The Very Daunting Data On Motherhood

Sometimes the mom talk gets confusing for someone like me. I wanted to be a mom at times, but the world had other plans for my adulthood. I’ve made peace with my life, and I have plenty of joy. But here’s the question that keeps coming back. Am I missing out, or did I dodge a bullet? Literally?

The facts aren’t on the side of people who talk about the joy of motherhood without acknowledging that being a woman, biological or chosen, can kill you.

Maternal mortality and health

The United States is one of only seven countries in the world where maternal mortality has significantly risen since 2000, alongside Venezuela, Cyprus, Greece, Mauritius, Belize, and the Dominican Republic. The WHO flagged this distinction in 2023, and the US runs roughly three times the maternal mortality rate of Sweden, Japan, the Netherlands, Germany, the UK, and France. (Commonwealth Fund, AJMC)

A 2025 NIH study covering deaths up to a year postpartum found that maternal mortality rose from 25.3 deaths per 100,000 live births in 2018 to 32.6 in 2022, a 27% age-adjusted increase. The CDC’s narrower measure, which only counts deaths within 42 days of pregnancy, put 2023 at 18.6 per 100,000 and 2024 at 17.9. Underneath those headline numbers, the racial disparities are severe. Black mothers died at 44.8 per 100,000 in 2024, compared to 14.2 for white mothers. American Indian and Alaska Native women had the highest rate at 60.8 per 100,000. (STAT, March of Dimes)

The leading cause of maternal death in the US is now mental health, which includes suicide and overdose. About 96% of birthing-age women, around 62 million people, live in areas with a shortage of maternal mental health professionals. Roughly 60,000 women a year experience severe maternal morbidity, and that number is still rising. Maternal mortality review committees have found that more than 60% of pregnancy-related deaths are preventable. (The Century Foundation)

Paid leave

The US is the only OECD member without mandatory paid maternity leave. As of 2023, only 27% of private sector workers had access to paid family leave. Almost 3 in 4 had none. Among the lowest 10% of earners, only 6% had paid family leave. Just 12% of part-time workers did. About 40% of women don’t qualify for the FMLA’s 12 weeks of unpaid leave, and only 39% of those who do qualify can afford to take it. (Center for American Progress)

The motherhood penalty

Bankrate’s 2024 analysis of Census data found that full-time working mothers earned 35% less than full-time working fathers. That’s wider than the 31% gap in 2023 and 32% in 2022. Over 30 years, the projected gap is around $600,000. Mothers working full-time earn 74 cents per dollar that a full-time working father earns. There’s no equivalent penalty for fathers. Fathers with kids under 18 earned 25% more than men without kids in 2024, $76,388 versus $61,308. (Bankrate)

The Institute for Women’s Policy Research finds that the motherhood penalty drives roughly 80% of the overall gender pay gap. Each child under five is projected to cut a typical mother’s earnings by 15%. Shelley Correll’s classic audit study showed that mothers were rated 10% lower in competence and 12.1 percentage points lower in commitment than non-mothers, while fathers received a bump. (IWPR, Gender Action Portal)

Single mothers

Per the Center for American Progress’s analysis of 2023 Census data, there were 7.3 million single mothers, or 4 in 5 of all single parents. Three-quarters work, most full-time, with a typical full-time income of $40,000. The overall poverty rate for single mothers was 28%, compared to 5% for married couples. (Center for American Progress)

Intimate partner violence and femicide

Per the Violence Policy Center’s 2025 report on 2023 data, 2,412 women were murdered by men in single-victim, single-offender incidents. 89.9% of victims knew their killers, and 57.1% of those killers were husbands or other intimates. An average of more than 70 women a month are shot and killed by an intimate partner. Nearly 7 in 10 intimate partner homicides involve a firearm, and 77% of those firearm victims are women. (Violence Policy Center, Everytown Research)

The CDC’s NISVS finds that 34% of US women, or 43.5 million, have experienced contact sexual violence, physical violence, or stalking by an intimate partner. A gun in a domestic violence situation increases the risk of homicide by 500%. 72% of all murder-suicides involve an intimate partner, and 94% of victims in those cases are female. (Everytown Research, NCADV)

Black women are killed by men at 3.1 per 100,000, more than 2.5 times the rate for white women at 1.2 per 100,000. The share of Black women killed with firearms rose from 51% in 2011 to 74.7% in 2023. (Violence Policy Center)

Children and custody

The Center for Judicial Excellence has tracked these cases for over a decade. Their count is more than 900 children murdered in contested custody cases over 15 years, most by abusive fathers. Family courts award joint or sole custody to fathers accused of domestic violence around 70% of the time, and abusive fathers are twice as likely to seek custody as non-abusive ones. (Governing, Center for Judicial Excellence)

A 2019 DOJ-funded study by Joan Meier at George Washington University found that in 78% of cases where child abuse was later verified, the judge had initially dismissed the mother’s allegations. The Resource Center on Domestic Violence reports approximately 100,000 contested child custody cases each year in the US, and roughly two-thirds likely involve domestic violence. Meier’s research also shows that when fathers cross-claim “parental alienation” against mothers reporting abuse, mothers’ risk of losing custody nearly doubles. (Resource Center on Domestic Violence, Meier study)

Research summarized by the Center for American Progress found that states that introduced no-fault divorce laws saw decreased rates of domestic violence, female suicide, and spousal homicide. That matters now, given the recent legislative push in some states to roll back those laws. (Center for American Progress)

Post-Dobbs & Intersectionality

The Gender Equity Policy Institute’s April 2025 analysis found that maternal mortality fell 21% in supportive states post-Dobbs. It rose 56% in Texas in the first full year of the state’s ban, including a 95% rise among white women. Black mothers in banned states were 3.3 times as likely to die as white mothers in those states. Women’s risk of maternal death in Texas was 155% higher than in California, and Latina mothers in Texas faced nearly triple the risk of those in California. (Gender Equity Policy Institute)

A Johns Hopkins study published in the American Journal of Public Health in April 2026 used national vital statistics data from 2016 to 2023 and found that abortion bans are likely associated with increases in deaths during or within one year of pregnancy. Eighteen states now have complete or 6-week bans, up from 14 right after Dobbs. The Milbank Quarterly’s 2025 literature review estimated that states with abortion bans have experienced 22,000 additional births, 59 excess pregnancy-associated maternal deaths, and 478 excess infant deaths since Roe was overturned. (Johns Hopkins, Milbank Memorial Fund)

ProPublica’s analysis of Texas hospital discharge data found that the sepsis rate in second-trimester pregnancy loss hospitalizations rose by more than 50% after Texas’s near-total ban took effect in September 2021. The analysis identified at least 120 in-hospital deaths of pregnant or postpartum women in 2022 and 2023, an increase of dozens of deaths over a comparable pre-pandemic period. From CDC death certificate data, the rate of maternal deaths in Texas rose 33% between 2019 and 2023, even as the national rate fell 7.5%. Texas also saw a 50% increase in maternal sepsis in that first post-ban year. (ProPublica, Texas Tribune)

A time-series analysis on Texas found that in the year after the state’s 6-week ban took effect in 2021, infant mortality rose 17% over expected, including 21% for non-Hispanic Black babies. Johns Hopkins’s broader study found that the infant mortality rate not due to congenital anomalies rose 4.2% nationally, from 4.69 expected per 1,000 to 4.89 observed, with a clear pattern of disproportionate effect on Black infants and infants born in the South. (Milbank Memorial Fund, Johns Hopkins)

Maternity care deserts, which are counties with no obstetric providers or hospitals offering maternity care, were identified in 35% of US counties. In states with strict abortion laws, 39% of counties are maternity care deserts, compared with 25% in states with abortion access. Idaho lost 22% of its practicing obstetricians in the 15 months after enacting some of the most restrictive laws in the country. Abortion-ban states saw a 6.7% decline in OB-GYN residency applications during the 2023 to 2024 cycle, while states with legal abortion saw a slight 0.4% increase. The Department of Health and Human Services projects about 3,000 fewer OB-GYNs practicing nationally by 2030. (Commonwealth Fund, Lown Institute)

ProPublica’s reporting has named eight preventable deaths across three states so far. Josseli Barnica died in Texas after waiting 40 hours for miscarriage care. Amber Thurman and Candi Miller in Georgia had their deaths deemed “preventable” by the state’s maternal mortality review committee after they couldn’t access legal abortions and timely care. Porsha Ngumezi hemorrhaged in 2022 when her doctor didn’t perform a D&C, and she bled to death, leaving behind a husband and two sons. Tierra Walker and Nevaeh Crain were also identified by ProPublica in Texas. In April 2026, the Texas Medical Board disciplined three of the doctors ProPublica had investigated for delayed or inappropriate pregnancy care under the state’s ban. Texas’s law can put a physician behind bars for 99 years, which is the deterrent driving the delays. (ProPublica, CNN)

States with the worst outcomes are also the ones limiting their own ability to count what’s happening. Idaho dropped two members from its maternal mortality review committee who had spoken out against the ban’s impacts. Georgia’s committee was dismissed entirely after officials cited a confidentiality violation following ProPublica’s reporting on two preventable deaths. Texas’s committee is prohibited by law from reviewing cases that include an abortion medication or procedure, which means it can’t review most miscarriage-related deaths. (ProPublica, Texas Tribune)

As of January 1, 2025, roughly 62.7 million women and girls lived under state abortion bans. (Gender Equity Policy Institute)

Did I miss out on being a mother?

I’m lucky to live a life of relative safety and autonomy, but I’m not fooled. These stats are scary, even for the child-free among us.

Doug Wilson is a pastor of the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches, an arch-conservative, patriarchal church network. If he and his buddy Pete Hegseth had their druthers, I’d be out of the world of work and thrown into the world of childcare and midwifery, under the eye of a Christian God, rather than being a Jewish author and HR keynote speaker.

I pray for the safety of mothers who currently live under those constraints, and I pray for the safety of all women and caregivers. And myself.

Happy Mother’s Day.