Children Handle Grocery Shopping for Mother's Day at Stop & Shop

Photo caption: (from left to right) Amelia, Allyson and Madyson Galloza of Paterson, took their Mom Raysa shopping at the Clifton, Stop & Shop ahead of Mother’s Day with a $150 gift card provided to them and other families from The Boys & Girls Club of Paterson and Passaic by Stop & Shop to help families impacted by the economic fallout from the COVID pandemic.

Stop & Shop and The Boys & Girls Club of Paterson and Passaic have teamed up to make Mother’s Day more special for six moms and their families. Stop & Shop provided each of the families impacted by the economic fallout from the COVID pandemic with $150 gift cards so that the children can lessen the burden on mom and handle the weekly grocery shopping for her. The boys and girls aged 5-12 shopped the aisles at the Clifton Stop & Shop located at 160 Kingsland Road in Clifton, NJ, checking everything off their moms’ grocery lists.

The U.S. Census Bureau says 1.5 million fewer moms of school-age children are working now as compared to March 2020, creating a financial fallout on families. The Bureau of Labor Statistics also finds that during the pandemic, women’s participation in the workforce fell to levels not seen since the mid 1980’s. Not to mention, mothers still maintain majority of the household work such as grocery shopping.

Representatives of The Boys & Girls Club of Paterson and Passaic say that many of the mothers whose children shopped at Stop & Shop this week are raising their children alone and are the sole providers for their families. While the mothers were on-hand to supervise the trip to the supermarket, the kids handled the shopping, budgeting and payment with Stop & Shop gift cards, making this Mother’s Day very special in what has been a very difficult year.

Many mothers say that access to childcare and the demands of virtual and home schooling during COVID have forced them to leave the workforce. Millions of women who have kept their jobs have struggled to keep working. The number of mothers on leave has dramatically increased since March 2020.

NJ is one of the top 10 states in the U.S. for income inequality, and this is reflected in the disparities that Club students and parents face in Paterson and Passaic regarding food security, educational support, technological access and more. Paterson has been specifically identified as a food desert, and 1 in 6 children in Passaic County were food insecure even before COVID-19. In statewide assessments, the public-school districts of Paterson and Passaic, NJ have failure rates of over 80% in Math and over 68% in English Language Arts, based on 2018-2019 NJ School Performance Summary Reports. When virtual education became the only option offered during the 2020-2021 school year, lack of access to the technology or expertise needed to engage in remote learning threatened to exacerbate the already-existing educational achievement gap in those cities.