#Mothers2mothers Day Brunch

[spooky1980]

Mothers2mothers Day Brunch At The Twenty Two

LONDON, ENGLAND - MARCH 13th

Angela Scanlon and Zawe Ashton attend the mothers2mothers Day Brunch hosted by mothers2mothers, Tommee Tippee, and Good Culture at The Twenty Two on March 13, 2024 in London, England. (Photo by Hoda Davaine/Dave Benett/Getty Images)

[justzawe]

LONDON, ENGLAND - MARCH 13: Zawe Ashton attends the mothers2mothers Day Brunch hosted by mothers2mothers, Tommee Tippee, and Good Culture at The Twenty Two on March 13, 2024 in London, England. (Photo by Hoda Davaine/Dave Benett/Getty Images)

[olemisekunst]

Zawe Ashton attends the mothers2mothers Day Brunch hosted by mothers2mothers, Tommee Tippee, and Good Culture at The Twenty Two on March 13, 2024

[myyearofgivingdaily]

Happy (Absentee) Mother’s Day!

My wife Gwen has been a working (and frequently traveling) mom for 20 years now, but this is the first time she has managed to put all three of those things together and miss Mother’s Day. She’s in Hong Kong today (or whatever day it is there), doing the Superwoman thing, while our two kids and I probably will spend a quiet day at home.

That’s fine, really -- we have found through the years that our family’s best Mother’s Days (and Father’s Days, for that matter) are the ones that place the least pressure on our ingrate children to model good, loving behavior in public. No matter what time of day you read this, you can rest assured that Gwen has already had her Mother’s Day brunch at her Hong Kong hotel with her Work Family -- indeed, she sent me a picture of her dim sum as I was writing these words.

Having snuck Gwen’s MD cards into her bag before she left on this trip last week -- and having negotiated a bit of a language/cultural barrier with the concierge in her hotel to make sure she received a bouquet of flowers today -- I feel relatively confident that Gwen won’t forget us completely as she goes through her day. In lieu of further gift-giving, I thought I’d choose a nice matronly charity ... or three ... for today’s donations.

There’s no shortage of them out there, doing terrific work for mothers and their children. Here in the Los Angeles area, a collection of showbiz-participant and -adjacent mothers created the Alliance of Moms, which offers parenting instruction and other services to foster kids who have become mothers themselves. The group is working to break what it says is an intergenerational cycle -- 25% of teen girls in foster care become moms themselves by age 17, and two-thirds of those babies will grow up to become teen mothers themselves.

Another group of entertainment-industry women, headed by model Christy Turlington Burns, created the nonprofit Every Mother Counts to help cut the number of women who don’t survive pregnancy or childbirth, in the third world as well as in low-income communities in the U.S. (The group reports that the U.S. ranks 60th in the world for maternal health.)

The group Mothers2Mothers prepares “Mentor Mothers” -- mothers in sub-Saharan Africa who are living with HIV themselves -- to serve as healthcare workers in understaffed health centers and within communities. They provide women with essential health education and support to help them protect their babies from HIV infection, and keep themselves and their families healthy. M2M strikes a personal chord with me, as I was involved in the initial planning stages of the Hope for African Children Initiative just after the millennium. Unfortunately, the situation hasn’t been mitigated nearly enough since then -- more than 400 babies are still infected with HIV globally each day. Most acquire HIV from their mothers during pregnancy, childbirth, and breastfeeding; in fact, without interventions such as those provided by M2M, up to 40% of infants born to HIV-positive mothers will contract the virus themselves.

Though Gwen’s away from us today, and though our parenting experience over two decades has been far from perfect or stress-free, we recognize how incredibly fortunate we have been. And so, since I don’t need to prep breakfast in bed this year, it’s nice to do a little something for other moms on this Mother’s Day. Have a great one! 

About the author: Jon Cummings has spent his career as a performing arts and music journalist at magazines including Billboard and Inside Arts as well as the pop-culture website Popdose. He also has served as a communications and publications specialist for organizations including the ACLU, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, and the U.N.-affiliated World Conference of Religions for Peace. After setting his remaining hair on fire last November 8, he became a co-founder of Indivisible: Conejo in the northwest suburbs of Los Angeles, and now serves as that organization’s communications guru. It’s about time he did his bit to serve his onetime colleague and longtime friend Melinda Newman’s Causes and Effect mission.

About this blog: Causes and Effect: My Year of Giving Daily was started in 2013 by entertainment and culture journalist Melinda Newman, who made daily donations to a wide variety of non-profits and wrote about her experience. USA Today music writer, Brian Mansfield took on this monumental task in 2014. This year, 12 individuals will contribute, each taking over the blog for one month.

[justzawe]

LONDON, ENGLAND - MARCH 13: Angela Scanlon and Zawe Ashton attend the mothers2mothers Day Brunch hosted by mothers2mothers, Tommee Tippee, and Good Culture at The Twenty Two on March 13, 2024 in London, England. (Photo by Hoda Davaine/Dave Benett/Getty Images)