own in silos, thinking, "Am I the problem? What's the problem? How do we talk about this? How do I talk about this with my friends and family?" No, we want you to do screenings with your friends and family.

... talking about and defending women's rights.

So I feel like you can relate to this, 'cause I read your book, and I so related to your story.

I think there's something about, like, when you come from nothing, you wanna build something.

And, like, my parents were refugees.

They came here from Uganda in 1973.

Even though they were trained engineers, my mother sold cosmetics, my father worked as a machinist in a plant.

And so I, from the youngest of possible ages, just wanted to give back.

Why are alarm bells not going off everywhere? If this is, i- i- if that's really true, because I think any woman listening to this would find that entirely shocking.

People...

Cared about content, you know, people cared about documentaries, people, you know, like there was a, there was a, you know, like we weren't against DEI, right? There was like, there was a desire in the industry to tell these kinds of stories and all of that really shifted.

But for me, the inspiration was when I started my work at Moms First and I would talk about how, again, like, American motherhood is impossible by design, right? And that we've been getting cons since the ink dried on the constitution that we can get more, we deserve better.

We can be Norway and Sweden and we can have paid leave and we can have childcare.

Oftentimes people just look at me a little bit like, you're crazy because we had been so indoctrinated that we were the problem, right? That we actually can't ask our employer or our government or anybody.

It's up to us to solve it.

And I realized like, oh my God, like we got to tell the history here.

What How do we get from and how did you get from that shift of like, this is my problem versus the system? And what are the problems they're recognizing?

So you do believe that this is reversible with the right policies in the short term.

I mean, absolutely.

Like America has the most educated population of women with the least amount of labor market participation.

When you look at that chart and you study, why did 500,000 women leave the workforce in 2025? The number one reason was the cost of childcare.

Most American women come home, they look at their paycheck, they look at the cost of their childcare, and the math is not mathing.

And that means that every day we lose nurses, teachers, social workers, foundational workers to our country.

This isn't about women's preferences.

Well, just answer that question.

I mean, those stats even each on their own would be pretty huge, but all of them are happening simultaneously in a place where we think that, well, you should be able to do both.

That's right.

I mean, you know, people are drowning because of childcare costs.

Like, they're one bad day away from financial ruin, right? A car breaking down, a health event, because all of their savings goes into childcare.

And so when you've seen states think, when they have a surplus or they have an opportunity to make an investment, and they look at, well, what are all the things that I can do for a family? H- what are all the, like, ways I can give them more resources? Oftentimes, policymakers come to the decision that if I can lower childcare costs, you know what I mean, if I can make it affordable and available, I actually can take families out of a precarious financial situation and put them i- on the path to the American dream.

And so childcare is the linchpin of affordability, and that's something that Moms First is, you, you know, you know we've been driving towards the past four years, of taking it out of something that has always been seen as a personal problem, this is your s- problem as a family that you have to fix, to it being an economic issue.

Workers can't work without childcare, you know, and, and, and businesses don't work without workers.

Where should the solution come from? Should it be a federal policy, or as the administration says, this is a state by state issue?

And-

And no one's coming to save us.

So here, you know, here's the thing is as much as we're now...

You know, I think it is important that people like you and I connect the dots for folks, connect the Roe v- The minute we lost our reproductive rights, we- people saw us as less human.

Because if you can't control your body, you really can't control anything, and I think the minute that that happened in America, you actually start...

That- that's what's led us from there to The Rape Academy, and all of these things in between, the SAVE Act, the getting rid of DE&I, the NASA taking off like female scientists from...

Like, all of it is interconnected, and so now here we are, right? And I think as women have, as these things have happened, we haven't risen up in the way that we need to.

Yeah

Yes

...

so interesting, because I think you assume, and w- going back to class, that people who are barely trying to get by, and the vast majority of people in America don't have the economic luxury of actually thinking about these things.

They're just trying to get by, and I think my parents were in that position.

I think most families that I speak to are in that position.

And so for me, having more resources, having more support, and looking at this as someone who's kind of, again, leading a movement of moms, I think it's so hard to have, like, these conversations about what your parenting style should beWhen we are living in a country that doesn't have structure, and we are living in a culture that shames moms-

Like, where is that coming from?

Well, it's complicated, 'cause I, I think part of this, I think part, like you said, you know, as we've talked about, like, in the '70s there's a huge infusion of women in the workplace, and I think that there was, like, again, a culture movement about being a girl boss, you know what I mean? Working really hard, getting the corner office.

What is your message to lawmakers in Washington about how they can be a part of this solution?

You know, I asked President Trump a question about childcare when he was running for office, and he said, "Childcare is childcare.

We gotta have it." And then when he got elected, and about a month ago, um, he said, "We can't afford it.

The federal government cannot afford it.

I gotta spend money and resources, um, towards foreign wars." And I was surprised because the reality [laughs] is, is like things for American families have not gotten better.

They've gotten worse.

Like I said, 55% of Americans are in debt because the cost of childcare.

Mm.

You do? You're optimistic.

I am optimistic 'cause I've seen what's happened in Vermont, in New Mexico.

I saw what we did with Governor Hochul and Mayor Mamdani in New York.

I was just speaking to, you know, uh, Governor Moore, and we know that this has gotta happen because childcare is the linchpin of affordability.

55% of Americans are in debt because of the cost of childcare.

Families are drowning.

And so that is the one thing that we can do as a country to reduce people's costs.

Hmm.

Okay

...

I do think when I talk to Republicans today and I say, "Hey, like, what's going on here? Like, you guys are talking about the birth rate.

Right? You're talking about how you want people to have more babies.

You know that childcare is, like, the linchpin of affordability.

Like, and everything that I see in the polling and the focus groups that we've done is, like, Republicans want them to fix childcare.

Why don't you do it? You know? Why don't you do something about childcare and paid leave?" And, like, what I have heard over and over again is that, like, Ivanka was a big champion in the administration, and they just don't have that person, you know what I mean, in the administration right now.

Mm-hmm

But why does it make sense to make a movie, and then what does it mean to have 2,500 producers?

Yeah.

And here's the thing.

The hardest thing I ever did.

I was like, I don't recommend anyone to be like, you know what I mean, a documentary film producer, like, in a moment where, quite frankly, like, the, the, the business is really hard, right? And, um, I wanted to make it because as I went out there talking about this issue four years ago, I would look into audiences, and women would look at me, or moms would look at me kind of like I was crazy.

Like, "Wait a minute, I could have that?" Like, we had convinced moms for so long that like, "This is your fault.

You're doing something wrong.

How much do you think women are in a vulnerable position because of the risk AI poses to jobs and in general?

Reshma Sajjani is a lot of things: a lawyer, an author, an activist, a founder of two major non-profits working towards gender equality, and a working mom of two on top of all of that.

Like, at the end of the day, what matters is my family, is my friends, is, like, my spiritual life.

And I think that you have to be able to evaluate, what do I really need to get done? And what is the sense of like, I'm doing this because I have to prove that I have to be productive?

So the next time you feel overcome by guilt when you have to drop off your little one at daycare, or you drop the ball at work because the baby didn't sleep or got sick, remember, you're not struggling simply because you're not trying hard enough.

Not because we need more confidence, not because we have to color-code our calendar.

We don't have the structural support in order to both be a mother and actually participate in the workforce.

[laughs]

Right? Like, everything shifted 'cause nobody was there left, and I had not learned, and I still don't know.

I still don't, I still don't know how to make new friends.

I really struggle.

I can make a lot of acquaintances, but I really struggle with new friends.

And if I was honest too, I just also, like, had a little bit of judgment around it.

And I remember I was reading my mentor Hillary Clinton's book, and she wrote in there, like, that she makes a new friend every year.

Mm-hmm.