For more than 15 years, Beth Messersmith has been involved with MomsRising, an on-the-ground and online grassroots organization of more than a million people who are working to achieve economic security for all moms, women, and families in the United States. Beth also has served on the Durham PreK Governance Committee since its inception. She reflects here on her policy work with and for women and families and how that work intersects with her service to Durham PreK.

This interview was conducted August 22, 2023, and has been edited for length and clarity.

Beth, thank you for taking the time to talk with Durham PreK supporters about your work and its intersection with early childhood education, particularly universal pre-k. I’d like to start by hearing more about your work with MomsRising. How long have you been with the organization, and what does your work as Senior Director for North Carolina involve?

MomsRising nationally was founded in 2006, and I've been involved as a volunteer since 2007. In 2008, I along with several other moms in the Triangle founded MomsRising’s first state chapter here in North Carolina. I became staff in 2011.

Prior to this, though, I was co-director of Democracy North Carolina, focusing on voting rights and community organizing work. And then I had a son born two and a half months premature and spent a lot of time sitting by his NICU bed thinking. What are the policy choices that lead to so many families ending up in the NICU? What are the challenges that families face [after the NICU] in getting child care for children who often have special needs? What are the racial determinants of health that end up with so many more children of color in NICUs than white children? [In that time] sitting by his bed, the big policy I started thinking about was access to paid family and medical leave. 

I was fortunate to be in a position where I was able to leave my job. I had a partner who could support us, and I could be there. All the medical research says outcomes for children are much better when they're able to have a parent present with them during hospitalization. Most days, I was the only parent in the NICU all day, and sitting there at six o'clock, the doors would open, and all these parents would come rushing in after work for maybe an hour or two with their child. If families were fortunate to have any paid leave, they needed it when their medically fragile child came home. During those days, I had a lot of time to sit by his isolette think about how we organize parents to advocate for the policies that we need, and that's what we've been doing since 2008. 

So even prior to parenthood, your interest in political action was very present, and that, combined with parenthood, really turned you in this direction.

Yes. I'm a big believer that democracy is an action word, and that the people who are most directly affected need to be at the table when decisions are being made that affect our lives. You know, people often talk about voting. Voting is great, [it’s] important, but voting happens once or twice a year. It's what we do in between that really builds communities and the policies that we need.

Beth, you have been a member of Durham PreK's Governance Committee since the program began. How does your work with MomsRising intersect with your support of universal pre-K in Durham, and what aspects of the local program are you most proud of?

The work of Durham PreK is very closely interwoven with the work we do at MomsRising, [which] works on a broad motherhood agenda [and] manydifferent policies that affect families, including access to early learning and affordable, high quality child care. We know that these kinds of programs are incredibly important to help kids be ready to start school, be prepared to succeed, to build social and emotional skills that are so critically important. We know there is a long term return on investment for communities when we invest in early childhood and early learning. What we invest in early childhood, we save down the road in terms of what we get back in taxes, what we see in educational success, and in funding we ] do not need to put into the criminal justice system.You don't get a do-over on early childhood. You're only 4 once, and the kinds of experiences that families and children have during that time period can make a difference for the rest of their lives. 

As someone who has lived in Durham since 2001, I am tremendously proud to see our community leading the way on recognizing the importance of investing in early childhood, putting our money where our mouth is, and intentionally trying to build a universal pre-k system. We know that social interactions are important. We know that building buy-in is important. Quite frankly, we build community in our educational settings. It's where families come together. It's where children come together and build friendships. And it's very important that every single child in Durham has the opportunity to have these programs. The fact that we're investing  and doing so in a way that also invests in the early childhood workforce and recognizes the pivotal role that these professionals play in building our community’s future is something we all should take pride in. Durham’s efforts align very closely  with what we work  on at the state and national level at MomsRising.

Analysis of the workforce shows, too, that a lot of early educators themselves are parents, so that’s really doubling down on trying to support workers and their families.

We talk about how the early childhood workforce is the workforce behind the workforce. There's two components. Early learning is critical to get children ready in the long term. But in the short term, families need access to high quality, affordable child care so they can work and create family economic security, so they can pay for housing and these ever increasing grocery prices. 

Even with the compensation supports, we've been getting through the federal emergency dollars, child care educatorss are not making living wages. As you pointed out, they are disproportionately moms. And disproportionately, they're on public benefits because we don't pay people enough to support their families. We don't pay them enough to pay for quality child care for their own children. As a result, we're seeing people, understandably, leaving for retail or food service work. When Amazon or Walmart or McDonald's can pay you more with benefits and salary than the early childhood workforce, we have a huge problem. 

It says something about how much we value children and how much we value their parents. As a nation, we talk a good game about motherhood and apple pie, but Durham really makes those investments. I'm proud to see Durham supporting families and supporting the childhood workforce. The fact that we stood by that even through the pandemic speaks volumes.

MomsRising is a co-convener for the, NC Families Care Coalition, an advocacy group that champions family-friendly workplace policies in the state. Can you tell me a little bit about that? 

Sure. NC Families Care is a statewide coalition of organizations working on family friendly workplace policies,. We advocate for passage of policies like paid family and medical leave insurance programs. Thirteen other states, plus DC, have paid family medical leave insurance programs that allow workers to be able to take time off when they welcome a new child or have a serious illness or a family member with a serious illness. 

We work on the right to earn paid sick days. The US does not have any public policy that says workers have a right to earn paid sick days. That has a massive impact on young families. According to the CDC, kids get sick on average  12 times a year, especially when they're little and when they're first entering childcare. I hear every day, especially once cold and flu season starts, from parents who don't have access to sick days and are being forced to lie to their employer saying they are sick themselves, hide their children at their places of employment, or have to leave their kids who are far too young to be staying home by themselves, putting them in dangerous situations. It's a terrible position for families to be in and one that’s completely unnecessary.

We also work on pregnancy accommodations and breastfeeding rights in the workplace. Recently, we won two major victories on The Pregnant Workers Fairness Act and the PUMP Act at the federal level, providing those accommodations nationwide. 

Our workplaces were created for a 1950s workforce that actually never existed, especially forcommunities of color and women of color. We really don't have this “Leave It to Beaver” kind of world that our workplaces are largely set up for.. The pandemic brought to the forefront the idea that people are whole people. They have caregiving responsibilities, they want to be good employees, and we need to create policies that allow people to do both. Because you're going to get the best from people if you let them be authentic, right? 

That's what NC Families Care works on. It's a group of civic organizations, labor organizations, community organizations, all working to move these policies. We recently won paid parental leave for all state employees, all K through 12 public school personnel, and all community college personnel. And we've worked with 24 local governments to win paid leave policies for local city and county and public school employees across the state. Bit by bit, we're going to work until we win for everybody. That's the goal.

That's got to feel really good, to see that happen.

It's life changing. I keep thinking of all the people for whom their first experience of motherhood or fatherhood is going to be very different than it would have been. Right now, in this country, 24% of moms are back at work within 10 days of giving birth, so the ability to change that is huge.

With your bird’s-eye view of the many policy and practice areas related to North Carolina families and children, could you speak to the ways in which universal pre-k is connected to other family and child policy priorities?

There’s this Audrey Lorde quote that says “there’s no such thing as a single issue struggle because we don't live single issue lives.” That's what we see. We see a mom who comes to us who can't afford childcare or who’s struggling to figure out pre-k for their children, often a mom or dad who didn't have access to paid family and medical leave. Only 12% of North Carolinians have access to that. It may be a family who is food insecure. They're having a hard time finding housing. Transportation may be a challenge, right? So we can't work on these issues in silos. We can't afford to just work on childcare or just work on paid leave, because that's not how people are experiencing these policies. We have to braid those narratives together and talk about how we create a network of public policies and programs that actually benefit not just families and family economic security but benefit the economy and employers across the board.

Beth, you’ve said in the past that MomsRising, in part, helps to teach mothers to use their voices and tell stories to advocate for what their families need. Can you give an example of how the amplification of lived experience has helped both mothers and policymakers consider changes in the early childhood or universal pre-K space? 

We know that policymakers rely on data and evidence to help make decisions. Obviously they rely on the numbers, but they also  need faces on top of the numbers. It can get very overwhelming just to look at this many thousands of kids that are sitting on a subsidy waiting list, for example, or this many parents who can't find an infant classroom for their child. When we can bring those individual voices to Raleigh, when we can bring them to Congress, it does make a big difference. 

In early childhood funding all along the way, it has made a big difference. During the height of the pandemic, we had a mom from Durham who went and testified before Congress, talking about how she was struggling having to quit her job because she didn't have access to child care. I was actually talking to a mom this morning who was in an article in Winston-Salem talking about  child care deserts. Putting those faces on the statistics regularly moves policy. It helped get federal emergency dollars. Even though we weren't necessarily having many parent speakers at the Child Care Commission during the pandemic, being able to take back everything I was hearing from parents and identifying the concerns parents are raising – that helps influence what policies come out. 

We're still in a place where our leaders  need to listen to families’ voices  and act to provide the level of state investment in child care that we need as federal emergency dollars wind down.We continue to need people's voices. The stories make a huge difference.

If parents felt moved to share their stories and to become advocates, how would they go about doing that? What would be a first step?

I would ask them to please email me because I would want to make sure that I connect with them personally. It's Beth@MomsRising.org. There are a couple of different ways that people can choose to share their stories with MomsRising in whatever way they feel comfortable. They get to decide how and when their story is used. 

People can share it in written format, and if that's all they want to do, that's fine. We will take those stories and compile them into storybooks. We hand deliver them to members of the General Assembly and to members of Congress. We've had numerous situations where members of Congress are actually reading from our storybooks into the Congressional Record. Congresswoman Adams does that often. It's really powerful. 

You could choose whether or not to be anonymous because we want people to feel comfortable sharing their experiences however they feel best. But if you're willing to talk to the media, and an opportunity comes up, we have a team that will talk to you about your story and help make sure that you're sharing what you feel comfortable with and then help connect you to the media. 

If you're someone who would be willing to meet with a member of the legislature, we organize meetings with lawmakers. We often get calls from Congress or the White House for people to come and testify, so we look to see who has the story that fits that situation the best, and then we help support those folks in going up and testifying. In May, a mom from Asheville shared her child care story on the lawn in front of the Capitol for bill introductions. It was very exciting.

Storytelling is a really powerful way to make change. It's interesting to hear an organization really embracing the lifting up of lived experience for families.

Parenthood can often come with a lot of guilt, especially when things aren't going the way you would like them to for your family. I experienced that a lot when my son was born. I had one job, which was to keep him safe, and a lot of guilt that I wasn't able to do that. But I think when we hear from families telling the same versions of the same story over and over and over and over again, we like to lift that up. This is not a pandemic of individual failings; we have a systemic problem that requires systemic policy solutions. Together, by telling our stories and not having people tell them for us, but telling them ourselves, there's a tremendous amount of power in that. When we do that, we actually win. That's how we won all these other policies. 

How do you ensure that those voices represent a cross section of parents and that everyone whose needs need to be represented are represented in those stories? 

That's a great question. We do it a number of different ways. Our philosophy is first that the people who are most directly impacted are the people who should be heard first. So if, for example, we’re talking about childcare subsidies, we're looking for people who are actively receiving childcare subsidies. Or who needed childcare subsidies and were unable to access them. 

We spend a lot of time looking at our membership list and how, demographically, it matches up with the country. We do that every year. We also spend a lot of time intentionally partnering with organizations that are formed by and lead by communities of color. We do a lot of work directly with folks who may come from low-income socio-economic backgrounds. So, for example, when we're talking about hunger and food insecurity, we work closely with the food banks across the state. We do family days at the food banks, and the goal is to connect directly to people who are experiencing that problem. We recruited families through these family days, and those folks came in and became part of our fellowship program. They receivedstipends, and they learned about how public policy around food and hunger works in our state and in our country. We talked about how you work with the media, about how you tell your story. We did an entire session in English, and an entire session in Spanish. A lot of those parents went on and are now our Parent Advisory Committee on School Meals. So the goal is really that we want to intentionally recruit from folks who are most closely experiencing in the problem and then go out from there. Certainly, people who aren't experiencing in it can be allies, and we want and need that. But when we're lifting up the voices, it's about intentionality.

Sounds like it's also about showing up and literally meeting families where they are and then making it easy for families to come along on the journey.

Yes. At MomsRising, we talk about our approach to organizing as layer cake organizing. Often, peopletalk about a ladder of engagement, that some types of advocacy are more important than other types of advocacy, but that's not really true. Families are stretched very thin, and if all they can do is sign a petition, then I'm grateful for that, because I know how hard it can be to have that time to check your email in between work and nap and all the things for the kids. But if somebody is able to do more, if they're able to go to the General Assembly, if they're able to tell their story, we try to do it in a way that they build on each other. So, for example, on the days that we take families to the legislature, not everybody can get to the General Assembly because they've got work or childcare or they may live in the west or the east and they can't get there, so our goal is that we'll take the storybooks to the General Assembly, we’ll have parents there on the ground, but then we'll send out a text or an action alert that says “moms are on the ground right now, back us up with a phone call, send an email right now.” Together, we're much more powerful. By the time I get to a legislator’s office, they've already heard from four or five constituents in their district, and they're expecting us, and it makes it so much more powerful.

Over the time you’ve worked and volunteered to support families and children in NC, what have been some of the wins or major milestone moments you’ve witnessed? 

I think the paid leave is a big one. That's a huge win for us. Winning on the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act and the PUMP Act. We were working on that for almost a decade. And as a result of that, people will be able to have a water bottle, they'll be able to sit down on a stool if they're a cashier, they'll be able to not have to lift heavy boxes and put their pregnancies at risk. We're very, very proud of those. 

With early childhood, I feel like it's been a lot of incremental wins – a lot of trying to shore up, protect, restore funding that's been lost along the way. On Durham PreK, I'm really proud of how we weathered the pandemic in a way that was true to our values, that did not leave families in a hole at a time that they were most at risk, a time when not just the children were struggling but the parents were struggling to keep their employment, to stay engaged, to be all the things at once. And I'm really proud that we didn't waver in our commitment to making sure that the child care workforce, our pre-k workforce, was supported, but also that families were supported. 

We're very proud of Medicaid expansion. MomsRising worked very hard on Medicaid expansion for a long time. The ACA, we worked very hard to win that. It was one of our first big victories. But you know, whether [or not] it's a big splashy win that gets a lot of media attention and gets signings, it will be something I treasure. It’s also those day-to-day wins that we saw during the pandemic [and] as we've come out of the pandemic in terms of growth and expansion of Durham PreK, that I’m equally proud of because they show that we're with families for the long haul – for the big victories and for the everyday victories.

Without discounting how far things have come and how much has been accomplished, what’s still on the table for supporting universal pre-k in North Carolina? And how can parents, business owners, and policymakers begin or continue to do their part?

That's a great question. I think there's a tremendous amount still ahead for universal pre-k – first of all, making it truly universal. I think that we've come a long way in Durham, and it's very excitingto see Durham being a model for other communities across the state where local governments are trying to take up some of the slack where we haven't seen theinvestment at the state level that we need. I spend a lot of time talking to folks who live in rural communities who would give anything for these kinds of opportunities for their children, and they just simply don't exist because the resources aren't there. So when we talk about universal pre-k, it needs to be about making it truly accessible for every child who is eligible and needs and wants it in Durham, and then [modeling] that all across the state and all across the country, inspiring not just local but also state and federal lawmakers to invest Because if we don't, then those who have resources have more opportunity, and those who already have fewer resources get less. And that's not okay.

Beth, thank you for your time. As we wrap up, I’d just like to ask whether there is anything we did not cover that feels important to this topic. 

I feel like so many of the issues that we work on at MomsRising and that Durham PreK also tries to address about investments in children and investments in families do not get the attention that they deserve. They get typecast as children's issues or women's issues, and historically, those have been perspectives that have been devalued. Caregiving work has been devalued, because that's been seen as women's work and disproportionately has been done, especially in the South, by women of color. We have to change that narrative. These programs do benefit children. They do benefit women, but they also benefit families. And, especially in this economy, women are workers, and in most households in North Carolina, all available adults in a child's life are in the workforce. So when we talk about these policies, that are family economic security issues, that are children's issues, they're also employment issues. They are also labor force attachment issues. They are also economic development issues. We have to see them holistically. If we're not willing to invest in children, which we should be, then we need to be investing in programs that are evidence based and proven to work and that make a difference for families and the economy.