Strollerderby

When we become parents, we are responsible for the coices we make, not the governement. Turning over our responsibility to the governement will lead to waste, ruin and misery. wanna work? then you find a childcare provide that cares about your kids. The governement can't do this for you even if you hand over half your paycheck to them and ask them to do it through a bunch of useless laws. They can't make someone who watches your kids actually give a rat's behind about that - that's your job to find someone or do it yourself.

Per the mom rising website, their goal is to overturn the capiltalist system. And replace it with what?Communism, socialism or anachary.

These are just a bunch of whiny women who have plenty of freedom of choice in this system but instead want freedom from the consequences of those choices. Wanna be a working mom, single mom stay at home mom, blogging mom? it's all possible, millions of people do these things everyday, but you may have to make some sacrifices in order to achieve it, like everything worth having.

they just will force hardworking people, who don't bitch and whine but rather accept that being a parent requires trade offs, to hand over their earnings to subsidize these women's choices. They want all the benefits of this wealthy capitalist system we live in but not to put in any hard work to maintain it, rather they will tear it down and replace with a system where everyone has the same standard of living: a really, rock bottom crappy one because there will be NO incentive for intellegent, industrious creative people to find cures for diseases, endgineer safer, efficient vehicles,  run farms, set up organic shops, or otherwise contribute.

Rahab, you've made a lot of salient points.  I too am disturbed by the growing trend to allow our government to make choices for us that I think would be better served by making them ourselves.  I think that the best effect of groups like MomsRising, though, is to raise awareness to people who might otherwise be content with the status quo, not knowing that there are other possibilities out there.  And for that I hope they are successful.  It still reeks of being told what to do instead of to think for ourselves, but at least much of what MomsRising advocates are ideas I can get behind.

Decent, quality childcare would allow all of us to do our jobs well, without burdening the single people. It's not an extravagance.

How is the government going to provide decent qulity childcare? You can't legislate that someone care about other peoples kids. No amount of government mandated education or requirements of childcare workers will make someone care. The parents have to use their own judgment to decide who cares for the kids. Passing it off is just dodging responsibility.

If you are a mom who works, you are responsible for finding a suitable childcare provider no law in the world can take away that burden. Otherwise, you need to not work outsid eof the home and watch them yourself. It can be done. Millions do it daily.

When we become legal drivers, we are responsible for following the laws of the road, but we're not responsible, directly, for the roads that we drive on the officials on patrol, the lights, the maintenance, the bridges, the tunnels. We expect our government to take care of that for us. We pay for it in taxes, sure, but it's a little bit from everyone, not just drivers.

Leaving childcare up to the marketplace has resulted in too few options for too many people. Daycare worker's wages need to be subsidized, we need a network of providers, not these lame offices that will send you a list of providers within X miles of your place but with no seal of approval on the places.

I'm hardly advocating we overthrow capitalism. But just like we do in other sectors (airlines, medicine, higher education, small businesses, corporations, on and on) the government should kick in a substantial amount of money to solve what Moms Rising accuratly depicts as a childcare crisis in the US.

Given that the governement screws up just about everything it touches, why on earth do you think it would be any good at solving this problem?  If the government puts their seal of approval on a day care provider, that means something?

Can't find a good provider on your own? Don't work, stay home with the kids. that would be the responsible thing to do. rather than blaming society for your problems.

I don't think this falls into the same category as basic infrastructure like roads and justice systems.

On the Mom's Rising website they state their mission to be the overthrow of the capitalist system as they believe it to be oppressive.

I think they have a good mission and I like the messaging that's been coming out.  I want to get more involved, but I'm feeling stretched as it is.  But I know the more moms that get involved in these issues, the more likely we are to influence change.  Did anyone find it odd, however, that the Times put the MomsRising article in the Thursday Styles section?? And when you find it online it's under "Fashion."  Maybe that's where we need to start- stop pigeon holing mommy workplace issues under Fashion!

Rahab, I wish you and your ilk would stop talking about people making "choices" to become parents. Yes, modern medicine has made it possible for us to have sex and avoid the conceptive consequences if we so choose. Nevertheless, we, like all every form of life, are biologically driven to reproduce. It is about the most instinctual thing we do. Yes, there are some who never breed or do breed, but then take measures to rid themselves of that "choice", but the vast majority of us will, at some time in our lives, become parents. And ALL of us were at one time children, kids in need of not just our parents to help us grow up and become civil, responsible adults, but communities of people--teachers, shopkeepers, grandparents, neighbors, daycare providers, etc.--to support us and our parents. Pretending that parents are all islands unto themselves, fully and totally responsible for everything that happens in their lives, is a lie.

Moms Rising isn't just about daycare. It's about ending discrimination that exists against moms, who earn 7 cent on the dollar that men (parents or not) earn. (Women without children earn 9 cents on the dollar that men earn.) Moms Rising is about getting rid of the abysmal health care "system" currently in place, which takes premium payments from families, then leaves them to fend for themselves, refusing to pay for treatments or medications when a child experiences a serious illness. It's about improving the pay for childcare providers, who are among the worst paid workers in the US, so that less stressed out, better educated people are providing care for our nation's most vulnerable citizens. Poorly paid workers are highly stressed--is that the kind of person we want caring for young children?

We (I'm a Moms Rising member and activist, in case you hadn't guessed) are also advocating for paid maternity and paternity leave for ALL parents. The US is the ONLY industrialized nation not to provide any paid leave for new parents. Lack of leave negatively impacts our nation's breastfeeding rates, harming children's longterm physical health, and also babies ability to attach with to their parents, harming longterm mental health. (There are many many studies supporting both those assertions.) We don't have to become communist to provide parental leave--that whole argument is so very 1980s I can't believe I'm still hearing it. Highly competitive, capitalistic economies provide parental leave. Are we communist for providing public education, too?

Anyway. Instead of continuing with your uninformed lashout, take two hours out of your life and read Motherhood Manifesto. Find out what's happening to real parents, who are working very hard, yet still not able to raise their children in a country where culture and public policy to so very little to help parents give their children a good start in life.

I read the Manifesto and find some parts valid & useful, and some parts less so.

Open, flexible work:  Definitely a good idea.

Equal pay for equal work:  Absolutely.  A woman (or mother or father) should receive the same pay as a another person doing the same job for the same hours.

Fair wages:  What is "fair"?

After-school programs: Probably a good idea.  A longer school day with mandatory PE and time to complete homework might actually help.

Universal health care & subsidized child care:  Not so much.  I don't want to bear the burden   of someone else's personal choices, whether it is from childbearing or smoking, for example.

Family leave:  Possible, if the costs are shared between parents, employers and fed/state/local governments.

The rest I've got think about some - for the suggested two hours, maybe more - and blog about it.

Chris

Paid maternity leave is socilaism. It is incompatiable with capitalism. Perhaps you should read Wealth of Nations be informed on what makes a stable society?

Wopmen make less because: 1. we aren't s good at some things as men 2. Women tend to not major in money makes fields like engineering, etc. in the numbers that men do. they are more concentrated in liberal arts which are not as profitable (and no bs about how women are not encouraged to pursue hard sciences, I have an MS in engeering and my hand was held to whole way by the university because they wanted to increase the number of women in those programs) 3. someone has to put their career on the back burner when children come along and its better that the mother do it. By taking maternity leave when I have a child, my coworkers who keep working for the sma epriod of time advance past me (and they deserve to since they were their working)

The government can't deliver on any of these promises. The economy will suffer and the general qquality will decline. Paying childcare providers more won;t make them take better care of your kids. it is 100% your responsibility to make sure your shildren are properly cared for. It is not society's, the government's or my job to see that your kids get what they need. It is 100% on your shoulders.

Maybe if they say they will build you a castle in the clouds you would vote for that person, too?

Exactly, who, besides you, Rahab, gets to decide what is socialist and what is capitalist? And really, do those definition matter more than whether children receive good healthcare, whether their parents have jobs that provide them with insurance or not? Are you actually a parent who has had to search for daycare? There are VERY few options, most of them are just barely adequte and cost as much as rent. Is it really fair that more older women live in poverty, thanks to not earning as much during their careers and therefore not accruing as much in social security benefits as their male counterparts? Should mothers who stay at home with their young children, as you suggest is best, be punished years later for that choice?

Since when is raising children 100% a parent's responsibility? If that is so, why do we have a public education system? If you saw a child lost in a mall, would you ignore her and say to yourself, "That child is 100% her parent's responsibilty."

As I said before, most of us will become parents one day and would benefit from more family-friendly public policies. Those who do not have children also benefit when other people's children grow up healthy and well-adjusted.

Governments can and DO provide much more than ours does, without breaking economies or taxing people into poverty. They can provide EXCELLENT services--governments around the world do it. The problem in the US is that people lack imagination and compassion, who believe, quite mistakenly, that they exist as islands unto themselves. For all our rhetoric about family values and caring for our neighbors, Americans can be the most self-absorbed, selfish people on the planet.

I'd also like to point out, in response to Rahab, that some of us don't have the luxury of "choosing" to stay home with our children. I personally tried it for a short while, hoping to make it work, and when the money ran out, I was forced to return to full-time outside employment to make ends meet.

One of the reasons the money ran out? The incredibly high cost of a family health plan, which my husband's employer does not subsidize. On top of that, our monthly daycare costs are higher than our mortgage payment.

Believe me, I would LOVE to put my career on the so-called back-burner, but I can't. Instead, I'm handing over the annual financial equivalent of college tuition to a daycare center who will underpay the people who care for my daughter each day, and another college tuition to our insurance company. These are problems that could be ameliorated, if not solved, by some shrewd legislation.

I'm not even going to touch your statement that women "just aren't as good at some things as men."

I wanted to add that many peopel do lots of creative, industrious work without expectation of making a lot of money, or even any money. It seems there are people who only want to get out of bed in the morning and go to work for a buck (sad, IMO) and those who work because they truly enjoy what they do. The notion that people will not work hard if they are paid for it only holds true when people can't choose to do work they want to do.

Also, government attention to the social welfare needs of citizens is not anti-capitalist. Corporate welfare, which the US government doles out by the bushel to highly profitable companies that don't even pay their fair share of taxes, IS anti-capitalist.

I love this organization and wish they had been around in my mom's time. I read the article and only wished it had been in a more important section. Then more people would have read it. I actually just bought her a T-shirt for mother's day at their goodstorm.com store, http://www.goodstorm.com/stores/momsrising. I think is makes a great mother's day gift...