2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: No. Hillary Clinton did not call people on welfare, "deadbeats." (edit: internet slooow) [View all]JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)I think we need to focus on what is good for the child, the child like you who watches her mother move into the workplace.
And we have to understand that a child of three has a different relationship with mother than does a child of one or of three months.
I think the emphasis in welfare or work discussion should be on the science, the studies about the needs of very young children (under three years) and the focus should be entirely on the needs of the child.
Women can and will adjust.
But there is one thing. We need laws that protect older people in the workplace. Because the mother with a special needs child or who chooses to stay at home needs to be able to re-enter or enter the working world when her child's needs are taken care of. For most mothers that happens when the child reaches maybe three or so. For some mothers that does not happen until the child is safely through special education and has learned somehow to work to care for himself.
We need a child centered standard for deciding welfare matters. And we need equal rights and pay for women in the workplace.
We also need good housing that is suitable for poor families and single mother families with day care and in some cases infant care right there.
But infants need a lot of intensive attention and care, and I do not view a mother who wants to stay home with a child under three as lazy or "sitting on her ass," as one DUer said.
We need good, up to the best researched standards, day care. We need to make sure that every very young child in America is exposed to the language, the talk, the stories, the books, the stimuli that help a child develop its brain in the early weeks, months and years of life. Most of our children do not get enough experience with numbers in early childhood. I think that counting is one of the first skills a child should understand. But that is my unresearched opinion, just based on experience.
That should be more our concern than whether the parents are "deadbeats" whatever that means or whether mom is "sitting on her ass." I don't think any mother who stays home with a two-year-old is sitting on her "ass." Those were the thinnest years of my life,, when I was home with my children.