From Proof to Power
ANNUAL
REPORT
2025
Friends,
For years, we’ve made bold bets.
We bet that child care could break through the noise of partisan politics and become what it truly is: a mainstream affordability issue that matters to families, businesses, and elected officials across the political spectrum. This year, that bet paid off. Together, we rallied hundreds of companies and helped secure $16 billion in new federal funding for child care.
We bet that change doesn’t just happen in Washington — it starts in the states. By building deep, yearslong partnerships with leaders like New York Governor Kathy Hochul, we helped make child care the defining affordability issue in the New York City mayoral race. The result? A historic child care investment announced just eight days into the new administration. Now we have a model to win child care across the country.
We bet early on AI — not as a buzzword, but as a tool to solve real problems for families. Years ago, we launched PaidLeave.AI, one of the first generative AI tools built by a nonprofit to navigate government benefits. This year, we scaled that work nationally, proving that AI can do something powerful: put money back in the pockets of working families.
And we bet that the fight for moms would be stronger if more people joined it. At a time when so much in our culture pulls us apart, we brought dads and men into the conversation through our Future of Fatherhood Summit, showing that the path forward is one we build together.
This report isn’t a victory lap.
It’s proof of concept.
Proof that when we organize, build unlikely coalitions, and stay relentlessly focused on what families need, we win.
Now we’re turning that proof into power.
And we’re just getting started.
Onward,
Moms First is a movement for America’s mothers.
We organize moms, business leaders, and policymakers to make clear what the data already shows: when moms thrive, families and the economy thrive.
Our mission is to secure paid leave and affordable child care so families can succeed without sacrificing their health, financial stability, or careers.
Our vision is a country that values motherhood, supports caregivers, and reflects that value in our policies, workplaces, and culture.
Mobilize business
Harness innovation
Shift culture and build movement
The national conversation around care hasn’t caught up to economic reality. Child care, paid leave, and caregiving are still treated as lifestyle choices or workplace perks — when in fact they determine labor force participation, business competitiveness, and long-term economic growth.
Families are navigating rising costs, shrinking flexibility, and confusing systems with little structural support. The result is predictable: instability at home and drag on the broader economy.
$172B
annual economic impact of the U.S. child care crisis, including lost productivity, earnings, and tax revenue1
59%
of parents have gone into debt to provide for their children2
260%
increase in the average cost of child care over the past three decades3
24%
of women leave the workforce in the first year of motherhood4
73%
of workers are left without paid time off to care for a newborn, sick child, or aging parent5
1 in 4
new moms return to work just 2 weeks after having a baby6
From the Boardroom to Capitol Hill
In April 2025, Moms First convened more than 50 employers in Washington, D.C. for a first-of-its-kind Child Care Hill Day. Together, business leaders delivered a unified message across 20+ bipartisan meetings with members of Congress: child care is not a “family issue” — it is a workforce issue.
That pressure helped lay the groundwork for historic federal tax reform, including strengthened employer child care incentives and expanded relief for working families.
The result: $16 billion in federal child care tax credits.
This was not symbolic advocacy. It was a structural economic policy change — driven by business leadership.
A Blueprint in New York
We applied the same business-first strategy in New York — reframing child care as an affordability and competitiveness issue for the nation’s largest local economy.
Through high-level convenings, public coalition-building, and strategic partnership with the Governor’s office, we elevated child care as a defining economic issue in the city and state’s political landscape.
The outcome was a historic expansion of affordable child care in New York, including free care for two-year-olds in NYC and expanded statewide subsidies.
New York proved what our model makes clear: When business leads, policy follows.
Closing the Gap Between Policy and Practice
In 2025, Moms First uncovered a striking paradox at the heart of paid leave: only two in five eligible parents actually used their benefits, leaving behind $6,000 to $10,000 per parent on the table. In partnership with McKinsey & Company, we conducted first-of-its-kind research into paid leave eligibility and utilization across New York, New Jersey, and California. The findings revealed an access crisis, not a demand problem.
60% of parents who didn’t claim benefits simply didn’t know they existed. For lower-wage workers, the picture is more complex: in some states, low wage replacement rates make leave feel financially out of reach, compounding the awareness gap. This research sharpened our focus on closing the information gap, directly shaping enhancements to PaidLeave.AI so that any parent, in any state, can get clear, personalized answers about what they’re owed and how to claim it. By pairing rigorous research with accessible technology, Moms First is closing the gap between policy on paper and benefits in hand.
“Research into paid leave usage has been hindered by the fragmented landscape of state-level policies, differences between types of leave, and the evolving role of employers.
Our work with Moms First aimed to bridge this gap by examining paid parental leave in three of the largest states with long-standing policies.
The study provides an unprecedented review of who uses paid family leave, their satisfaction, and how to reduce barriers to fully accessing its benefits — and it ultimately shows that having good legislation isn’t enough — implementation is critical.”
— Ramya Parthasarathy, Partner, McKinsey & Company
“After the birth of my baby, I had a life-threatening hemorrhage and my baby was in the NICU due to a heart defect. Thankfully, we have both recovered now, but it was an incredibly hard time.
PaidLeave.AI helped me access close to $12,000 in state-covered parental leave funds I was eligible for. I never would have found the time to navigate that process on my own given how challenging my recovery was. The platform walked me through every step: how much I was eligible for, what forms to fill out, and it even caught that I qualified for two additional weeks of leave due to my high-risk pregnancy and birth. I had no idea, and I never would have applied for those extra weeks without the technology flagging it for me”.
—New Mom & PaidLeave.AI User, New York
Reimagining Masculinity and Care
In partnership with Equimundo, Moms First convened the historic Future of Fatherhood Summit, bringing thousands into a national conversation about masculinity, caregiving, and gender equity.
We challenged the idea that paid leave and child care are “women’s issues,” reframing caregiving as shared leadership and fatherhood as central to economic stability.
The summit broke into the cultural mainstream with coverage in the Sunday Style section of The New York Times, signaling that fatherhood and caregiving are no longer niche policy debates — they are national cultural conversations.
Centering Mothers as Leaders
Moms First partnered with Marie Claire to launch the inaugural Power Moms initiative — elevating motherhood as leadership, influence, and cultural power.
As part of Marie Claire’s “Motherhood Issue,” we spotlighted moms leading across industries, reframing motherhood not as a limitation, but as authority.
Through national media amplification and high-profile honorees, Power Moms expanded our reach beyond policy audiences and into mainstream culture.
“At Marie Claire, we spotlight the women moving culture forward – and we know you can’t tell the story of progress without telling the story of moms. The Power Moms are a diverse group of actors, activists, business leaders, and musicians who, despite their different fields, have one thing in common: motherhood isn’t a limitation, it’s part of their legacy.”
— Nikki Ogunnaike, Editor in Chief. Marie Claire
How a Nonprofit CEO Rallied 200 Businesses to Help Score Billions in Childcare Wins as Part of Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill
Read more
In 2026, we are taking one of the boldest steps in our organization’s history.
We’re premiering our documentary about American motherhood, a first-of-its-kind cultural project designed to tell the truth about what moms are up against and why the system so often feels impossible. For too long, mothers have been told their struggles are personal failures. They are not. They are policy failures. They are design failures. They are cultural failures.
This film is about reclaiming the narrative.
It’s about exposing the myth of “having it all,” naming the economic penalties of caregiving, and showing the invisible labor that powers this country every single day. But it’s also about possibility. About what happens when moms stop blaming themselves and start demanding more.
More than a movie, this documentary is a movement. Thousands of mothers are already part of it — as storytellers, as Associate Producers, as committed hosts of community screenings. Together, we are building something bigger than a film. We are building cultural momentum.
Adecco Group US Foundation
Amplify Her Foundation
Anderson Foundation
Annie E. Casey Foundation
Bobbie for Change
Broderick Family Foundation
Brittany Shugart Shiba
Craig Newmark Philanthropies
Divya Nettimi
Elyse and Lawrence B. Benenson
Equimundo
Every Page Foundation
InMaat Foundation
Isabelle Raymond
Kaitlin Solimine
Long Ridge Foundation
MAKERS by Yahoo
Max Mara
Morgan Stanley
Pivotal Ventures
Progyny
P-Squared Philanthropies
Rockefeller Foundation
Rovere O’Kelley Family Fund
Silicon Valley Community Foundation
Soderberg Foundation
Sparrow
Stardust Fund
Synchrony
The Burke Foundation
The Cadence Giving Foundation
The Families and Workers Fund
The Tepper Foundation
Visionary Women
Walton Family Foundation
Sources
- Ready Nation. The Child Care Crisis Costs the U.S. Economy $172 Billion Each Year (2026 Report).
https://www.instituteforchildsuccess.org/resources/resource/cost-child-care-crisis-report/ - National Debt Relief. Six in Ten American Parents Are Going Into Debt for Their Children.
https://www.nationaldebtrelief.com/news-media/six-in-10-american-parents-are-going-into-debt-for-their-children/ - U.S. News & World Report. Working Parents Need the Child Care Tax Credit.
https://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2025-08-29/college-working-parents-child-care-tax-credit - National Institutes of Health (NIH). Research on Paid Leave and Maternal Workforce Outcomes.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11047346/ - U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Employee Benefits in the United States.
https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/ebs2.pdf - The Guardian. Paid Maternity Leave and Women’s Work in the U.S.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jan/27/maternity-paid-leave-women-work-childbirth-us