Our party should advocate for two parent families with one parent at home

[dsc]

I am not saying that this situation should be forced but one of the biggest reasons parents fear our positions on social issues is that with parents having to work like slaves to house and feed their kids they have lost touch with what they are doing.

Economically parents no longer can support children on a single salary. This isn't just about minimum wage workers or unskilled laborers. This is about even professionals such as teachers and professors. In the 1970's it was possible for one worker to support a family. Now for all but the most fortunate that is simply untrue.

I admit it, I never could devote the time necessary to properly raise a child and devote the time necessary to properly teach my class. There were weeks at a time last year where I didn't cook, cleaned only the necessary things, and didn't read, or watch TV. I would have been a dismal parent.

Economically this issue works for us. Socially in the long run it does too. Having as a national goal that one worker can support a family should be a Democratic priority. If people wish to work, great. But all too often parents are working like slaves and neglecting their families out of necessity. The wealthiest country in the history of the universe shouldn't be leaving its children to rear themselves.

Let our parents be parents. That should be a liberal ideal.

[Armstead]

1. I have one modification to that

We should advocate for having the CHOICE to be a two parent family with one parent at home.

Other than that, though, you're right. It is an economic issue ultimately. Many people can't afford to practice "traditional family values" anymore, whether they believe in them or not.

[MisterLiberal]

71. Here goes another

Yeah, let's just scrap the whole damn platform while we're at it and put an elephant out front as our mascot.

Is anyone going to stand for anything???

Let's keep the wife barefoot and pregnant and put her in dresses down to the ankles and make her have twelve children and if she lives through that we can throw her in an old folks home.

Yeah, well only one problem: That doesn't sound like the Democratic Party to me.

[Ignacio Upton]

74. Your post is over-simplifying what he said

We need to continue supporting the right of women to work, but we should also create the economic conditions so that one-income households are only needed, ergo, one of the parents (it can be the mother OR the father that stays home)can raise the children and have more time for them. We could use this as an arguement for raising the minimum wage or enforcing equal pay: what ever happened to when you didn't need to worry about your parents not being home to cook dinner? Support economic fairness and allow for the middle and working class to not have as much of a burden.

[Darth_Kitten]

124. I learned to cook dinner myself.

:)

So essentially create the economic conditions so that the biggest bread winner (essentially the father/husband) controls the purse and the wife is dependant on him for money?

Why don't we let families sort out their own issues regarding economics and family responsibilities? :)

[pagandem4justice]

142. Economic Dependence

In a healthy partnership, the higher-earning spouse does not lord it over the other, effectively (as you say) "controlling the purse." Rather, both spouses pool resources for the good of the entire family. For instance, I earn slightly more per year than my husband - however, there is no "his money" and "my money," but rather *our* money.

Any person in a marriage or partnership who feels controlled by the other due to economics has far greater issues than that of wages, and thus is outside the scope of this discussion.

Finally, you ask, "Why don't we let families sort out their own issues regarding economics and family responsibilities?" I agree. That is why we should advocate to create conditions by which families can choose to have both parents working, or not, depending on their own views or ideals, rather than being automatically forced to both work just to make ends meet.

[Darth_Kitten]

160. But why should the ultimate goal be on having one parent stay home or

not? Who has decided that this is the ideal? :)

Both parents have been working and raising children since the beginning of time, and we've only started "worrying" about the issue this past century when women started getting some choices and more economic clout.

I don't care if people want or not want to stay home with the kiddies, it's their call and all the more power to them. I guess my issue is why as a society we are so interested in how we THINK other people's kids are being raised and cared for. :(

:)

[dsc]

75. Please quote, from the OP where I say

that the parent staying home should be a woman. Yes, I want a quote, with me saying that. For the record a quote is where I say the exact words.

[MisterLiberal]

81. Please...

I don't believe you're naive; if there is going to be one parent staying home, which one do you think will be pressured to?

I'm just tired of all of these attempts to make ourselves Repuke lite.

And for the record, you can quote me on that.

[dsc]

86. My dad, yes that would be the male parent

stayed home with my sister. I, for the record, am gay and thus either I or another male, that would be the non female gender, would be staying home. So again, I would like a quote where I say "the woman should stay home" For the record a quote is those words not your assumptions which we all know what happens when one assumes. I am sick of people putting words in my mouth and then being upset when called on it.

[preciousdove]

106. About having and making good choices personally & as a society,

My brother is the stay at home parent. He supplements his income with software design he does while his autistic/aspberger son was using his computer for homeschooling. It took them 14 years and over $300,000, mostly wasted, to find someone who could help their son be able to function in a classroom. He will be attending an out of state prep school next fall.

His wife a former systems analyst now a manager loves this son to pieces but does not have the patience it takes to be with their son 24/7. Their decision evolved over about 3 years many years ago starting with them both working. They were lucky to have family who could watch him, younger siblings in the summer and grandmas when school was in session for both sons when they were tiny and they both worked outside the home and were able to build their careers to the point where they had this choice.

To put a either parents right to work ahead of the wellbeing of a child is wrong. Some kids manage to grow up despite it but a lot do not. It reminds me of the 1870's when a lot the men were dead or suffering the effects of war wounds and mental fatigue. Not written in the history books but available if you look is what the women had to do to survive and it affected the children deeply. The children in those families were the time of the rise of the outlaws and other criminals who terrorized other Americans.

Right now with the laws on the books about criminal and addictive past many parents are unable to find a job and there is no more welfare. Their choices are prostitution, crime or drug sales. This is just nuts. When society gives people no options of course they are going to do bad things to survive. I wish people would talk to their grandparents about how it really was in the good old days of their lives and their parents lives and that the grandparents would be truthful and say that helping people who are down benefits us all. So many people living in the suburbs voting Republican are the great grandchildren of bootleggers (yesteryears drug dealers) and worse because there was no choice then either but they either don't know their own history or are lying to themselves about it.

[verdalaven]

114. I didn't read that in the original post

My husband and I work full time but opposite shifts so that one of us is always home for our daughter. We've been doing it for years, not because we want to but because it is necessary. If either one of us had the opportunity to stay home and man the fort while the other worked, WE'D TAKE IT! Our family life would improve 100% if one of us could stay home.

And who is to say that it is the woman that has to stay home? My husband would make an excellent homemaker!

Besides, let's not forget that there are an awful lot of single parent families out there. Making sure all our citizens can earn a living wage is a worthwhile goal for the Democratic party. I see this more as an issue of worker's rights (bring back unions in full force!) and human rights, rather than a swipe at women's rights.

[NMDemDist2]

120. who said the stay at home parent should be female? I know a family

here in the neighborhood where the Mom is a big Insurance exec, the Dad stays home since he can't find enough work as a carpenter to make it worth it. So he stays home with the boys, does the school volunteer thing and makes wood crafts to sell at the church and school bazaars

most families I know with a stay at home parent, it's the man who stays home rather than the other way around.

[don954]

139. You ever thought some dads might want to stay at home with the kids?

In the current economic reality of women getting sub-par pay, and inflation out-pacing wages, we cant.

[pagandem4justice]

141. Parsing the Difference

You don't seem to understand the difference between what the OP stated and the "Elephant's" true objective. The RW truly does wish to keep "the wife at home barefoot and pregnant," etcetera, as you state. They wish to keep women shackled to the home to ensure the supremacy of their twisted, backward way of life, and with less competition in the workplace to boot.

But nothing about the OP goes in any way toward such a goal. Rather, by giving families the choice to have both parents work, or for one to work while the other stays home with the children, we embrace the ultimate freedom of choice. In an America run according to true liberal ideals, those who have children *wish* to do so, and thus would also wish to give their children the best possible upbringing according to their *own* ideals. Those ideals may include both parents working so that they may afford the best in child care, or it may include the ability for one parent to stay home and raise the children in a traditional manner. Also, note that this may include a parent of *any* gender.

And that does sound like the Democratic Party to me.

[lumberjack_jeff]

161. There is no Democrat principle; "everyone must be a wage slave"

A working wage should be sufficient to support a family.

Being a stay at home dad works well for me and also for my family, and it isn't solely a matter of economics.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=2144454&mesg_id=2146470

[cpamomfromtexas]

169. CHOICE IS THE WORD AND JOBS THAT PAY ENOUGH TO DO IT

Hey, I don't take offense to the staying home. I'm a CPA with a Master's degree and I (at least at this time) choose to stay home with my children. But since hubby has taken a 40% cut (airline industry), I may need to go back full time.

When I work, I take short term contracts and I pay $100 a day for childcare. When my husband paid the daycare center, he called me and asked how do people with regular jobs afford this- all the time?

I explained that they were simply working for the government to pay taxes and social security and hadn't put pen to paper to figure that out yet. Now with gas prices so out of whack, people are now going in the hole-just to have a job! In addition, the second income is actually taxed a little higher since it usually bumps you up a bracket.

Now sometimes it makes sense, especially if you need to stay active just to be marketable, but certainly not long term if you're not moving up.

The whole economic mess we're in is insanity.

[demnan]

2. I think you're on to something

Basically the idea of women working was allowed because this way they could lower relative salaries for people. We need livable salaries and a lot of people are single with dependants as well. (I couldn't have kids - couldn't afford them).

On the other hand it will never work. They would much rather have half the population of Mexico living here and working for slave wages than to pay a fair wage to Americans.

[OzarkDem]

33. So you're saying women should stay home

so wages will go up for men? I hope I'm wrong in interpreting your post.

[demnan]

55. No maybe men should stay home

and take care of the kids if that's what works! :)

[lumberjack_jeff]

122. I do.

1) Housing costs aside, (which is a geographic choice) it doesn't take as much to live as you might think.
2) There are many ways to create a functional family.

I was laid off from a good-paying tech job in 2003, at about the same time that our youngest was diagnosed as autistic. We decided that we were going to sell our too-large house, the wife would return to work after 5 years of stay-at-home parenthood, and we would build. Luckily for us, throughout the previous 20 years of working life, I'd always saved diligently, and our house had appreciated so we had some modest equity.

After a fashion, we sold the house, bought the equipment to build, bought rural acreage, moved a $10,000 single-wide mobile onto it and moved in. We built a workshop to store our stuff and we are now waiting to break ground on a modest 1800 sf house. When all is said and done, we'll have invested about $150,000. The learning curve is steep, but all growth requires effort.

The five of us live comfortably, albeit not luxuriously, on my wife's income, which is a little over 1/3 of what I made in tech-world. We intend to build from our savings to avoid a mortgage. We're anxious to move in to a "real" house, but we all understand the purpose of the short term sacrifice.

I do a bit of work here and there hauling things in my $3000 dump truck or doing tractor work or doing other handyman tasks. I'm not some kind of dot-com millionnaire. I think our retirement is reasonably secure, but beyond that, we're distinctly middle-class.

I find simplicity stimulating, gratifying and intellectually liberating. I was unable to see my older kids grow up in the way that I'm able to be with my youngest. His special needs are also somewhat overwhelming for his mom. I have time to volunteer, and work with the school on my son's behalf.

Supporting one's family is not synonymous with having a career.

A side note; My boss at the tech job, one of the nicest, smartest and hardest working people I've ever met, died of heart attack about 6 months after he laid me off (no hard feelings, businesses gotta do what they gotta do). The stress killed him, and he is most definitely no longer able to support his family, in any sense of the phrase.

The other method of increasing the demand for labor is to reduce the size of the workforce. Migration to single earner families does exactly that.

Someone out there has a job because I didn't take it first. :)

[HulaChicken]

101. It's about choice

I choose to stay home with my kids, but I know many women who would like to make that choice, but can't. Women who choose to work should be allowed & respected for that, too. But right now, way too many families don't have the option to allow one parent to stay home if he/she chooses. I am a feminist, a businesswoman, and a powerful woman who should be IN CHARGE, but I want my choice damnit... and staying at home with my kids is the hardest & most rewarding thing I've ever done. And right now, that's what I choose. If you're pro-woman, then you have to support a women's right to choose her own path.

[theplutsnw]

103. Amen from another Pro-women Stay at Home Mom!

I sincerely believe this is a HUGE issue in this country. I am sorry to say it but I think we let WAY to many nannies and daycares raise our children. Is it for everyone? Hell no, but I know a lot more moms or dads would stay home if their SO could make enough to do it.

[Darth_Kitten]

125. I resent that...

too many nannies and daycares raise our children? :eyes: Sorry, this is still a back handed swipe at working mothers, IMO.

Maybe some stay at home mothers should consider why it's only their responsibility, certainly not their husbands, in raising the children? Are your husbands ducking out of sharing the responsibility of raising the kids, I mean, because THEY aren't staying home?


Just my say. I say let everybody make their own choices.

[dsc]

136. Did you bother to read this line of the post you responded to?

but I know a lot more moms or dads would stay home if their SO could make enough to do it.

Or do you think dads are female now?

[Darth_Kitten]

159. Oh, yes, I did, thank you very much. Reading is quite fun.

Sorry if a contrary opinion bothers you.

[cilla4progress]

119. Right on!

There is NO career track for parents who want to 1) be "professional," ie, have responsibility, leadership; and 2) be "responsible," ie, available parents. I have to CHOOSE between stable, professional employment (in fact, was just laid off in place of someone younger who will work weekends and evenings in addition to full-time workweek), and being available to take my daughter to piano practice, or even go roller-blading with her after school.

It shouldn't be this way..there should be a choice. And by the way, I have a WHOLE LOT MORE education than my male spouse, who earns @ 125% of what I make.... If it were reversed, so would our provder roles.

[cpamomfromtexas]

170. Hey it's supply and demand-very simple

Firstly, I'm a woman so please understand that.

Secondly, my Democrat Dad insisted I be educated for this simple reason, an educated Mom will make sure the next generation is educated.

Thirdly, more people in the workplace allow employers to pit workers wages against one another. So yes, if we insist every wage be a living wage, then at least one parent can take time off during critical years and wages will go up because employers won't have as many people in the wings to pit against one another.

[acmavm]

3. Excuse me? If that's the case the democratic party will lose a hell

of a chunk of it's membership. I'll be the first to go. Any party that promotes an agenda of favoring one lifestyle over others, which are sometimes forced on people, might as well just merge with the republicans.

That's one of the most disturbing things I've seen posted on DU since I joined.

[dsc]

4. Name one, just one, case where women have been forced to stay

at home in say the last 15 years. Incidently I don't think it should always be the woman staying at home. Note I used the word parent rather than mother.

[acmavm]

10. Push for a two-parent agenda? Maybe you've not been paying

attention for the past couple of decades but THERE ARE MILLIONS OF HOUSEHOLDS with only one parent present. And believe me, not always by choice. So there's to be some sort of unspoken disenfranchisement in the party by people who think they have the right to judge what lifestyle people should live? Golly, I seem to remember reading and hearing PLENTY of stories of kids who not only survived but made good with only one parent in the home. Who are you, and who is the democratic party to decide what sort of lifestyle to endorse? It is none of your business. Just like I'd tell any republican to mind their own business and worry about equality and justice for everyone I'll tell anyone in this party the same thing.

This sounds like something straight out of the Bill Bennett Book of Politically Correct Behavior and Ideals.

[BlueCaliDem]

46. Please Calm Down...You're Upset About Something dsc has NOT

proposed at all.

In the first sentence in the body of the post, dsc writes:

I am not saying that this situation should be forced .

As I understand his/her writing, dsc is trying to say that perhaps the Democratic Party should take a serious look at "living wages" since married couples/commonwealth couples with children who are both working aren't really benefitting from their hard labor, and with wages so ridiculously low in comparison with standard of living, perhaps the Democratic Party should try fighting for reasonable, living wages; wages like most European countries have been paying for decades now, so that a second paycheck is icing on the cake, and not a necessity.

As it stands today, a second paycheck is more often than not, essential just to get by.

You cannot deny that because the average wage in this wealthy country is so ridiculously low it's forcing married couples to both get a job--MUCH to Uncle Sam's glee, may I add.

Fact of the matter is, if both spouses get a paycheck, they pay DOUBLE Federal payroll taxes while getting only one paycheck benefits. This is a Federal public secret--do the math.

I am a stay-at-home mother by choice (and I do our annual income taxes so I know what I'm talking about when I say it makes a huge difference)but I admit that my husband makes sufficient income so I don't have to feed extra tax dollars to Uncle Sam and we live comfortably, with three kids, two dogs, one cat, and two guinea pigs.

The stress I'd experienced when I was working outside the home; the extra Fed and State taxes I had to pay; the extra gasoline I had to put into my car; the extra expenses of clothes, shoes and lunches...it just wasn't worth it and got us nowhere.

Now, I DO work at home, although not paid. I run the house; care for our kids; am in charge of finances; make sure that the only stress my husband has is caring for his clients and those working under him at the store (he's store manager and certified Interior Decorator and successful at both), and nothing else.

I love cooking dinner in the evenings and enjoy seeing everyone around the table trying out yet another "cooking experiment" of mine. This is priceless.

Twenty five years ago, my husband and I made a pact; a partnership. A concentrated choice.

He would work outside the home, and I would work in the home: both with the sole goal to strengthen and care for our family, regardless of the fact we both, at the time, were High School drop-outs, but he'd gone on to get his college, and vocational certificates while working full-time, and I'd work part-time (sometimes full-time) outside the home when it was necessary.

Now, with minimal stress we both are more happier than ever before in our lives; our relationship on ALL levels is pretty damned good <wiggling brows>; our children are happy and respectful and never drank, smoked, or did drugs (I'm a liberal parent, but strict when need-be) and I've come to learn that I could spend my precious time more fruitfully by studying our rights regarding credit (to ensure all three of my children get knowledgable about the most important choices as consumers); learn to do home improvements (I am proud of installing the plumbing for our new fridge that has an ice-maker and ice water and our dishwasher).

I am living proof, that, against all odds (we were only 16 and 17 when we began), even in America, it's possible to only have one parent working outside the home and one remain in the home, and I believe that my children haven't (yet) strayed, and are happy, least stressed, and focused in life, all because of ONE parent being there to keep an eye on them.

[acmavm]

47. He is saying that the party 'should advocate' this position. Seriously

the big laugh comes with the 'I'm not saying that this situation should be forced' part. How would you people force it if you could anyway? And what makes anyone here think that they have the right to do so?

All that's beside the point. This party has no business, and neither does anyone here or saying the party should advocate any position or way of life that would in fact discriminate against or denigrate anyone else as long as they are doing the best they can, not living an illegal and immoral lifestyle, and not trying to cause harm to any other individual (which is more that the people supporting this ridiculous idea can say for themselves).

Worry about feeding the poor, taking care of the sick and the homeless, try to find understanding and sympathy for the weak, but don't pass judgement or make policy decisions on issues that are none of anyone's business but the people who are living in those circumstances. Take my word for it, if people were to pay more attention to what really counts they wouldn't have time for half-baked suggestions that would cast aspersions (or cause some people to look down their noses) on a big part of the democratic party.

[BlueCaliDem]

49. My Reading of "Should Advocate" is "to propose". Your Reading...

...of it, is more sinister; aggressive even, although BOTH definitions of "advocate" are correct--and it's up to the reader to decide how they wanna interpret the verb.

I guess it's down to how one perceives things: positively or negatively.

No one is saying that "it can be forced", simply because, as you've pointedly pointed out, it just can't happen.

The Democratic Party is supposed to stand for "choice"; tolerance, good-will, equality and prosperity for everyone, right?

I read dsc's post in context with that solemn belief, and from that point-of-view, that's why I was baffled by your passionate response.

I also read dsc's post to be a positive one; that we've been fighting to get laws passed that would bolster a living wage in our country, but the Republicans have successfully framed the issue, and made people think that having a living wage is a BAD thing (like universal health care in a country where 45 million don't have any insurance), so perhaps we need a different strategy in order to revisit, and present this important issue anew, and begin eradicating the hungry poor; help heal the ailing sick, and help ensure, if not facilitate an environment that will curb illegal and immoral behavior?

That's what I took away from his post.

It's not about Ozzy and Harriet dreams...it's about fair, hard dollars for fair, hard work, while simultaneously trying to raise the next generation of Americans, happy, healthy, and stronger than we are.

The Democratic Party has a big enough "tent" to be open to ALL ideas, and as Democrats, we should be too.

[acmavm]

52. AND 'FAIR' IS NOT THE ADVOCATION OF ONE LIFE-STYLE OVER

ANOTHER. It is not your business or your decision as to how people should decide to live, alone, with someone, whatever. To 'advocate' a particular lifestyle does not leave the tent flap open to everyone. Yeah, it should open to all ideas unless they are designed to disclude anyone from belonging, which this phony platform would do. But I bet you people would be cajoling and whining for our votes at election time though, wouldn't you? What would the argument be? We of the holier than thou two-parent families demand that you vote the way we want just because we're the party of smarmy hypocrites?

You know what really struck me as funny about your response? Here:

<snip>

The Democratic Party is supposed to stand for "choice"; tolerance, good-will, equality and prosperity for everyone, right?

I read dsc's post in context with that solemn belief, and from that point-of-view, that's why I was baffled by your passionate response.

<snip>

The original post had nothing to do with 'choice'. Nor 'tolerance, good-will, equality and prosperity for everyone'. It was all about a deliberate and disingenuous ploy to pander for the votes of weakening and wavering republican shits who got us into this mess in the first place. And if that's they type of politics you support, that you and the original poster and his apologists believe to be correct, than you deserve those wavering doubting bushies and people like myself who were fighting this fight from the beginning need to find another place to go. A new party who's politics aren't so base that they aren't willing to sell half the party out for republican votes.

Seriously, do you really think that the democratic party is more representative of you two-parent families than it is to us who are battling to do two jobs ourselves? Well, if so somewhere along the line your idea of what the party is supposed to be got really screwed up. Or else you narcissistic view of right and wrong has gone to your head. And the original post wasn't about a 'living wage'. That came from people who were smart enough to see through the crap in the original post. The original post was about posing as fundie-lite to appease wavering republicans.

Why is it that so many people are willing to turn on so many in the Democratic party just to kiss republican ass?

[BlueCaliDem]

64. I Agree to the Heading of Your Post...

It is not your business or your decision as to how people should decide to live, alone, with someone, whatever.

You're right, but I've never said that, did I. On the other hand, you apparently think it's yours exclusively as judgmental as you are toward me here.

To 'advocate' a particular lifestyle does not leave the tent flap open to everyone.

Why not? Who sets that speciously restrictive "rule"? You? Why must advocating an idea; a theme, cancel out, seclude or exclude another? Surely you can see how baseless that argument is!

Why is wanting a household income comfortable enough to be earned by one of the parents, while one chooses to stay home if presented that option, rile you up so?

Surely, you understand that the Democratic Party is big enough to handle more than ONE point-of-view, so I don't see your problem?

Case in point, don't you know we have opponents as well as proponents of abortion rights within the Democratic Party working side-by-side; hand-in-hand for bigger, more important issues? So your argument here is outright wrong--the flaps are WIDE OPEN.

Yeah, it should open to all ideas unless they are designed to disclude anyone from belonging, which this phony platform would do. and then I thought this was very telling when you followed it up with: But I bet you people would be cajoling and whining for our votes at election time though, wouldn't you?

You people?? Who's "discluding" now? "Designed to disclude anyone from belonging"?? What ridiculous argument is that? Just because I'm heterosexual, married, and have children, and choose to stay home, I don't condemn nor "disclude", nor look-down OR up, at single-parent families, or gay-partnership families--so why do I get the feeling your post is doing that to me?

Your show of indignant anger, and bitter intolerance of ANY new ideas that doesn't conform to yours while lecturing me about "disclusion" baffles me.

Your blatant attempt to demean a fellow Democrat just because she happens to live differently than you is insulting, and discriminatory, and discrimination is contrary to the ideals of what the Democratic Party stands for--just in case you forgot.

As for "cajoling" and "whining" for "our" votes (whomever that "our" may be), I really don't give a rat's patooty who you vote for (that's probably the "narcissist" in me), be it out of spite, or whatever! If that's worth "proving a point" against the people you perceive as "different" than you within the Democratic Party, then be my friggin guest!

I, for one, will continue to believe and argue, that the Democratic Party has a huge tent, with WIDE OPEN flaps, and that there's room for more than just ONE theme within her.

[acmavm]

70. Apparently advocating a single 'two-parent' platform appeals to you.

You are EXACTLY the type of person I am talking about. You accuse me of being discrimanatory when you think that promoting a specific type of life-style is 'open tent' democracy. Basically I will say it again, how people live is none of your business or the democratic party's business. Adopting a platform that the democratic party stands for two-parent with one parent a stay at home parent is arrogant and discrimatory. If you can't see that then you are wasting your time and most important to me, my time.

[BlueCaliDem]

93. Nope.

Apparently advocating a single 'two-parent' platform appeals to you

Apparently, you haven't been reading my post, otherwise you'd know just how incredibly way off you are. SINGLE?? Copy and paste where I'd posted that, or stop parsing words to fit the argument so you don't have to admit you're wrong.

You accuse me of being discrimanatory when you think that promoting a specific type of life-style is 'open tent' democracy.

Your heated attacks, and belittling of my chosen lifestyle as a stay-at-home mother and parent IS discriminatory, as well as insulting, and I rightfully called you on it.

Also, I have already stated that one theme doesn't necessarily cancel out, exclude, nor seclude another; that the Democratic Party is big enough to be all-inclusive--so what part of that didn't you understand?

As for "promoting a specific type of life-style"--I was opining, NOT promoting, and doing so based on personal experience that's, granted, different than yours but unlike you, I didn't go in full-attack mode to cast aspersions on yours, as you did mine!

Basically I will say it again, how people live is none of your business or the democratic party's business.

Yes, and I agreed with you--and understand the knife cuts BOTH ways on this. Do you? Judging by your response and attack on my chosen lifestyle that's not anything like yours, I don't think so.

Adopting a platform that the democratic party stands for two-parent with one parent a stay at home parent is arrogant and discrimatory. If you can't see that then you are wasting your time and most important to me, my time.

Adopting a platform that the Democratic Party stands for exclusively is arrogant and discriminatory, yes. The operative word here is the one I added, and what you'd forgotten to add: exclusively.

But I never advocated that did I? Neither did the OP. It's you, in your mind, despite my arguments and explanations to the contrary, who concluded that I and he/she had, and that, my friend, is arrogant, and discriminatory.

If you'd bothered to read the gist of our posts, you would've known that.

[TNMOM]

68. acmavm -- why wouldn't you want SINGLE parents

to make a better living?

My reading of the original post is that it's a advocacy for higher wages -- so that one person, (whether she/he is married, single, gay or otherwise) can support his/her entire family on one income.

This position would help single parents as well as married parents.

[pagandem4justice]

148. This *supports* single parent families as well

The agenda proposed by the OP actually will support single parent families as well as couples. Granted, in a single parent household, that one parent will automatically not be able to choose to remain at home, *but* by advocating for wages to be sufficient that a single income will support a family comfortably, without struggling, life will improve for single parents as well.

No one is stating that single parent homes should suffer - quite the opposite. In the current economic climate, where two wage-earners equal one sustainable household income, a single wage household actually has the equivalent of "half" an income. This is not a fair situation, for any type of household.

[OzarkDem]

34. They haven't - R's know better than to send that message

Women have been given a choice and equal opportunity, what's wrong with that?

[wickerwoman]

102. Andrea Yates?

I get your point that it's not necessarily the woman who would stay home, but I think you're being naive about where a lot of this country is socially. I'd guess, conservatively, that one in four Americans doesn't believe in birth control or abortion. They think women should have as many children as "God sends". And with God doing all that sending, who is really going to be changing all those diapers?

It's great that you live in a place where men and women are equal childcare providers but that just isn't where most people in this country are. My family vote Democratic, live in a Blue State, are anti-abortion, etc and I'm still gob-smacked by some of the Troglodyte opinions they offer about marriage, family and child-rearing. Of course it's the women who are going to be pressured to stay home, because their salaries and lower and "women are just better parents".

[Stinky The Clown]

12. I respectfully disagree

The OP never made the posit that this would be forced on anyone. What the OP said was, to me at least, quite clear. We should advocate for a society where this is **possible**. Not mandated. Not even advocated. Just **possible**.

[acmavm]

15. "Our party should advocate for two parent families with

one parent at home".

Advocate may not mean to make it mandatory but is sure as hell implies that any family not made of of TWO parents somehow is not quite as 'good', is in fact not sufficiently fulfilling the 'requirements' of the party. Not really a 'democrat' but one of those you know, that the party allowing in on the fringes. Not quite measuring up but then again not being force out either.

As has been said here, keep the issue realistic and simple. Adequate pay for work performed. Then keep everyone's noses out of where they don't belong, in other people's personal lives. As long as they're not running around like the Phelps family disrupting funerals and advocating death for anyone, it's not your business or the original posters business what kind of family set up people have.

[Stinky The Clown]

18. Point taken ...... the OP used the word 'advocate' ... my bad ... but ....

Look at the bigger picture. Framed properly, this plays across the 'great divide' that supposedly exists in America. I personally think the idea of saying it with the words 'two parent family' in the statement is important. I agree it needs to be approached gingerly, but that very wording is the appeal.

It needs the work of a message maker to get it right. But the concept seems reasonable to me.

Again, I hasten to add that I am by NO MEANS advocating (there's that word again) for any sort of exclusion of any other form of 'family'. My own personal situation is a more non-traditional than not.

[acmavm]

26. So what you're saying in effect is 'pretend' to advocate? Be hypocrites?

Or pretend the party is an inclusive one but whisper 'not really' under our (or rather your) breath when discussing policy and who's 'one of us'?

Nice. I'd rather belong to a party that's honest about where we stand and when it says it is the party of fairness, inclusiveness, advocation of civil and constitutions rights for EVERYONE, that it really mean it. OOPS, I forgot. We already have a party of weakling leaders and representatives. No the backbone of the party, or rather those people who feel like they're the backbone of the party, think that they have the right (or is it obligation???) to decide what the proper and acceptable type of family lifestyle it should promote?

[Stinky The Clown]

29. Where did you get the notion that I said we should 'pretend' anythng?

I am not advocating any lie. I **am** advocating proper wording.

And you assembly of a verbal molotov cocktail to toss at my post is insulting. To say nothing of unproductive.

Saying that I think the use of the specific words 'two parent family' does not imply that other words wouldn't be used along with them. Unless, of course, one wishes to disagree without considering the whole issue. What you're doing is parsing. That's a very dangerous thing to do. It causes you to assume meaning where none exists. And instead of contributing to an honest discussion, it simply causes ears to roll shut and communication to cease. (As does, admittedly, this harsh response to your harsh post.)

Now please go back and re-read what I said.

[acmavm]

31. Well, I find your high-handed tone to be hypocritical and offensive.

<snip>. I personally think the idea of saying it with the words 'two parent family' in the statement is important. I agree it needs to be approached gingerly, but that very wording is the appeal.
<snip>

I didn't misunderstand anything. Even with the little equivocator at the end"
<snip>
Again, I hasten to add that I am by NO MEANS advocating (there's that word again) for any sort of exclusion of any other form of 'family'. My own personal situation is a more non-traditional than not.
<snip>

[fed-up]

19. I agree!!! Politicians should stay out of my bedroom!!!

I do not want politicians telling me how to run my love life.

I am a single mother, never married, because I walked in on my son's father with his hands around my 3 month old son's neck. I should mention that the father had quit Prozac cold turkey which may have had something to do with his uncontrollable anger at son's crying, but that is another issue.

I DO NOT Want anyone telling me that I SHOULD be in a two parent household or that I am a lesser parent because I have never married.

My 17 YO son is an honor roll student (w/one year of Junior College credits), does not drink or do drugs and is anti-war. We may be poor, but we are as happy as can be under the current administration.

I do agree with this statement:

"Push for a good economy with strong worker protections and affordable health care, and families will take care of themselves."

[nashville_brook]

43. wha? a living wage is a living wage -- that's a core value.

[acmavm]

45. Not sure at all about what you're talking about but I agree, a living wage

is a core value. That should be a given for all American workers. But this 'two parent, one a stay-at-home' being advocated by the Democratic Party, that's crap. Good for you if you can get it. There's not a bit of doubt about that. But what if you can't or don't or chose not to? That's where the problems begin.

No one here, or no one in the party has the right or any business to pass their 'approval' on anyone's lifestyle. Not as long as it's not illegal or immoral (and I'm not sure who's fit to judge on that issue either).

[nashville_brook]

61. pragmatically, a high enough living wage for a family unit to sustain with

only one worker would look a lot like Clintonianism -- which was the first time we started about this as a radical lifestyle departure. during the reagan-bush years when we were in school (or traveling in a band) we couldn't even conceive of either of us making a living wage -- let alone, one wage for the whole family.

it's up to families --- in their many beautiful arrangements -- to decide how to use the time and money. maybe someone stays home with kids. maybe someone starts a business. maybe the grandparents need caretaking. i think this makes wonderful sense.

i think OP had their mind on familes with kids, maybe cause that what their situation looks like and that's how they'd use their extra slack.

i'm real behind this idea for another reason, though -- i think our culture is starving from lack of energy. who has time to create? who has time to acheive the wonderful things they imagined as children. it's like that great commercial from a couple of years ago. the one for a financial services company where it was all children saying, "when i grow up i want..." and the answers were all like, "to work 80 hour weeks and have a heart attack by the time i'm 40."

"when i grow up i want to give every bit of creative energy to a company that can eliminate me at any given moment for no reason at all."

etc.

we aren't born to work to enrich the barons. that's what republicans are for. :)

[verdalaven]

116. I love your post

because you have a great point. How many people have the time to pursue what they really want to do with their lives? They are so busy surviving they don't have time to pursue happiness, and that includes the happiness of spending time with family and friends.

Wow, I just depressed myself.

[leyton]

85. Way to not read the original post.

The original poster was saying that a single-parent family structure should be economically viable. And you know what? It should. When a parent stays home with their kid, they can help them with homework; make sure they don't watch too much TV; and in general be a stronger presence in their child's life. The OP was not trying to say that this should be forced upon families - only that this is currently not an option economically when it should be.

I haven't made it through the whole thread yet but I'm sure there are a thousand more kneejerk reactions like yours that I'll be responding to.

[Vanje]

5. No. It shouldnt

Push for a good economy with strong worker protections and affordable health care, and families will take care of themselves.

[Stinky The Clown]

13. Exactly!

[Mad_Dem_X]

171. Exactly -

Make it so one person is able to stay home if he or she chooses, by paying good wages and giving affordable health care for the working parent!!

[mike_c]

6. I strongly agree that people need to be more aware...

...of the clash of incompatible values that is undermining the quality of life in America. On the one hand, traditionalists hold up the example of the nuclear family-- with it's separate roles for family members-- as an ideal to strive for, but on the other hand we've created a society of wage slaves where EVERYONE must toil in the salt mines just to barely make ends meet.

I'd rather NOT get into debates about the appropriateness of the traditional ideal, I mean, are all the members of those families really well served by the roles that ideal imposes on them? But I think you're right-- the only way to get republican lower and middle class votes to join us is to lead them to realize that they're currently voting in their own worst interests by favoring policies that have forced them into increasingly precarious wage slavery.

[soleft]

7. We should make it a point it's no longer possible 4 1 parent 2 stay home

and include in that point that it doesn't have to be the mother.

It's all about choice and FREEDOM.

Freedom ain't something we fight for other countries to have when we don't have it at home.

[femrap]

83. Why the hell don't we make 'work' more family friendly....

women (and some men, too) have been asking for on-site child care....why not? Especially the Big Corps whose CEOs make millions of dollars...give up a little bit of that for a child care center at the place of business...then the parent could have lunch w/ the child and not have to be worrying about a babysitter, etc.

But the Big Corps don't do that because they want to put women on 'mommy tracks' so they don't have to be promoted to positions close to that stinky rich CEO....

Life would be so much better if the dumb ass Corporates would realize that if they want future customers and future workers and future Americans for that matter...they need to account for REPRODUCTION OF CHILDREN...and provide child care...FREE! Productivity would increase...everyone would benefit.

[lumberjack_jeff]

162. But it is possible, and it violates no Dem principle to support it.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=2144454&mesg_id=2146470

As a stay-at-home dad, I resent two basic threads of disagreement to what I consider a common sense suggestion by the OP.
1) 'of course all stay at home parents are moms', and
2) 'advocating for economic conditions where one wage-earner families are viable amounts to enforced economic dependence and subjugation of women'

Enforcing the conditions in which two parents must work is not liberation for moms, dads or children.

I am active in advocating for the rights of the disabled. At one time, most disabled children were institutionalized. This large-scale care industry did irreparable harm to an entire generation of the disabled. To a lesser degree, I see similar harm occuring to kids who are subject to a different kind of institutionalization.

I DO NOT BLAME PARENTS. Our consumer/corporatist society makes too many families assume that they couldn't survive - in fact have a better quality life, on one income. There is a point where a family earns enough - additional earnings are only needed to create a lifestyle that mitigates for the fact that neither parent is meaningfully involved.

[wellstone dem]

8. As a single adoptive parent

of my wonderful, wonderful daughter. The title to your post makes me uncomfortable. I think we should advocate for all familes. and living wages, family friend personnel policies, good health insurance will help us all.

[No Exit]

22. From one parent to another--

is your daughter a teenager yet?

I am speaking only of practicalities. I have two teenaged boys. It is not easy, but I know that if there weren't two of us (parents), it would be a lot harder.

Your daughter might never give you a moment's trouble, and the whole 18+ years might turn out to be an experience which is delightful 24/7. But since children are human, the far more common experience is that all of them are hard to handle at times. That's when it helps to have more than one parent.

The concept of the original poster is apparently to give people a choice to be economically able to have a stay-at-home parent (it could be either parent, and no one is dictating who the parents are--they could be adoptive or not, gay or not, etc., etc.) in order to ensure that even kids who are hard to handle at times get the maximum amount of necessary attention.

If you decide the 2-parent system is not for you, fine. I think the original poster just wanted to see if that system could be made economically feasible for those who want it.

P.S.: My kids are not delinquents, and they both have jobs and go to school. But I can say with certainty that in parenting, one needs all the help s/he can get.

[bluedawg12]

28. God bless anyone with the heart to adopt a child and raise that child

as a single parent. What a gift of love, labor and sacrifice.

hell of a lot better than a child being shunted from foster home to foster home.

The message here seems to be that we do not live in an Ozzie and Harriet perfect world and alternative households abound.

But I would never have anything but affection and admiration for an adoptive parent-especially one so open hearted and generous as to adopt a child into his/her own home and assume the expense and respnsibility for that yong life- as a single parent.

I think that level of generosity and love from a single person is worthy of my respect.

Not because it's easier, but because it is twice as challenging.

[wellstone dem]

41. My daughter is 17

and she is doing great. Which is amazing.

She was in a two parent family. She was abused. She was neglected.

She was 9 years old when I adopted her from the foster care system. Being a single parent is unbelievably hard, and I don't have every other weekend off. But what I've done isn't that incredible. I have only one child.

Still it was the hardest thing I have ever done. But it is also the most fun thing I have ever done. I have received far more than I have given. And I challenge anyone to have been a part of parenting a more productive, progressive, caring, compassionate young woman.

I'm not opposed to two-parent families, believe me there were many days where I just wanted to be able to go out for a cup of coffee to de-stress. However, at a time when kids languish in foster care, yet those in power are loathe to allow single people or gay parents to adopt, I hesitate to bill a advocacy effort as "support for two-parent families."

[No Exit]

118. She's doing great, thanks to you

I'm sure that's the reason because I know that being abused/neglected, and/or being in the foster care system, could not possibly produce ANY child who would "do great". So congratulations for taking someone who would have been ruined, and giving her the chance she needed.

I think the original poster was trying to find a way to take the "high moral ground" thing back from the repukes. You, by adopting, have actually contributed to the taking of said high moral ground away from them: they are always screaming "adoption, not abortion". We could say to them, "look, here's a democrat who adopted, now what are YOU--Mr. Evangelical Republican Puritan--doing to help children?"

(But I just can't quite let go of the smile I get whenever I think of the corporatocracy--the employers, that is--having to suddenly contend with a labor force that was virtually cut in half.)

Good luck, and keep up the good work!

[bluedawg12]

9. Our party should advocate decent wages so that

families do not HAVE to have two wage earners just to remain in debt.

Whether both parents want to work is one issue, and I know some very happy house-husbands, but we need to make clear that Americans have no choice and must work, and yet, the fruits of their labor only gives them enough cushion to live pay check to pay check.

The minimum wage is the minimum to qualify as: working poor.

We want to promote policy that supports working men and women and will allow them to have one parent reamin at home--if they so chose.

Or, if two work, at least they can save their money, have a futre for their retirement, or when their kids go off to college, or when they are old or infirm.

This of course applies to all American households- regardless of race, religion or sexual orientation.

[McCamy Taylor]

11. Tax credit for stay at home parent? GOP would hate that. Better yet,

stay at home parent gets a "salary" from the feds for being a child care person, gets money paid into social security etc.

You might find more people could afford to marry their live ins under this scenerio.

[Stinky The Clown]

14. Think of a 'minimum standard of living'

Wherein each American has a place to live, healthcare, education, nutritional meals, and a job.

That's an American value.

[Neil Lisst]

16. is a puzzlement

It is a difficult call on how to encourage the two parent home with one able to stay home, without hurting all those folks who don't have that and won't be able to do so.

I agree that the root cause is wages that are not sufficient to support a family. We're supposed to value families, but what happened to the idea a guy should be able to work a 40 hour week at the factory and support a family of four?


-----
my progressive political cartoon
http://www.webcomicsnation.com/neillisst

[Wordie]

143. That's nice...hope the Dems use something like that. HOUSING COSTS are a

major part of the difficulty that even two parent families have these days, yet I hear this issue discussed infrequently on DU. If housing costs could be reduced to a reasonable percentage of ONE workers salary (as they once were), this would completely preclude the need for the debate in this thread. While there are additional expenses involved with women working, I am pretty sure that the *economic* justification for a family where both parents work is to be able to afford a better house, or a house at all. Framing the issue in terms of housing costs clearly doesn't get into lifestyle issues of women who WANT or HAVE to work, and thereby avoids the kind of backlash that concerned an earlier poster.

How to do so? Well, that's what I hope our Dem leaders will get working on, soon.

[OzarkDem]

36. I recall R's pushing for something similar

back during the Clinton years. Its probably gone the way of the balanced federal budget ideas they pushed.

[pagandem4justice]

150. I don't agree with that option

As I've stated numerous times in this thread so far, I do like the idea of the OP, since it advocates fair wages to the extent that families and couples can choose their own household arrangement without being forced one way or another. It's also friendly to single parent households, as higher wages benefit all workers ... and this *is* a core Democratic value.

However, I cannot agree with your idea, of giving a "tax credit" or "salary" to stay at home parents. This would give yet another government subsidy (as with Child Tax Credits) to those who choose to have children. Thus, this type of arrangment is discriminatory to those of us who do not have children (by choice, biology, or circumstance), whereas higher wages (or a condition which otherwise favors a higher standard of living for all wage earners) is fair to all.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

17. I think that all dsc is saying is that parents should have the OPTION to

have one of them stay at home.

Stay with me for a moment here, but one reason that feminism has such a bad name among so many working class people is that the desire of educated, middle-class women to have fulfilling careers outside the home quickly became an absolute requirement for working-class women to work at boring, low-paying jobs, due to the stagnation of blue-collar wages.

When I was in grade school in the 1950s, the ideal was that the blue collar men would work at the boring and dangerous jobs while the women would raise the children and maintain a comfortable home. A family could live comfortably (not luxuriously, but not in need, either) on what one assembly line worker or one school janitor earned. Many of my relatives lived like this: Dad stood on his feet all day in a hot, dirty factory, bored out of his mind, while Mom was there when the kids came home from school, prided herself on her spotlessly clean house, and had dinner on the table promptly at six. The women didn't have fulfilling careers, but neither did the men, so it seemed like a fair trade-off.

Unfortunately, the ambitions of educated women to use their knowledge in the workforce instead of immersing themselves in housework began to be realized at precisely the time that real wages for blue collar workers started falling.

Suddenly, working class women found themselves having to take disagreable jobs just to pay the bills, and on top of that, they were still expected to do the housework AND find ways for the children to be taken care of. Annie Affluent was saving lives as a surgeon and could afford to hire help, but Betty Bluecollar was waiting tables at Denny's all day and then had to go home to a husband who still expected the housekeeping and cooking standards of years past.

To make matters worse, when American corporations began sending blue collar jobs overseas, there were cases in which the men could no longer find jobs, while the women, who were concentrated in service occupations, such as housecleaning, restaurant serving, and retail clerking, which were not vulnerable to outsourcing.

If blue collar and "pink collar" wages had kept up with inflation, the minimum wage would be about $12 an hour today.

Obviously, you couldn't raise the minimum wage that high all at once, but it would be a goal to work for year by year.

If we had a system in which it was possible for one parent to stay at home or for single parents to work just one job instead of two (perhaps through European-style child subsidies, available to both single and married parents), then working outside the home or not could be a real choice.

Note that the Republicanites want only affluent women to stay home. At the same time that they're singing the praises of lawyers and accountants who quit their jobs to raise children, they're requiring poor single mothers to work at minimum wage jobs with little or no financial support.

[acmavm]

30. Now explain to me that fairness in this. How about if a one-parent

head of household would rather stay home? Do they get subsidized like the Ozzie and Harriets types? Or do they just get looked down on as 'one of us but of the lesser variety'? You know, the all people are created equal, but some are more equal than others type of thing.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

40. In my ideal world, all parents would get two years of paid leave and

generous family allowances, but there's only so far you can go (especially at the governmental level) in compensating for the fact there is, for whatever reason, only one adult in a single-parent family. Older children can pitch in and do some of the housework, but if the child is small, the entire burden in both spheres falls on the parent.

It's a tremendously hard road to walk, so hard, from what I observed, that I decided not to embark on it. But that's just me, not someone else's situation. There are involuntary single parents who lost the child's other parent to death or divorce, and voluntary single parents who wanted a child so much that they were willing to make the sacrifices.

High-quality subsidized public daycare, as some municipalities in Japan have, would go a long way toward easing the burden of single parents. What else, though? Publicly funded housekeepers to come in a couple of times a week?

I've pointed out the Republican hypocrisy of wanting affluent married women to stay home with their kids and poor single parents to enter the workforce, even if there's no daycare and the job offers no fringe benefits.

[TNMOM]

69. I don't see "subsidy" in the original post

I think the original poster is saying they should raise wages so that a family can be supported on one income.

It makes no difference whether you're married or single or gay or whatever.

I don't get why asking for higher wages is such a bad thing -- for anyone.

[AlGore-08.com]

48. Umm... except that women didn't suddenly enter the workforce in the 1960s

Or whenever feminism is supposed to have forced us all to have crappy jobs.

Poor and middle class women have been working crappy, low paying, physically exhausting jobs since the dawn of time. For instance, during the industrial revolution, women (and children) were employed in factories and mines because they would accept lower wages than male employees. Those lower wages were justified because of the myth that each family had a father that could (and would) work to support the family, and any other family member who "chose" to work was doing so for "extra" money.

There never has been a point in human history where the majority of families consisted of a working father and a stay at home mother. Not even the 1950s. (For those interested, this ideal middle class family structure was dreamed up during in the Victorian Era. It was not lived by the majority of middle class women then; and those who were able to achieve it did so by hiring female servants to do the crappy, boring, physically exhausting parts of pre-electric appliance housework.)

The real problem with promoting a two parent, stay at home family is, as a number of folks have pointed out, is that it doesn't address the underlying problem that makes it difficult for all families, regardless of their structure.

We need decent wages, national health care (or at least affordable health care with some way to hold providers accountable), decent public education (including more ways to help offset the expenses of college), properly trained and funded first responders, a clean environment... in short, a social safety net.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

91. What you say is true of the poor, but among the relatives I knew

growing up in the 1950s and 1960s and the parents of my classmates, there were factory workers, school janitors, self-taught auto mechanics, meter readers, paperhangers, plumbers, and all sorts of other blue collar types, all of whose wives stayed at home.

At that time, it was very unusual for married women with children to have a paying job, except possibly by having a one-person hair salon in the basement or holding Tupperware parties.

I can remember how traumatic it was in the 1970s, how a lot of blue collar men were reluctant to have their wives take outside jobs, because one of their points of pride was being able to support their families. If their wives took paying jobs, that was an admission that they had failed to "bring home the bacon," as the saying went.

Perhaps the 1950s and 1960s were an anomaly, but when married women began entering the workforce in the 1970s, some for reasons of personal fulfillment, some out of economic necessity, the nation definitely noticed. Civic and charitable organizations that had depended on legions of women volunteers being available during the day had to rethink their operations, daycare centers (formerly used only by the very poor) sprang up all over, and door-to-door sales, once common, withered away, because no one was home during the day.

But you're right that all families need more support. I wish that we could provide the types of support that are taken for granted in Europe and even, to a lesser extent, in Japan (family allowances, public health nurses making home visits to new parents, free or subsidized daycare, paid family leave, national health care).

[MountainLaurel]

123. Amen

When you hear about the glories of one parent at home, it's a very slim portion of society.

But just like the right wing thinks that single mothers should be out in the workforce while middle-class white women are bad mothers if they do the same, no one really gave a crap when it was poor children having to raise themselves because dad worked at the mill while mom cooked at the local diner.

[OnionPatch]

20. I can see

advocating for more jobs that make it possible to have a parent stay home and a living wage for existing ones. I don't see anything wrong with that. I do think the average full time job should pay that much.

This doesn't mean I think that the person staying home even has to be the woman, or that anyone would HAVE to stay home. I see what the poster is saying, and I agree. Basic, full-time jobs should pay a living wage that can support a small family. If Republicans believe in the sanctity of the family, as they claim, why don't they back it up with living wage laws?

[Birthmark]

21. I agree.

Here's how to do it:

$20,000 EARNED INCOME CREDIT for all families with children who have one parent staying at home and one working. This will help low income families the most. But will also drive up wages as people drop out of the labor force.

[electron_blue]

138. and $20,000 for one parent head of households?

would you agree with that? OR do you have to be 2-parents to get this?

[Kingofalldems]

23. The gop runs on a low tax agenda

while forgetting to tell us that they are also for what many corporations want most---low wages. I've always thought that a good counter to gop low tax promises is to run with a slogan of--'America needs a raise'. I think it would work.

[No Exit]

25. You're right, and btw

I was always told that the repukes were the party that would give tax relief to the middle class. Boy, was that wrong. (But it's not news that repukes are hypocrites!)

[calmblueocean]

38. "America needs a raise"

That's a great slogan. Really makes you sit up and take notice. And it's true. I'm writing this one down. :)

[nashville_brook]

62. damn right calmblue!

we deserve a raise. we deserve respect. we deserve security.

i love this meme -- very John Edwards!

[No Exit]

24. If, among couples, one opts to stay home while children need someone,

that cuts the pool of available labor in half.

If there is a labor shortage, those who work for wages might well have greater bargaining power, and would thus get better pay and benefits.

I would certainly rather see the job market be a worker's market, than an employer's market.

[Wordie]

145. You guys seem to be forgetting about outsourcing and globalization: those

jobs might just go overseas instead.

Sorry to bring this up; it's not pleasant, I know.

[nashville_brook]

27. rec'd -- and here's why

i've considered myself a feminist ever since that tennis match with the "male chauvanist pig" guy. i was a kid -- was it Bobby Riggs? i grew up knowing i'd have a career and would never be beholden to a "traditional family" that kept me captive in the home like my mom.

fast forward 30 years. went to college. studied feminism along with every other liberation "science" i could find. i've had the career. no kids. married happily for 20 years. here's the thing: you can't make it on two incomes. and it has nothing to do with money.

where does life happen? if you think it happens in the workplace; selling your labor to a company who has no interest in your welfare, then you should have no qualms with things as they are.

but if having a life worth living means anything to you, then read on.

when both of us work here's what our life looks like: wake up at 7 pour coffee down gullet. jump in car and speed 40 minutes to work in thick traffic. get to work. make list for lunch-time errands. do work. lunchtime: run errands (buy groceries, pay bills, maybe do some retail therapy). sneak back to work 15 minutes late. work till 5. back in traffic. get home to tired husband. decide where you will go for dinner b/c you're too tired to cook. drink one too many beers at dinner. go home. fall asleep. do it again. wait for weekend. drink. clean house all damn weekend. maybe get in some yard work. discuss hiring people to help with housework. start over on monday, exhausted. (occasionally visit parents and help with their chores).

if you have kids, just add sucidal tendencies to the above.

i don't work now. we barely make it one salary BUT this is what our week looks like now:

weekends: gardening. beer making. work in the studio (husband's a musician). do house projects (i.e. add value to house instead of tread water), go on motorcycle rides.

week: read and write. cook and bake. garden. do house chores. keep up with family and friends thru email. mentor friend's child. write letters to congress critters. blog. read. try to learn talk to neighbors. work on house projects. practice bird counting. walk on treadmill. husband comes home. we eat dinner. he works on music. i work on writing projects. we might watch a DVD with the dogs (couch time), go to bed when tired.

aside from being a happier life -- we are better neighbors. we are better citizens. we are better friends. we are better family members. and we are better carriers of our art (writing, music, etc.)

if you want a culture -- a "humanity" to prove that your people ever existed, then your people have to have the time to BE HUMAN. otherwise, EXISTENTIALLY, the only "humanity" that gets passed on to future generations is measured in annual reports. since i was a marketing schlep, my existence was literally expressed in ANNUAL REPORTS as that was a lions share of the kind of publications i produced.

imagine what cultural history courses are going to look like 500 years from now. how might they name our moment in history? my vote is for The Enslavement...

whoa -- sorry for the rant. :) but i couldn't agree with you more. this is powerful stuff and worthy of a half-hour saturaday morning meditation. :)

[OzarkDem]

32. Women's Rights

I'd hate to see us move backward when it comes to ensuring that women can have viable careers outside the home. Among the greatest advances of the women's movement in the 20th century was to encourage women to pursue a college education and equal access to well paying jobs in management.

The result has raised the incomes of women and families, helped them out of poverty, including poverty in retirement years and given them the ability to provide for their families as single parents. It has also changed the world of business and government as more women are allowed to participate as leaders.

Keep in mind, many, if not most, of these same women will take time off during their career to spend time with family.

It would be better to focus on providing all working parents with the support they need and remove some of the negative impact of staying out of the workforce for a few years (social security, etc).

[nashville_brook]

42. i think the OP's idea is what you say, plus

supporting single-income family wages isn't anti-feminist. it's pro-labor. pro-family. pro-community.

a movement based on single-income family wages is actually surrporting a higher wage. higher social security support, etc.

we are hardwired to form families in order to increase our carrying capacity. the freemarket has infriinged on our survival instinct and taken advantage of us. now it take two-incomes to make ends meet? where does that leave single parents?

i say this is the core of progressive values -- to supoort the individual in their struggle with bigger, more powerful entities like companies we work for.

and who says mom has to stay home? my hubby was homeboy before i was homegirl.

[bluedawg12]

35. Articles from literature, FYI:

Or check out pub med and do your own research:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?db=pubmed...

Peace


.........
Future Child. 2005 Fall;15(2):57-74. Related Articles, Links
For love and money? The impact of family structure on family income.
Thomas A, Sawhill I.
John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, USA

But new research that simulates niarriages between existing single mothers and unattached men with similar characteristics suggests that family structure does affect family resources and that child poverty rates would drop substantially if these mothers were to marry. It does not necessarily follow, however, that policymakers ought to, or even can, do anything about family structure. Marriage is not an economic cure-all for the complex problem of child poverty. It would be a mistake for policymakers to focus on promoting marriage to the exclusion of encouraging and rewarding work or addressing problems such as early out-of-wedlock childbearing.
.........

Future Child. 2005 Fall;15(2):33-55. Related Articles, Links
American marriage in the early twenty-first century.
Cherlin AJ.
Johns Hopkins University, USA.

.Andrew Cherlin reviews these historic changes, noting that marriage remains the most common living arrangement for raising children, but that children, especially poor and minority children, are increasingly likely to grow up in single-parent families and to experience family instability.

Cherlin notes that sentiment in favor of marriage appears to be stronger in the United States than in other developed countries.

The share of U.S. adults who are likely to marry is higher, but so is the share likely to divorce.

U.S. children are also more likely to live in single-parent families at some time in their childhood.

Although nearly all Americans, whether poor or well-to-do, hold to marriage as an ideal, today marriage is increasingly optional. To a greater extent than ever before, individuals can choose whether to form a family on their own, in a cohabiting relationship, or in a marriage.

Assistance must be directed to needy families, regardless of their household structure. Policymakers must craft a careful balance of marriage-based and marriage-neutral programs to provide adequate support to American children.
.............
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retri...

Pediatrics. 2003 Jun;111(6 Pt 2):1541-71. Related Articles, Links

Comment in:
Pediatrics. 2004 Feb;113(2):428.

Family pediatrics: report of the Task Force on the Family.

Schor EL; American Academy of Pediatrics Task Force on the Family.

There is enormous diversity among families-diversity in the composition of families, in their ethnic and racial heritage, in their religious and spiritual orientation, in how they communicate, in the time they spend together, in their commitment to individual family members, in their connections to their community, in their experiences, and in their ability to adapt to stress...

...Family life in the United States has been subjected to extensive scrutiny and frequent commentary, yet even when those activities have been informed by research, they tend to be influenced by personal experience within families and by individual and cultural beliefs about how society and family life ought to be...


...FAMILY CONTEXT OF CHILD HEALTH: The power and importance of families to children arises out of the extended duration for which children are dependent on adults to meet their basic needs. Children's needs for which only a family can provide include social support, socialization, and coping and life skills. Their self-esteem grows from being cared for, loved, and valued and feeling that they are part of a social unit that shares values, communicates openly, and provides companionship. Families transmit and interpret values to their children and often serve as children's connection to the larger world, especially during the early years of life.

.........
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retri...

Future Child. 2005 Fall;15(2):157-75. Related Articles, Links

The hefty penalty on marriage facing many households with children.
Carasso A, Steuerle CE.

Urban Institute, USA.
Over the past seventy years Congress has enacted dozens of tax and transfer programs, giving little if any attention to the marriage subsidies and penalties that they inadvertently impose. Although the programs affect both rich and poor Americans, the penalties fall most heavily on low- or moderate-income households with children....

...........
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retri...

Health Serv Res. 2002 Feb;37(1):173-86. Related Articles, Links

Family structure, socioeconomic status, and access to health care for children.

Heck KE, Parker JD.

Infant and Child Health Studies Branch, Office of Analysis, Epidemiology and Health Promotion, National Center for Health Statistics, Sacramento, CA 95814, USA.

OBJECTIVE: To test the hypothesis that among children of lower socioeconomic status (SES), children of single mothers would have relatively worse access to care than children in two-parent families, but there would be no access difference by family structure among children in higher SES families. ..

CONCLUSIONS: At high levels of maternal education, family structure did not influence physician visits or having a usual source of care, as expected. However, at low levels of maternal education, single mothers appeared to be better at accessing care for their children. Health insurance coverage explained some of the access differences by family structure. Medicaid is important for children of single mothers, but children in two-parent families whose mothers are less educated do not always have access to that resource. Public health insurance coverage is critical to ensure adequate health care access and utilization among children of less educated mothers, regardless of family structure.

..........
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retri...

Future Child. 2002 Winter-Spring;12(1):120-45. Related Articles, Links
Family economic resources in the post-reform era.

Zedlewski SR.

Urban Institute, Washington, D.C., USA.

Aided by the longest economic expansion in U.S. history and other policy changes designed to make work pay, federal welfare reform legislation has spurred mothers to leave welfare at an unprecedented rate. The majority of mothers who left welfare are working, but most have jobs with low pay and limited benefits...

The author cautions that the evolving story of welfare reform will need to be monitored carefully to achieve long-term positive impacts on family economic resources and child well-being...

...

[calmblueocean]

37. How to do this without demonizing single parent families?

I think that's what most people here are wondering.

The key is in your line about "supporting a family on a single salary". That's what we should support. We should advocate the idea that a single salary for an average working class family should be enough to take care of that family, whether one or two parents.

I'd suggest that part of this ought to be making the right to unionize part of our foreign trade policy. Right now, multinational corporations have us at a disadvantage because they can exploit workers in non-unionizable countries like China to break the backs of their counterparts in the first world. Multinational corporations can only be bargained with if we have multinational unions. Demanding the right to unionize for all our trade partners would have a powerful effect in raising wages in America and making the single-salary family viable again.

[bluedawg12]

39. I agree with you, but, how could we demand anything from

foreign labor markets?

We have no levarage to demand unionization of manufacturing jobs in China.

Globalization has effectively screwed the American worker- or, brought us to a level of third world labor practices and we give up wages and benefits.

how about US laws that state: in order for any corporation to donate to any political party/candidate in the US, their head quarters must be on US soil, and they cannot find off shore tax shelters, and their hiring practices over seas must conform to US standards of labor? Too far out??

[calmblueocean]

107. The one thing we have that everyone else in the world wants...

...is access to our markets. We would need a president strong enough to pull out of the WTO and return to bilateral trade agreements in which we could use tariffs as leverage to negotiate human rights and worker rights in countries we do business with. Either that, or flex our muscles and change the nature of the WTO itself from a "free trade" organization to a "fair trade" organization.

I think we definitely ought to use tax incentives based on corporate behavior to stack the deck in favor of the American worker, too. John Kerry had a good plan in his platform this last election, which involved:

- having a federal "Buy American" policy that prefers American companies and workers wherever possible

- giving business a one-time tax holiday for any foreign profits they reinvest in America

- ending tax break loopholes that encourage big companies to ship jobs overseas

... among other things. Somehow this just never got into the mainstream discussion, though. Someone in another thread said, "America needs a raise", and I think that'd be a fantastic catchphrase to start getting people talking about just these kinds of ideas.

[bluedawg12]

154. These are great ideas: well said!

You are so on the money- because the economy and jobs will be an big issue- it already is.

We need to be the party of the working middle class.

[nashville_brook]

44. i think it's a matter of marketing the message. R's might appreciate

the opportunity to have a traditional family.

everyone else benefits by the rising tide floating all boats. maybe OP was a little think on the "mom stays home" message, but i'm a housewife. i prefer "homegirl." we barely make it, but we're too damn tired to be a 2-income family.

here's another consideration: families form to take care of weaker family members whether they are children, elderly parents, or chronically-ill partners. i contracted an infection in my spine a few years back and literally have 2 decents weeks out of a month. i *could* work. but i'd be miserable not being able to take care of my injury the way i need to, AND more importantly to me, our family suffers from me being taken out of homelife almost entirely. we need someone to cook, get groceries, garden, and generally tend to life. i'd much rather be doing this than selling my labor to a lousy corporation that doesn't give a hoot about me.

i think this is a freedom issue and a powerful one. i think the wheels are turning. people are sick of the gerbil wheel.

[win_in_06]

50. I disagree. Families can survive on one salary.

But a lot of sacrifices would have to be made that were standard decades ago, but unthinkable for some now:

no cable
one car
one tv
eating out rarely
modest clothes
modest vacations
public school
sack lunches instead of cafeteria

how many of us are willing to live without some of these comforts?

[CTyankee]

58. I still do!

It is part of my whole life "ethic." We do have cable, but we inherited a second TV. Spouse takes the bus to work and home. Eating out is the special occasion (about 4 times a year!). And one vacation at a vacation home we inherited from spouse's parents and we own.

It is what I call "getting rich slow" and it works. It worked for my depression era parents and it is working now. Also, being out of debt. Our only interest bearing debt is our mortgage. Every credit card gets paid in full each month. If we can't swing that, we don't buy it! That simple.

[johnaries]

51. How about advocating people make their OWN decisions?

Personally, I don't want to even BE a parent, single or otherwise.

[Flirtus]

59. ding! Freedom, sweet freedom to choose your lifestyle

Single parent here, not by choice, by abusive marriage, However, LIFE IS GREAT!! Even though I had to go thru hell learning how to make choices based on my own needs, the first part of that was learning not to expect anyone else to know how to make my choices for me.

I have two jobs so I can slack off whichever one impedes my life at the moment. I did have to WORK HARD for a decade to get to where I am now, but, it's all mine! The 17 year old has never had a home cooked meal, since I had to sell the kitchen appliances a long time ago to pay some bill... but she's much better adjusted than I ever was at her age.

The OP made me MAD, but the rest of the thread is getting a grip on freedom.

[Hippo_Tron]

53. Bullshit, both parents can work and raise perfectly fine kids

At least that's my experience.

My parents both worked and still do work full time jobs. Both leave for work at 8:00 or 9:00, both get home at 5:00 or 6:00. I don't feel like I was deprived of anything as a child. This is because my parents were commited to spending time with us when they were not at work. Sunday through Friday at 7:00 was family dinner every single night unless there was a GOOD. After dinner we'd play games or my parents would help us with our homework, etc.

Did I have a nanny watch over me between 3:00pm and 6:00pm? Yep. Would I have fared just as well in some after school program if my parents couldn't have afforded a nanny? I'm pretty sure I would have.

Frankly I think that I fared better because my mother having a career of her own provided me with a strong female role model in my life. I'll take that over being able to see her between the hours of 3:00pm and 6:00pm every day.

[Crowdance]

54. Living Wage is what we should advocate.

This proposal imposes a moral measure where none need exist. Let parents be parents, artists be artists, teachers be teachers, etc., etc., etc. Every citizen, parent or not, deserves a living wage and health care.

In truth, not every family has a parent who WANTS to stay home. I know plenty of families with two working parents who both love their work; neither would want to give it up. And who is to say that they SHOULD? Endorsing a policy such as you propose would have the effect of making stay-at-home parenting the ideal. It's not. It's simply one option.

Pehaps, dsc, you think you wouldn't be able to "properly" raise a child while working, because you haven't done it. I have, three times, and it's very rewarding. One must sift priorities (for example, not every corner of the house gets vaccummed every week, and we all own enough underwear and socks to last 2 weeks). But my family is successful and loving, despite (or perhaps because of) the compromises we have to make.

[wellstone dem]

63. Living wage should be the focus

I agree.

[Telly Savalas]

73. That and labor laws which promote a work/life balance.

35 hour work week, vacation time, personal leave...that sort of thing.

It's unnecessary and counterproductive to advocate for a specific household arrangement. Promotion of a living wage and work/life balance empowers everybody to make the choices they think will work for them.

[williesgirl]

56. Wrong - keep the feds out of who stays home or works - they already

have tried to eliminate our rights. For God's sake, don't give them more ammo. You must be on serious drugs to even suggest this.

[CTyankee]

57. I have been both in a 2 parent family and a single parent

and i have given this a lot of thought.

I believe that my children prospered when I stayed at home while they were in their birth to 6 years. When I was forced to go into the workforce (because my spouse could not or would not work hard enough to support us)I was in a real bind. I found that I was working full time and then coming home to the "second shift." With men, it was a different story: come home, wife cooks dinner and cleans up after, watch TV and go to bed.

Nowadays I think it is different. Enlightened men, such as my sons in law, take equal responsibility for their kids. But my sons in law are not everybodies. Judging by what I see on the right wing these days, some guys just haven't gotten there.

So here is my judgment: the hardest job I ever had was raising my 3 children. BY FAR. But "work" got in the way. I was supposed to be a loyal employee 24/7 and I tried to be. It didn't always work. It was the male model, overlayed on women who got into the workforce in the 70s.

I lasted another 32 years in the work force. I am semi retired now and I am so happy I don't have to go in for 8+ hours a day. My grown kids are great: professionals with advanced degrees and great jobs. I have one daughter with 3 kids and she only works very part time (for very good money). So this has been a success story.

But I am middle class with some money to have choices. Not a lot of women in this country have choices, but wish they did. Our job as Democrats is to make sure they do!

[bklyncowgirl]

60. The ability to support a family decently on one salary should be the theme

One of the big problems with the Democrats is that the Democrats talk about reality while the Republicans sell dreams.

Republicans talk about the dream of striking it rich and the dream of living like it was 1950--or at least the 1950 that people know from watching Ozzie and Harriet.

Democrats need to talk about how their programs relate to people's dreams. How higher wages, and universal health insurance, for example could enable a parent to stay home and raise the children or perhaps to go to back school and pursue the career they've always dreamed of.

Telling people that we'll do such and such a program to make things a little easier in the crappy little world you live in is not going to compete with the fantasy of wealth.

If reality sold the best selling diet books would be telling people that the road to a better body would be to eat less and excercise more. When was the last time something like that hit the best seller lists?

[calmblueocean]

167. "Democrats talk about reality while the Republicans sell dreams."

So true!

I think one of the biggest problems with the Democratic party today is that we've lost the narrative of our American dream, and have settled for criticising Republicans.

But criticism is no substitute for imagination. We need to get people excited about what a liberal America can be like. Someone in another thread said, "We're the Democratic party, and we believe in the future", and I think that's a great starting point for us.

I wrote a post on DU a while ago about making pro-choice more than just a euphemism for abortion and I believe we need out-of-the-box thinking like this to put the Democratic party back on its feet.

I'm thinking about starting a blog devoted to just these sorts of ideas.

[dsc]

65. Some responses to save on bandwidth in one post

First, it should be noted that nowhere do I mention women being the stay at home parent. Obviously in my case there would be no women so no women could be staying home. My mom stayed home until I was 5 and my dad stayed home while my younger sister was little.

Second, advocating isn't forcing. Nor is it saying single parents are inferior. But in all honesty two parents is a good ideal. Yes, one parent can do well. Yes, two parents can do a shitty job. But it is simply ludricrious to suggest that having two people doing a job isn't better than having one person do the same job.

Third, yes some people choose to work. But I want someone to seriously back up the notion that there are masses of people who voluntarily take care of other people's children for slave wages while their own languish at home, voluntarily flip burgers at McDonalds while their own children languish at home, voluntarily work in old age homes while their parents sit at home alone. Give me a break. Those people are working for one, and only one reason, if they don't they would be living on the streets and or eating dog food.

We keep getting clobbered on values. Well just what kind of values make people have two incomes to simply survive? What kind of values lets the children of the poor and middle class raise themselves while their parents work for slave wages? I am not saying that under no circumstances should both parents work. But I am saying that there should be an option for only one parent to work and not have the family starve. And yes, there should be a tax credit or maybe even a salary for stay at home parents.

[bluedawg12]

77. Has anyone mentioned vouchers?

The radicalright advocates vouchers for alternative schools.

How about vouchers or tax credit, as you mentioned?

Raising the minimum wage would help the working poor- a particularly sad oxymoron for a so called super-power.

[dsc]

87. I don't like vouchers in place of public schools

since in many regions of the country they are used to avoid integration. But as to vouchers for stay at home parents that would be fine with me.

[Crunchy Frog]

66. I don't think that our party should be advocating

for any particular way of running a family. I don't have a problem with trying to improve the economic conditions of working people so that they have more choices, but we should never look as though we're trying to dictate what those choices should be.

[mitchtv]

149. I do have a problem with any more tax breaks for child bearers

Sorry "It is a lifestyle choice" Can't afford another child? don't have one. Work for a living wage. more vacation time,better education. No premiums for additional children. I was a union rep and there was always plenty of dissention caused by "family" people wanting special considerations while others carried the load. I agree with you Crunchy, we should not be promoting any particular lifestyle.

[pagandem4justice]

153. As Do I

I agree with mitchtv's post - having a child is a lifestyle choice, and there should be no additional goverment "premiums" in the form of tax breaks, credits, or subsidies for having them. Nor should childless workers suffer in terms of longer hours, holiday work, etc., in favor of those who "have families." This is promotion of a lifestyle choice over others, and is thus antithetical to our overall position as liberals and Democrats. However, in that the OP advocated something fair to *all* workers (that is, wages for everyone sufficient to the extent that people who *choose* parenthood can afford to have one worker remain at home if they so choose), I agree with his assessment.

Just don't advocate promoting benefits to those with children over those who do not.

[union_maid]

67. I understand what you're saying and I think you're right

I'm long past staying home with kids, but I did..just barely. I managed to be home for a few years with each of them. Once women didn't have the choice to do anything but stay home. Now they don't have the choice to do anything but work unless they're in very affluent circumstances.

My daughter has had a fulfilling career and continued working when her first child was born. The child is 12 now and she told her husband she wouldn't have another unless she could stay home. She felt like life was too rushed, crowded and out of control when her firstborn was little. I know one woman who went out on leave to have her baby and came back to work and was so miserable that she just cried pretty much all the time. She wanted to be home with her baby. In the end she worked out a night job. She'd much rather stay home but one income doesn't make it so she can't. I know another who had told me she loved her job and she'd worked hard to advance and planned to come back after maternity leave. Except that when she actually had the baby she didn't want to leave him. She was able to afford to stay home, although I'm sure it wasn't easy.

I know other women who wouldn't stay home for anything in the world. And the same goes for men, both ways. I'd say for the young women I know it's about half and half as far as preferring to work outside the home and preferring to be home. But most of them have to work.

The original goal of the women's movement was choice for both parents and now it's anything but. Even without kids I'd love to stay home. I'm helping with the care of an elderly parent, my husband isn't really healthy enough to work fulltime and do much around the house and at the moment neither am I. I think society would be much improved if it was recognized some families need a fulltime person running the household. Or even a part time one.

[dchill]

72. Our party should advocate...

Pulling out of Iraq.
Professional experience in political appointees.
Guaranteed right to privacy.
Guaranteed health insurance.
Fair labor laws.
posse comitatus

You know - stuff we really believe in...

[annabanana]

76. It's FAIR WAGES that are the sticking point.....

It's HARD to leave your kid at home, or with a babysitter, or at a daycare facility...

If a single salary could support a family this wouldn't be such a hot button issue, regardless of who's at the office and who's watching the kid!

[mzmolly]

78. I really like this! And we could interject the strengthening of unions

as a means to an end?

[The Backlash Cometh]

79. Funny you should say that.

Trust me on this one. Not all working women who voted for Bush are understanding of women who stay at home to care for their children. It's a very odd thing.

[dsc]

89. some are probably jealous

and if the stay at homes are on government assistance even resentful to some extent. I would hope that few working women who aren't married to wealthy men or wealthy themselves voted for him though.

[The Backlash Cometh]

90. Apparently, you can never be wealthy enough.

[NAO]

80. Woman's Liberation was turned into Marx's "Reserve Army of Labor"

When women entered the workplace it was a triumph from the perspective of human rights. However, from a different perspective, it was a disaster.

Marx wrote of "the reserve army of labor" - a situation where there were more workers than jobs, and there was always someone to take a job a lower pay, fewer benefits. This situation undermines labor and takes all the power out of collective bargaining. Combined with "right to work" laws, the entry of the other half of the adult population into the workforce was a way to massively reduce wages and benefits and increase desperation for employment. It cheapened labor and made business more profitable.

[Matariki]

97. the answer is simple - shorter work week and more vacation

Same compensation. Europe is a great example.

[SupplyConcerns]

82. Kids need full-time parenting

Although the feminist movement has been an undeniably good thing for society, your post hits on one aspect of the revolution that has bothered me: is it usually better to work than to raise kids? Is it such a coup for women to be able to parent and work at the same time? There has long been an unagknowledged sacrifice among working men: this job is terrible, but I show up every day out of love and devotion to my wife and kids. Both working and raising kids are rewarding tasks, but to stick both tasks, full-time, on one parent is cruel. Kids deserve full-time parenting, whether it's from one parent being there 100% of the time or both parents being there 50% of the time.

[Darth_Kitten]

126. I say let the kids fend for themselves.....

Women have been working and having/raising kids since the beginning of time.

Again, why is having a career/job/whatever such a big issue when it has to do with the FEMALE parent? Let's leave women alone for a change, it's not like their choices are killing anyone! :sarcasm:

[dsc]

133. Please point out one post

by me or by the person you are answering where we say the female parent should be the one to stay home.

[Darth_Kitten]

158. No one would dare....

:)

[1932]

84. Andrew Sullivan advocates that because he's conservative and he knows

that the less financial security a family has, the easier they are to push around if you're their employer.

We need to advocate policies that allow people to choose how they want to live their lives, and for those lives to have dignity, whether people chose to have one parent stay at home or work.

And since kids are only aroud the house for 18 years, what we really new is a job market that doesnt' ruin your opportunities and choices if you drop out for a few years to look after your kids.

[dsc]

88. agreed on both of those

I don't think one has to be completely unemployed for all 18 years given the fact that schools are around but even a five year absence can be fatal to a career and in most cases it shouldn't be.

[dretceterini]

94. One parent...

two parents; a commune...who cares!

I don't like the idea of a "living wage"...hell, in Manhattan or Los Angeles, it's $2000 a week to live decently!!

That's part of why we moved to Utah.

Not everyone gets to live life exactly as they wish.

[1932]

98. I don't understand what you're arguing.

[dretceterini]

127. My point was

Comparing what consitutes a family and the concept of a living wage is absurd. It cost 3 times as much to live in Manhattan or Los Angeles than in the middle of Dakota or some place similar...and who says that we are supposed to get a choice to live whatever we want?

[pagandem4justice]

155. Point?

Yes, it costs more to live in one area of the country over another. But does that mean that if I cannot afford to live on my salary in NYC, I should quit my job and move to Arkansas?

Wages should be set according to the region the employer serves

[Darth_Kitten]

128. Tell that to any male worker....

and then duck. ;) :hide:

But ladies, come on, think of others for a change. It's not like you are guilt-tripped or anything..... think of your kids FOR A CHANGE! :sarcasm:

[bluedawg12]

92. In summary:

We seem to be saying:

1.)Ensure fair and liveable wages to working Americans so that they can support themselves and/or their families with a good standard of living.

2.) Support working families.

- For single parent families liveable wages and some form of child care asisstance: vouchers, tax benefits to allow the parent access to quality, safe, child care.

- For two parent families liveable wages that would allow one of the parents ( male or female) to remain at home for child rearing.

- In the event that two parent families cannot be sustained on one salary, some form of child care asisstance: vouchers, tax benefits to allow the parents access to quality, safe, child care.

and my addition:

Broaden the term family to ensure fairness to all American households engaged in the important job of child rearing: this would mean a single parent,child, and grand parent or close relative living in the same household.

Or,domestic partners living in the same domicile with the rights and responsibilities of child rearing.

[dsc]

95. pretty much

though I would likely prefer that we fund day care centers due to the fact that would make sure that they were of high quality. Vouchers, with heavy regulation, can be a good substitute though.

[bluedawg12]

99. Day care centers have to be a safe available option

and they have to be regulated for that reason- most likely a State duty.

But by vouchers I mean providing vouchers to parent(s) for payment at a good day care center.

or, vouchers to fund a parent who stays at home--might be seen as a democratic "give away" so this might be a tax return or tax write off.


the egg heads can figure out the details--wonks make big bucks for this LOL- but I think we are on the same page.

My concern is that in today's pluralistic society that we not cut out non-traditional families.

if the radicalrightwingnuts had their way- they would use laws such as we are discussing to cut out same sex households, single mothers, and working single moms who, for ex, have an elderly parent staying at home...why not encourage the extended family in today's busy world. Aunt's, uncles and grand parents could be a great asset.

[pagandem4justice]

156. Lost me at the end

I've been with you and the OP through this entire thread, as I agreed with the spirit of your original post, advocating the economic freedom for people to choose their own family structure and lifestyle without being impeded by the limitations of their salary, and the political boon of such an advocacy.

However, now, at the end of the thread, you have added to your original proposal governmen subsidied for child care, tax breaks for parents, and "broadening the term 'family' to ensure fairness to all American households engaged in the important job of child rearing."

I'm sorry, you've lost me. While your original proposal has the potential to not only be of benefit to all American workers (single, married, gay, straight, parent, childless), your addenda do not. and I cannot support a system of taxation that further subsidizes child bearers at the expense of those of us who do not choose to have children (which such a system will ... as we both pay taxes, but only you receive a subsidy).

[Matariki]

96. I would advocate a much shorter work week, for the same reasons

the real issue is that it shouldn't take 2 people working 40 or more hours a week just to get by. with all the advances in technology and so many more people in the work force we should all be able to live well working a 20 hour work week. wouldn't that be great?

personally, in a family situation, i think there are benefits to both parents doing something in the world outside the home and both parents parenting. but really the division of labor should be up to each family, whatever works best for them. just a total of 40 hours labor between 2 people to support a family.

[Lorien]

100. Encourage flexibility for parents; tax credits for companies that use

American telecommuters (would also save fuel and ease road congestion)instead of tax credits for companies that send our jobs overseas. I have two friends with small children who successfully work this way. Also; tax credits for companies that provide childcare for their employees (don't know if such a provision is available already anywhere, but I'm fairly certain that it isn't enough).

[Starbucks Anarchist]

104. Not to get off subject...

But what about single, childless people? Or am I the only loser here?

[dsc]

108. I am also single and childless

but imagine how much better it would be to be single and childless with a salary designed to let you be married with children on just that salary.

[Starbucks Anarchist]

109. That would be great.

Or to have that kind of salary and still be single and childless, but with a lot more disposable income now. :)

[Pooka Fey]

105. I hate it when people put words in my mouth too.

Just perused the top of the thread where you are getting bashed for something you neither said nor implied. I totally agree with your post btw.

I know several stay-at-home dads who are working pro musicians (like the kind you see playing in bars and restaurants around town), and the mom is pulling down major cash at a corporate job. Guess who gets "pressured" into taking care of the kids in this scenario?

On edit: Just pointing out how in my example, both parents still need to work - it just happens that they are working different shifts.

[NVMojo]

110. a 3 yr old boy was beaten and kicked to death near my office 2 weeks

ago at his babysitters house. He was the nephew of one of my son's friends. After we discussed the tragedy, I looked at my son and said that I was grateful I was able to stay home and raise him and his brothers myself and I feel sorry for moms and dads today who have no choice but to leave their kids ...to make money. And leave their kids with strangers ...

[dsc]

111. thankfully that kind of thing is exceedingly rare

but far more common is just losing total touch with what your children are doing due to not having the time to keep up with them.

[Darth_Kitten]

129. That's very sad, but most kids if they are killed or abused...

it's by someone they know, most often a parent/other family member.
:(

I don't feel very sorry for those Moms and Dads who work and make money, why should they be guilt-tripped? :shrug: They love their kids as well.

[win_in_06]

112. Does this argument naturally progress to the question:

Which parent is usually more suitable to stay home?

Is the woman a better nurturer?
Is the man a better disciplinairan?
If the children are breast-fed does this automatically mean mom stays home?
Does it matter?

[dsc]

113. Other than the first few weeks after the birth

when both really should, the man to help and the woman to recover, it seems that a couple should make that decision based on the specific facts the couple faces.

[win_in_06]

115. I still think the question remains which is more suited.

Not based on circumstance, but based on natural tendencies and biological fact.

In other words, I think this could be used to suggest kids are better off if mommy stayed home while daddy works.

We have to be careful.

[bluedawg12]

117. We do have to be careful- the radicalright

has a whole line of arguement that goes like this:

Government should support the best ideals of what is good for society.

Studies show that children raised by a mother and a father fare better in life than those raised by a single parent, or same sex parents. ( not proven for same sex parents, but dual parenting seems to confer some benifits)

Studies also show, according to the right, that children fare better when one of the parents remains at home for child rearing.

Thus, conservatives want to promote programs, government funding, tax breaks only for traditional two parent, "married," hetero sexual couples.

Thus ignoring the realities of divorced sigle mothers trying to raise children while society turns a blind eye to the wage disparity they experience in the work force.

So we have to be very careful, this kind of issue leads to the hateful thinking like the recent one in Indiana proposed by Repug-ugly, Nurse, Senator Patricia Miller who proposed a law banning artificial insemmination (AI) aka in vitro, for single parents, same sex couples, and...part of allowing Americans to choose this type of health care measure would include a governement litmus "background test" to include things like whether or not the prospective parents attended church/temple/mosque.

The bottom line issue here is economic freedom.

Beyond that keep the government out of private lives.

[dsc]

132. In many cases they might well be

but that should be irrelevent to deciding on the policy.

[lumberjack_jeff]

163. Being careful

I'm curious which would get me flamed faster, making the case that fathers are better parents or that moms should stay home because they're better parents.

FWIW, in my household, for a variety of reasons, I'm the stay at home parent.

I call bullshit on the view that the economic conditions where single-earner households are viable should not be promoted because it might encourage some moms to stay at home and bake cookies. Some might want to do that, and if that's what they want, more power to 'em.

I can share cookie recipies with them if they wish. :)

There is nothing liberating about being a wage-slave, for men or women.

[pagandem4justice]

157. Meaningless questions

Progression to these questions in this argument are not "natural," but rather an attempt to move discussion of the spirit of the proposed solution away from the original intent, and toward meaningless, circular debate.

There is no evidence to advocate gender-based predisposition to nurture or discipline. Furthermore, women have been breast-feeding their babies for decades despite necesseity of working, through use of breast pumps.

Should anyone attempt to turn discussion of this issue away from the real focus -- which is wages appropriate to today's standard of living -- and onto such irrelevancies, you should just politely redirect them to the main point.

[win_in_06]

165. The questions are not meaningless, and they will be asked

and it will affect women. Look at post # 137.

Stay at home parent = Stay at home mom 99% of the time

[donsu]

121. poopie - think your idea stinks

not a "liberal ideal" at all

sounds more like a religious ideal

[dsc]

135. Yes paying people well is such an illiberal idea what the fuck was I think

[nvliberal]

130. Then push for unions and the so-called family wage.

See how far you get with that proposal.

It's not going to happen, because the "other side" of the political spectrum, the side representing business interests, is in control, and they NEED to have two or more people in the labor force per household, for it is cheaper to hire two people on what one person used to make on a single salary than hire two people in the same household making "family wage" money.

[bowens43]

131. Wow....just wow.

Maybe we should advocate that those parents be Christians of the opposite sex and the same race too.....

[dsc]

134. Yes shame on me for advocating decent wages

How Republican of me.

[bowens43]

164. This is what you said:

"Our party should advocate for two parent families with one parent at home"

This has NOTHING to do with advocating decent wages. Nothing.

[electron_blue]

137. I don't like this

Whose children, exactly, are rearing themselves? Not mine, and yes, I work. I really resent the implication you're making about me having my child in daycare/preschool.

Also, which parent do you think will be at home? I'm guessing it'll be the mom 99% of the time. It'll hardly be decided fairly in most families.

[Dr Fate]

146. No one is mandating anything- it's about the ability to do so if you want

We should have high enough wages and low enough costs to be able to do this.

It's all about having enough money to be able to spend more time with loved ones- or if you are single or childless, your own hobbies, etc.

I think this is an excellent way to frame this-Religious moderates & Liberals will dig it... wish I had thought of it!!!

[dsc]

147. If it isn't decided fairly in families then whose fault is that

really? If women are equal to men then why do you assume they will just lay down and stay home when they don't want to? Drive around any city from 3 to 5 pm. Tell me you don't see children with no supervision at all. Go ahead, I dare you to. I have seen the results of children rearing themselves in classrooms in three states.

[electron_blue]

151. oh puleez

[dsc]

152. You are the one claiming that women can't say no

I think you should justify that position.

[pagandem4justice]

140. Excellent way of reframing

I recently saw a program on FSTV with Professor Lakoff, explaining how we liberals need to use the power of language to reframe the debate with the RW in our favor. Your post is an excellent example of this approach. By framing the issue in terms of allowing families the ability to choose to allow a parent to remain at home with their children, you are actually approaching the issues of fair wages (or even a living wage), inflation, and the inequity of the modern distribution of corporate profits. Yet, by approaching those issues from a corollary understandable by every normal working family, you neutralize the common misperception (cultivated by the RW) that liberals are (a) concerned only with abstract, "elitist" issues, and (b) out of touch with the needs of the American family.

Get a copy of this to the DNC immediately!

[Dr Fate]

144. I like it. Wonderful! It's all about a living wage & the American Dream.

n/t

[Bridget Burke]

166. We should advocate fair wages.

Affordable housing, mass transit to make cars not so essential for getting to the job & affordable medical care for all. These factors should help those who wish to have (or be) a house mommie but also help everyone else. Except for the very rich who might not get all those tax cuts.

Yes, I know there are stay at home dads. But they are not included in the rosy picture of the "good old days" that makes your goal such a selling point.

What about single people? What about single moms? They will be reminded once again that they are not quite "right."

(From somone raised by a single mom since I was 4 years old--back in the 50's. "Father Knows Best" was just a TV show.)

[Dr Fate]

168. Kick

n/t