Comments on: Nah, but federal daycare would strengthen the family unit

by: Tina H

Mon, 12 Nov 2007 10:54:52 +0000

To me the obvious humanitarian thing to do, which would probably strengthen families anyway, is to work for economic justice rather than chase some anti-feminist pipe dream of the nukuler famblee.

Aarrrrrggggggggghhhhhhh! The LOGIC! It burnzzzzz!

*evil demons shrieking in pain*

/snark

by: figleaf

Sun, 11 Nov 2007 15:01:52 +0000

“Few women today would trade places with the typical 1950s woman and mother, the one fervently idealized by so-called “pro-family” groups.” After reading various histories (my favorite is Stephanie Coontz’s “Marriage, a History”) you realize it’s even more difficult to go back than people like Thayn imagine since the women of the 1950s were to a surprising degree actively, and even enthusiastically participating in a social experiment in nuclear family-building and Ozzie and Harrieting.

And for nearly ten years it… sort of worked in the sense that, with a sense that they were creating a new world, they were able to wallpaper over some extraordinarily gross “side effects.”

But expecting it to work again *by fiat* just because it once worked *by agency* is just worse than unproductive. Especially since even all the good will, enthusiasm, and sacrifice in the world wasn’t able to sustain it the first time, even for its inventors! And if, like Idaho, you’re going to try jamming it down people’s throats it’s going to have, um, unintended consequences.

For instance would anyone in their right mind marry someone knowing that if he was unable to uphold his vows and obligations, even assuming they were undertaken in good faith, that she’d have neither the economic means nor the legal recourse to get her and her children to safety and stability? Would anyone in his right mind want to marry someone who’d take chances like that? The point being it’s hard to imagine such legislation *strengthening* marriage. (And it’s not like there’s no historical precedent. In the 1900s many middle- and upper-class women agonized and/or chose not to marry at all for fear their husbands would turn out to be drunks or deadbeats or otherwise bad eggs.)

Cool post, Amanda.

by: Tapetum

Sun, 11 Nov 2007 12:26:48 +0000

If the Republicans were interested in having low divorce rates and happy marriages both, they’d be looking more into making marriage more difficult. Enforced waiting periods, mandatory counseling, things like that - so that people don’t marry someone they met last month and get divorced two years and a child later.

But we can’t have women running around unattached. So that kind of solution to the “divorce problem” is never considered. Only how to keep people hanging on to miserable marriages.

by: Molly, NYC

Sun, 11 Nov 2007 11:01:21 +0000

mnemosyne @ 29: Thanks.

It may be the other way around, but it does seem to connect with the idea of wife-as-breeding-stock, no?

by: lt

Sun, 11 Nov 2007 10:04:07 +0000

Lynx -

There’s good day care and bad day care, good schools and bad schools. More funding = more chance of it being better.

And no one’s forced to put their kids in daycare.

That was easy, wasn’t it?

by: firefalluk

Sun, 11 Nov 2007 07:38:30 +0000

but once the gains are obvious to men, they’ll be right up there with women in unwillingness to give it up.

You’d think so, but then, these are the same imbeciles that keep voting Republican despite their own best interests…

by: lynx

Sun, 11 Nov 2007 05:38:30 +0000

I’m with you on wanting full equality for women and opposing moves by republicans to make divorce more difficult and force women back into the domestic servant/sex toy box. you lose me though when you start pushing for federal childcare from the time kids are little, if only because I would never *ever* trust those bastards to raise my kids. it’s bad enough that our public school system is a sick sad joke whose primary purpose is teaching obedience and conformity instead of actually educating kids, can you even imagine how much worse it’d be if they had even more control over kids lives?

federal funding for community-based childcare programs would be another story, for me at least, but asking the government to become directly responsible for raising children instead of parents (fathers included) doing that work seems to me like one giant step towards fascism.

by: Kylie

Sun, 11 Nov 2007 03:23:56 +0000

Here in Australia we have state-funded daycare, and it does work very well for us. I can’t imagine not having it, I’d be stuck at home all day watching daytime TV! We get different percentages of our childcare paid for, depending on our situation. I get “100%”, (In reality more like 80% of the total cost, it’s “100%” of what the government deems the childcare centres should charge, but it’s still wonderful) because I am a single parent working fulltime. The percentage works off how desperately you need to put your children in care. If I were not working, I would get a much smaller amount, for ‘respite’ care. Even that is a godsend for non-working mothers. It’s good for the mother and child if she has a break sometimes. If we didn’t have this I could not afford to work. I enjoyed your article very much. I was one of those women trapped living with a macho male because I felt it was my duty. No more 50s housewife for me!

by: Lawrence Krubner

Sun, 11 Nov 2007 02:35:36 +0000

“The satisfaction of creating a me-first social hiearchy is far, far too alluring to pass up. Why do people make money in the first place? To pay for necessities and luxuries, sure, but after those are mostly secure, you make money to make yourself more important. That is a greater drive than the other two for people that have the first two down.”

Well, there has to be a large number of people who prefer equal societies, otherwise the civil rights revolution of the last 40 years probably would not have got so far.

by: Flying Fox

Sun, 11 Nov 2007 02:30:07 +0000

Yeah, divorce is just terrible when one or both parties set out for a game of Egyptian Rat Screw, without the cards or Egyptian parts and just lots of screwing, resulting in “rat” being too mild an insult for the royally screwed party or parties to even think of using. Ethical lawyers try to prevent the screwing contest. The ethical ones. But there are plenty of unethical lawyers for unthinking clients.

No, I do not actually know the rules of Egyptian Rat Screw.