GEOFF BENNETT: A new documentary explores the realities of motherhood in America, from the high cost of child care to the latest culture wars over parenting and raising a family.

Amna Nawaz recently spoke with the film's creators for our arts and culture series Canvas.

AMNA NAWAZ: The debate over a modern motherhood is often framed as a choice between career and family.

A new documentary film called "No Country For Mothers" dives deep into the so-called mommy wars, unpacking the systems that exploit and perpetuate those divides and what it would take to end them.

Here's a clip.

WOMAN: Working moms versus stay-at-home moms.

WOMAN: You have working moms.

You have stay-at-home moms, and then you have work-from-home, stay-at-home moms.

WOMAN: Oh my God.

WOMAN: Everything that structurally is set up is set up to make motherhood so damned hard.

WOMAN: Does housework count as, well, real work?

WOMAN: Culturally, we've never really told the truth about motherhood.

WOMAN: If we're going to win the culture war, we have to start... AUDIENCE: Now!

AMNA NAWAZ: The film is made by the CEO of Moms First -- that's Reshma Saujani -- and executive produced by Tan France.

They join me now.

Welcome to you both.

Thank you so much for joining us.

Reshma, I'll start with you because you meet with a lot of different moms in the film.

You share your own story as a working mom too.

What did you find as you dug into this?

Were the struggles of these moms universal?

RESHMA SAUJANI, Executive Producer, "No Country For Mothers": Yes, I mean, look, this film is an investigation into the lies we tell about American motherhood to distract and divide us from getting the things we need to make motherhood tenable in America, which is paid leave and child care.

And what I found as I went across the country is we all want the same thing.

But we're being tricked into thinking our choices are binary, that I got to be a tradwife or a girl boss, neither which -- like, no one wants to spend their time hustling so hard they don't see their kids or milking a cow.

We all want something in between.

But it's the culture wars that are preventing us from actually making America and American motherhood actually tenable.

And so I ended this film with a whole lot of hope in thinking that, if we can come together, we can change everything.

AMNA NAWAZ: Tan, we should note you are also, of course, a parent.

But this is a conversation moms often have amongst themselves, right?

Men and fathers can be excluded, or we expect them to not be part of the solution.

So why did you want to get behind this film?

TAN FRANCE, Executive Producer, "No Country For Mothers": For so many reasons.

As you mentioned, I'm a parent.

I'm a gay parent.

There are two dads.

There's no mother in this situation.

And so I think I understand even to a tiny extent what mothers are experiencing in America, but, most importantly, I was born and raised in the U.K., where the laws are very different.

Also, I'm surrounded by moms.

All my friends are mom -- women, moms, and I see the struggle, and it's it's exceptionally sad to see that we're in this position.

We want our country to be great.

It starts with taking care of our mothers and our children.

AMNA NAWAZ: Reshma, you talk about this moment, but it's also how we got here.

And there is a turning point.

You talk about the pandemic, what it did to American mothers, the impact it had, forcing women out of the work force.

Have we recovered from that yet?

Where are we now?

RESHMA SAUJANI: No, we haven't.

In fact, the pandemic in some ways was a gift because it showed us what's possible.

We started increasing benefits on paid leave and child care.

We started allowing remote work, offering mothers grace.

We recognized that often most mothers aren't both working and they're caregiving, and they shouldn't have to hide either one of their identities.

And so we were able to finally build a workplace that worked for moms.

But, after the pandemic, we pulled all that progress back.

Most recently, Deloitte and Zoom have basically reduced the amount of paid leave benefits.

You're seeing companies pull back.

And the reason why we have this rollback is the culture wars.

Every time women start making progress, we hand them a culture war.

You have to remember, right before the pandemic, for the first time in the history of our country, 51 percent of the labor force was female.

And last year, 500,000 women left the work force because they had children under the age of 5 and they couldn't afford or find childcare.

It's structure and structural obstacles that are impeding the progress of women and families.

AMNA NAWAZ: The culture wars, the political wars at the heart of it are something you trace too.

All of this well predates the pandemic.

You dive into some of the history here about how the Equal Rights Amendment and the era had actually been on both political parties' platforms at one point, until it wasn't.

Here's a clip of how that happened.

WOMAN: Going into 1980, Ronald Reagan drops the ERA from the platform, and they take up the cause in their platform of being pro-life and its family values, an identity structure as what a good woman is.

The debate gets framed as an us versus them.

And that's really important to remember as we go into the battles we're having now.

AMNA NAWAZ: Tan, how does that history help us understand some of those battles that Reshma was mentioning earlier, this choice between being a tradwife and staying at home and only having kids and no career or being a girl boss?

How should we understand about how we got here?

TAN FRANCE: Quite frankly, though, what we see historically is that there wasn't ever really a choice.

You were forced into a situation.

You are having to -- so many women are having to leave the home because they can't afford to stay at home and take care of the kids because our governments aren't taking care of them.

Or they have to stay at home because they can't afford the childcare.

We have seen this decade after decade.

This has been the case for decades now, I think since time began.

And so it was really important for context to show this isn't something that's new.

It's not going away.

And, therefore, it does require massive change.

But it requires bipartisan buy-in.

AMNA NAWAZ: Reshma, there's a moment, sort of an aha moment in the film, because you speak to mothers of all different backgrounds, different political persuasions, different economic circumstances.

You have a focus group that you're watching unfold.

And this group of women who come from varied backgrounds all coalesce around the idea of what would help them, and that is universal free childcare, regardless of their backgrounds and how they come to this issue.

And you actually asked then-candidate Donald Trump, about what he would do as president to try to work towards affordable childcare back in 2024.

Do you see any signs of a country working towards that when it's so widely supported?

RESHMA SAUJANI: Yes, I mean, when I asked President Trump that question when he was running for office, he acknowledged in an interesting answer that childcare is childcare.

You got to have it.

And then, most recently, at a breakfast during Easter, he kind of announces that, well, childcare is too expensive.

I'm spending - - we need to spend resources, quite frankly, on protecting the homeland, rather than day care.

It's too expensive.

We can't do it.

And, to me, that message was so off mark of understanding where American families are.

You know, 50 percent of Americans can't afford the basics.

That's the essentials, like diapers and food.

And childcare is the linchpin of affordability.

It's the one line item on most families' budgets that, if you shifted it, if you made it cheaper, it would change everything for them.

AMNA NAWAZ: Well, the way in which you're rolling out this film is as much a part of the story as anything.

The film has already made history.

It's set records for the most producers credited on a film.

Over 2,500 mothers, caregivers, and advocates are listed in the credits.

You're also not streaming it.

It's not on YouTube.

It's not on Netflix.

The only way for people to see it is in community screenings.

You have hosted over 1,000 so far across the country.

Why that decision?

Tan, I will come to you first.

TAN FRANCE: You know, Reshma and the team already started to talk about that quite some time ago, and I loved the idea.

I come from a traditional entertainment background now.

I have been on streamers for many, many years, and I thought, OK, this will go to a streamer.

We will sell this documentary, and it will get seen by millions.

However, after hearing the importance of doing this, this way, where we're doing private screenings, where we're encouraging people to do screenings with their communities, it's so that women aren't watching on their own in silos thinking, am I the problem?

What's the problem?

How do we talk about this?

How do I talk about this with my friends and family?

No, we want you to do screenings with your friends and family.

RESHMA SAUJANI: Listen, we didn't go to a streamer because we knew that we didn't want moms to watch it by themselves and think, yes, this is my personal problem.

I'm just a bad mom.

I just can't make it work.

And so we wanted you to watch it in community, because that's how we get to paid leave and childcare.

The second thing is, let's be honest.

We're living in a moment where we are suppressing women's content.

And I was worried that, if we gave it to a streamer, it would be buried.

And what we have been able to do in this past four weeks is like nothing I have ever seen.

And these are moms coming together sometimes at church.

You know what I mean?

Sometimes, in their community center, in their library, sometimes renting out their own theaters.

And they are staying until midnight, talking, crying, holding each other, hugging each other, talking about the laws are going to change, the policies are going to pass, the neighbor that they're going to help.

Like, this is the -- this is the match that we needed to, quite frankly, burn it all down and finally build a country for mothers.

AMNA NAWAZ: The film is "No Country For Mothers."

The two forces behind it are Tan France and the CEO of Moms First, Reshma Saujani.

Thank you so much to you both.

A real pleasure to speak with you.

TAN FRANCE: Thank you.

RESHMA SAUJANI: Thank you.