Work Hard and Parent Happy with Mirza

Being a parent can be immeasurably rewarding. Who doesn’t love watching their child grow into a fun, productive member of society? Parenting doesn’t happen in a vacuum, however. It takes a lot of time and hard work. Parenting is a full-time, unpaid gig. Rewarding? Sure. Mortgage paying? Nope. Few people understand this as intimately as Siran Cao, CEO and co-founder of Mirza. 

“I’m an immigrant and raised by a single mom. My mom was one of the many women whose career took a backseat when I arrived, so when my dad left, I grew up watching my mom rebuild entirely in a new country.

“That’s shaped my worldview and what matters to me most–women’s economic empowerment and independence.”

Whether we like it or not, parenting most often falls to the women. That isn’t exactly fair, but it’s what usually ends up happening. Some of that is due to how we’ve evolved as a species, but it has lingered due to unfair gender roles and expectations. So, when it comes to deciding who has to leave work to parent the children, it most often falls to women. 

Women In The Workplace

Women were on track to match, even overtake, men in the workplace. In 2019, women made up 47% of the workforce. Since the onset of the pandemic, more than 2.3 million women have left the workforce, making women’s participation in the workforce the lowest it has been since 1988. 

Though they couldn’t have known the pandemic was about to exacerbate the gender pay gap, Siran Cao and Mel Faxon, COO, founded Mirza as a means to correct that gap for good. 

Choosing between work and parenting shouldn’t be a difficult choice. In a perfect world, a parent should be able to do both. That takes a lot of meticulous planning and budgeting that can be incredibly intimidating. 

I’ll let Siran and Mel do most of the talking here: 

How Mirza Works

“The lion’s share of the wage gap is driven by the “motherhood penalty,” and the critical element here is childcare. With families spending a third of their incomes on childcare, it forces this trade-off of one person’s salary against cost of care. 

“That person, usually mom, due to a whole slew of reasons from no paid leave, to gender norms onwards. But just one year out of the workforce means losing 39% of lifetime earnings due to the missed acceleration (promotions, being mommy tracked, etc.) and lost compounding retirement savings. 

“So how Mirza works, we tackle that acute pain point. Our tech reframes that decision for parents and aspiring parents in larger family goals and financial health view, to anticipate upcoming costs and understand tradeoffs, and be better equipped to make fully informed decisions. 

“We then layer in funding for childcare so we can fundamentally change that math of income vs cost of care. At the core, we want to make sure parents (women!) have true CHOICE.”

The Math of Parenting

Mel Faxon, COO and co-founder, adds insight:

“For us, tackling childcare as one of the core contributors to the motherhood penalty/gender pay gap isn’t just about helping people afford the (often exorbitant) cost of childcare, but changing how they do the math around it. 

“The visibility our product provides into the long-term implications of taking unpaid leave, of having one parent drop out of the workforce entirely for a few years – it’s not a frame through which we normally think about having kids.  

“It’s much easier/more instinctual to think right now, present day, we’d “save” money if one of us stays home rather than pay for childcare – and we’re here to show you why that’s not really the case. 

“We’re currently in a milestone situation politically, where programs like paid family and medical leave and universal childcare are being seriously considered as part of national policy moving forward.”

A New Type Of Working Parent

Mel Faxon continues: 

“It could not be more apparent that single-income breadwinner families are no longer the norm. Families need and want dual incomes – and we need to structure work to support that. Care – childcare, eldercare – is something that we all have to do at one point or another, and our workplaces need to acknowledge that. 

“While our product is geared towards the individual, it’s always been fundamental that we work with employers to see that childcare is healthcare, childcare is wellness, it is financial health, and it is the future of work.”

It has unfortunately been drilled into the minds of managers and higher-level executives that in order to be a good worker you need to be 100% dedicated to the company at all times with no question. Your home life, your health, your family’s happiness is secondary to the wellbeing of the business. 

That, we now know, is nonsense. “A happy worker is a productive worker” is a bit of a cliche, but it’s true. If an employee has access to healthcare, a comfortably livable wage, and a happy home life, the more productive they will be. It’s a long-term investment. 

In a world obsessed with short-term gains, it can be tough to sell long-term investments. But we need to make that sale, or else this will all crumble. 

What Do Parents Think Of Mirza?

Mel Faxon shares some of the feedback Mirza has received since the launch of their beta on October 22:

“You’ve really nailed the fundamentals of what we’ve already been thinking about financially when preparing for kids”

“As soon as I signed up and filled in stuff about me, I saw good content right off the bat. I felt like I was being heard!”

“We haven’t really thought about loss in terms of paid time off, I [had] no idea, so it’s great that it’s included in the planning process.”

Things are still early, but the impact is already being felt. Mel shares one particular feedback:

“A really impactful comment we got the other day from one of our users, was not only that she wished she’d had this when she was family planning, but that Mirza has made her realize that she no longer has to just accept the way the world is. 

We can actually change the way things work for parents and for women, and she feels like we’re providing the information and ways for that to happen.”

What’s Next For Mirza?

Siran shares where she anticipates Mirza will move in the next 5-10 years. 

“We’re tackling the childcare crisis, so that means unlocking affordability for parents first, then we’ve designed our next steps for our financial product to be able to support providers! 

“We think of an end-to-end solution to work across the childcare ecosystem: funding care for parents and helping them navigate the available support, providing the platform for providers to access funding resources and increasing earnings ourselves, innovating in care delivery itself.”

Mirza is just getting started. If you’re a new parent or are about to be one, you can create an account right here. 

The pandemic stripped away a lot of critical progress. It’s time we work to gain it back and then some. Our children deserve it.