From Alternet, an article about the increasing crisis in childcare:
And, it keeps getting worse. According to a new 50-state report on child care policies just released by the National Women’s Law Center, the Bush administration has successful dismantled government services for children. State funds for child care assistance have fallen for the fifth year in a row. The problem will soon become catastrophic when large numbers of single mothers bump up against their five-year life limit on welfare.
We are simultaneously destroying programs and forcing far more families to rely on them.
The policies are punitive double-binds: work to pay for childcare or no childcare so you can work:
Poor working mothers face other barriers as well. Two-thirds of the states have raised the income eligibility and copayments for child care and 18 states have long waiting lists. All of these barriers to adequate childcare make it extremely difficult for women to work, feel confident that their children are safe and to get off welfare.
The article also points out that childcare providers–many of whom are in the same boat as their customers–are also suffering. According to the report, their situation is worsening at the same time:
Only nine states had adequate reimbursement rates for providers who serve families receiving child care assistance in 2006. This was a decrease from the number of states paying adequate rates in 2005 (thirteen states), and a substantial decrease from the number of states in 2001 (twenty-two states).
In other words, many states are not willing to offer assistance that will actually hire a childcare provider:
As of February 2006, ten states had not updated their maximum reimbursement rates since 2001, including two states (Michigan and Oregon) that had not updated their rates since 1997 and two states (Mississippi and Missouri) that had not updated their rates since 1999. In sixteen states, maximum reimbursement rates for center-based care for a four-year-old in 2006 were 20 percent or more below the 75th percentile of current market rates for this type of care (see Table 4c).33 For example, Missouri’s reimbursement rate for providers in St. Louis was only $331 per month, while the 75th percentile of market rates was $660 per month. Michigan’s reimbursement rate for providers in Wayne County was only $438 per month, compared to $758 per month for the 75th percentile of market rates. In sixteen states, maximum reimbursement rates for center-based care for a one-year-old in 2006 were 20 percent or more below the 75th percentile of current market rates for this type of care. For example, in Texas, center-based providers in communities covered by the Gulf Coast workforce board34 are reimbursed $520 per month for infant care, which is far below the 75th percentile of market rates—$851 per month.
This is what I don’t understand about the belief that those in power on the right give a crap about families or children. Issues like this, as well as issues such as the very crappy foster-care system and the reduction in services such as Head Start drive me nuts. The Pro-life movement doesn’t care what happens once these children are born, only that they are born.
Let’s take the money that is being used to campaign against abortion and contraception and put it where it can really help children: decent childcare facilities that enable single mothers to support their families!
As a person who has lived 2/3 of their life BELOW the poverty line, this kind of thing has always provoked deep despair for me. ANYONE who can add and subtract should have an EASY time figuring out that, if you make low-to-minimum wage, you can’t afford to have children or health insurance or healthcare at ALL, and for the most part can only afford to live in your car. You cannot AFFORD to LIVE in a ROOM of a HOUSE.
On top of that, you are branded as lazy, and stupid, and any number of other things. Everything is stacked against you and it is all your own fault and how dare you demand to be treated as human.
Poor women are told that if they don’t give birth to children they cannot afford, they are murderers, and if they DO give birth to them, well, they CHOSE to, go DEAL with it, we don’t CARE that you can’t supervise your child WHILE you are working to make a wage that you cannot sustain life on.
Being poor is a total clusterfuck no matter how you look at it, and most Americans are happy to blame the poor, even as they exploit them to gain massive dividends. The very same people who refuse to raise the minimum wage, act shocked that poor people “refuse” to buy health insurance, and get abortions.
DO THE MATH ALREADY!
Yup, I got to experience that first hand when I got my tiny little 3% raise (about $40 bucks extra a month) and suddenly made too much to earn 2/3 childcare assistance I had been recieving.
I went from paying $125 a month to $480. That little $40/month raise cost me $315/month in childcare.
I’ve since received another 3% raise so it is a bit easier now than last year, and I found a cheaper childcare shortly after I’d been told I no longer qualified for assistance.
Word, Kathy.
After my divorce from an asshat who wouldn’t work, but loved to make children, I went to work (in fact worked prior in order to gain some semblance of job skills to leave him). I stayed for eight years trying to ‘make it work’ like the wingers say us selfish divorcing women won’t do. Suffered chronic homelessness, starvation, transience, living conditions that nearly threatened my life (pneumonia in the winter of 1985 while pregnant with child #2). But I had to stay and work it out.
When I left him I had to shuttle children around to a plethora of babysitters, never mind daycare as the cost was untouchable, while trying and hoping still to get a job that would lead to the skills to earn a living wage. Rent, electric bill, shoes, coats, school supplies, field trips, birthdays and christmas, peer pressure, ridicule from neighbors, scorn and outright admonishment were our rewards for working hard the ‘old fashioned way’ like the wingers claim we women don’t do.
My children used to call on the company phone in the morning, I’d get paged much to my bosses’ consternation to direct them how to put their socks on, stop fighting over the comb and to walk together to school and don’t forget to lock the door and I promise I won’t have to work too late tonight and will be home to make dinner and read a story…I promise, I promise, just go to school so the teacher won’t call me again and tell me that you were late and make mommy have to go to another teacher’s meeting…
Most of the morons in this country would fall apart at the seams if they had to handle one day that the poorest have to endure every single day of every single year without mercy, without hope, without letup.
My children are intelligent, cynical and aware. I gave up pleasing the cacaphony of poverty deniers, went on welfare, went to college and stayed home to nurture my children as they needed. I used to tell harrassers, “burn me on the stake right here today or shut up.”
I still feel the same. Burn me now you stupid bastards and may you all burn in hell for the hell myself, my children and millions of others have had to endure so that you can feed your murderous, disgusting greed.
I experienced THAT first hand too. First foster family CHR sent us [my older brother (9) and I (7)] to were racists who locked my brother and I in a room and didn’t feed us. It was THREE months before CHR figured out what was going on and got us out of that house.
Nvmd that if it wasn’t for CHR’s bullying tatics my father likely never would’ve snapped and abused me so badly.
We’re having a debate about childcare in Canada, too.
Speaking as a childfree person, I always have this un-pc question pop into my head:
Why have children if you do not have the support system or money to take care of them? It’s not like we’re running out of people in either of our countries (as far as I know, the population has increased in every census taken in both).
I let 48 hours pass before I asked my question, to avoid derailing the thread.
Raging Moderate —
Why have children if you do not have the support system or money to take care of them?
Read almost any feminist blog.
1. Many (most) American schools don’t teach young people how NOT to become pregnant.
2. Many women cannot afford birth control, and many states will no longer provide it at reduced cost to those on welfare.
3. IF birth control is available, it is not always effective.
4. If birth control fails (broken condom), it is extremely difficult to get Emergency Contraception (read Biting Beaver’s hassles). If that fails, it is even more difficult to get an abortion.
5. As for the “don’t have sex” advocates — how many MEN will put up with their woman “not putting out”, and how many poor (and poorly educated) women can enforce their “no”? Also —
6. Rape happens.
In short, American society, at least, makes it almost impossible to PREVENT having children, at the same they it refuses to help finance stable living conditions for those precious fetuses that it insisted it must be born. Women are literally caught between a rock and a hard place, with a massive weight on top. And —
7. You should know all this. Your question is disingenuous, at best, and smacks of putting the blame on those who are not ALLOWED to control their own reproduction. Very few women want to birth a child they cannot afford, but once the government is finished fucking them over, they’re shit out of luck.
.
Re: Starwatcher’s #5 point:
And how many women really want to live totally celibate lives? The “just don’t have sex” crowd really do seem to pitch that one almost exclusively at women, as if we don’t have sex drives. Or even the need for touch and human closeness. Granted, there are a lot of ways to be sexual without PIV intercourse, but a lot of couple actually enjoy that part of sex. And shouldn’t have to have the threat of an unwanted pregnancy hanging over their heads every time they want to have sex. ‘Cause really, we DO have the technology to control that aspect of our lives these days. It’s just that far, far too many people don’t have decent access to it.
And before anyone gets up on their high horse about unmarried women screwing around, let me remind them that a lot of women who want to control their fertility are in fact married. They may want children someday, just not NOW. And they should have that option without getting hassled about it. (Not that you, RM, were actually doing so in your above post. Just that I’ve seen that tack before.)
Really good breakdown, Starwatcher!!! :)
And how many women really want to live totally celibate lives? The “just don’t have sex” crowd really do seem to pitch that one almost exclusively at women, as if we don’t have sex drives.
Very true, Laurie. But the type of men who pitch the “don’t have sex” line barely regard us as human; the idea that women have sex drives is totally irrelevant to them. If we’re going to squash that line of thinking, we have to drive home the point that they — the men — can’t enjoy sex with women if said women are being celibate to avoid pregnancy. Conversations like this….
M – Hey, honey, I’m feeling horny, you want to hmmm…?
W – I can’t; I can’t afford to get pregnant.
M – But you’re on the pill.
W – I know, but they do have a 2% failure rate, you know. I don’t want to chance it.
M – I’ll use a condom; then we’ll be doubly protected.
W – But condoms can break. No, it’s just not worth the risk.
M – But I’m horny!
W – Tough. Go jack off in the shower.
….would change their tune pretty quick.
It’s disgusting — BB has received HATE MAIL for being in the position of needing emergency contraception, has been called a slut and a whore, and told she should have kept her legs shut. NO ONE has suggested that Dubhe should have “kept it in his pants”, so that BB wouldn’t be in need of the EC. He is automatically granted the “right” to fuck; she is not. So… maybe he’s supposed to get it on with a ghost woman? These people conveniently ignore that it takes TWO people to fuck, and TWO to create a pregnancy.
And (people) shouldn’t have to have the threat of an unwanted pregnancy hanging over their heads every time they want to have sex.
That is the bottom line, and the big disconnect in the thinking of the Powers That Be. I think if I were granted one wish, it would be that these assholes could live as poor women, under the rules they’ve created, for six months. I think a lot of eyes would be opened.
.
Also: circumstances change. Supposing a woman gets pregnant when she’s in a position to support the baby. Then her partner decides he doesn’t want to be a father after all and flees for the hills. Or the pregnancy takes an unforeseen toll on her health and the plan of a timely return to work becomes impossible. Or her mother, who had agreed to help her take care of the kid, gets ill and can only look after herself. What looks workable now could fail in any number of ways nine months from now.
Yup.