I’m terrified of what Brexit means for my children’s future

Last Friday, I woke up in London to deeply unsettling news. Britain, the country I moved to 17 years ago and now call home, had voted to remove itself from the European Union. EU was not a perfect organization but, after two world wars, it kept a historically tumultuous group of nations in conversation.

It had been the most vicious campaign of my lifetime (even compared to those I watched firsthand in America). Each side chose the strategy of scaring the public rather than inspiring them. The campaigns on both sides focused on economic chaos, future turmoil, immigrants and nothing on how being in the EU benefits us.

Like in the US, many people in Britain feel abandoned and even lied to by the government. Their vote was an opportunity to protest against the establishment and now even some who voted to leave regret it.

Upheaval arrived immediately: the Prime Minister resigned that morning, the leader of the opposition party received a vote of no confidence, the pound fell to to lowest in 31 years.

That day I struggled to hold my emotions in check. I thought of my children: what will the world look like when they are older?

The EU brought women benefits that were never outlined in the campaign. As Caroline Criado-Perez pointed out in the Telegraph, “Under UK law, you were only eligible for maternity leave if you were full-time, directly employed (sorry, agency workers) and had been in your post for at least two years.

“Inevitably, thousands of women did not qualify. It was the EU that changed all this, meaning that all working women now have the right to paid maternity leave. The EU also introduced paid time off for ante-natal appointments, maternity leave for agency workers, and paid time off for fathers to care for a sick child.”

The EU also ruled that women could not be dismissed from their jobs for being pregnant, something that still happens today but at least women have a right to fight it.

I voted to stay and yet, I feel naive that I didn’t see the extent of the fallout to come. Or, what will come.

Will these rights for women remain? American women reading this will know that those rights are not absolute as the US continues to deny them to their citizens.

Two of the main pledges of the Leave Campaign were to claim that the £350m of EU contributions could instead be spent on our National Health Service and that immigration would be cut. The Leave Campaign started backtracking immediately.

These hypocrisies are terrible, but the vote means more than that. It means instability in Europe, considered the biggest economy — or second biggest depending on which number is followed — and that could mean instability globally.

I’ve heard many British people say that we survived World War I and II, so we can face anything after that. I don’t want my children to face down a world war.

It’s hard to see where this is going. I’m not an economist, historian or politician. But I am a mom, and I want for my children what every mother wants — a stable future where they can prosper. It will be with bated breath that I wait out that future with them.