The wages are crying out: Asking mothers to defy gravity

In my work, I keep watching different women arrive at the same dead end. The details change, but the underlying story rarely does.

It goes like this: she gets the job and then loses it before the 90-day probation period because she couldn’t make it through with zero days of paid time off. Or she gets the interview, nails it, and then can’t start because she can’t secure consistent childcare before the start date the employer set.

Too often, the job is inconsistent, like the work of a home health aide, and she’s never able to accumulate enough hours and enough money to pay all the bills. Desperate is a category, and being in it means you don’t get to hold out for something better.

I see versions of this story every week. Women doing everything they’ve been told to do: working, parenting, sacrificing, and still falling behind. Many are single mothers, raising children in a county where nearly 44% of children live in single-parent households.

They take the jobs they can find, often part-time positions with low wages and few, if any, benefits. The only jobs flexible enough to accommodate school pickups, doctor’s appointments, sick days, and the endless demands of raising children alone.

Still, it isn’t enough. Some women live week to week in motel rooms because they cannot save enough for a security deposit. Others move from a friend’s couch to a relative’s spare room, trying to keep their children in the same school while looking for something more stable. In their search for stability, they DoorDash between school dismissal and dinner, braid hair on weekends, clean houses, and watch other people’s children just to afford to care for their own.

We also expect them to do everything else: help with homework, volunteer at school, read bedtime stories, and be present after a full day of work. We tell mothers their children should come first, but our economy punishes them whenever they actually put motherhood first.

Certainly, you’ve heard the old adage “pull yourself up by your bootstraps.” I recently learned this phrase was originally a joke meant to mock what can’t be done. Somehow, the joke has morphed into an actual expectation.

We ask people to defy gravity, and then we call them failures when they can’t.

The data helps explain why.

Here in Sumter County, women earn roughly 77 cents for every dollar a man earns, based on median earnings by industry. Nationwide, women held 61% of the 40 lowest-paying jobs, work that is often physically demanding and emotionally exhausting. In South Carolina, women’s share of the low-paid workforce was 62%, according to analyses of 2024 census data.

In Sumter County, a single working parent with one child in childcare needs to earn about $49,000 a year, or $24.68 an hour, to meet basic needs, according to United for ALICE.

The federal minimum wage has remained frozen at $7.25 an hour since 2009, less than one-third of what that parent needs.

The county’s average hourly wage is $25.66 across all occupations, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

A minimum wage is simply the legal floor. A living wage reflects what it actually costs to survive.

If an employer is not paying a living wage, the employee’s survival is being subsidized elsewhere: churches stock food pantries, nonprofits piece together rent and utility payments, families open spare bedrooms, public assistance fills the gaps.

In one way or another, the community absorbs the difference, but we are paying it in the most inefficient and undignified way possible, after families have already fallen into crisis.

In the New Testament book of James, Jesus’ half-brother writes, “The wages you failed to pay the workers who mowed your fields are crying out against you.”

Wages cry out not because there is no work, but because there is no fairness, a reminder that how we treat those with the least power says a lot about our community.

When I ask mothers what they want for their families, their answers are simple. They want to attend a kindergarten graduation without worrying about losing their jobs. They want to buy a birthday gift without calculating which bill will be skipped this month. They want to be present with their children, not always exhausted.

What they are asking for, ultimately, is not less work. They are asking for solid ground beneath their feet.

When I think about a thriving community, this is what I picture: not simply more jobs, but jobs that leave people better off. The people who stock our shelves, care for our children and parents, prepare our food, and clean the places where we live and work should have enough time and enough security to enjoy lives of their own.

Perhaps the wages have always cried out, both in accusation and in hope for something better.

They call us back to the Jericho Road, asking us to imagine a community where work actually helps people thrive, not just survive. In this imagined community, children are seen as blessings, rest is valued, and no mother is asked to defy gravity just to keep her family afloat.