I found an article in the Washington Post, titled “Unwanted Pregnancies Rise for Poor Women” it spoke about how women are not wanting their children and choosing to end their pregnancy a lot more these days. There was a very interesting statement in the article. “Poor women in America are increasingly likely to have unwanted pregnancies, whereas relatively affluent women are succeeding more and more in getting pregnant only when they want to, according to a study analyzing federal statistics.” Stated author Marc Kaufman. This has always been an issue on what to do when you get to this point in life, and get thrown a curveball like this. Now at this point in the stage do you consider this a good thing or a bad thing? Personally I have a hard time with this. I in no way shape or form believe in abortion unless it’s going to kill the mother or the pregnancy is the cause of a rape. Otherwise, I think it’s something that should not be allowed. People need to have more responsibility for their actions. Now on the other hand, I have a hard time with individuals who cannot support their children. I know I sound very harsh and cynical.
On the other hand though I understand things happen, they just do. In my opinion those programs are there for unfortunate circumstances. Not to be the primary means of feeding children since the parents don’t want to work. In the first video on this section, there was a family profiled. The Hamilton’s are a family that I think make a great example of what these programs are for. The father OB currently does not care what jobs he can get. Right now, it’s all about finding work. After being laid off from a very good truck driving job and his wife being laid off too, it created an unfortunate circumstance that they needed help with. These programs do just that. They are looking forward to the day they can come off the programs and support their home again.
While on the other hand the second video that profiled Miriam Schamp all she could say was I pray that god will take care of me. I know he will. Those are the individuals that want someone else to take care of them. They have no self drive to get out there and better themselves. Sad, but unfortunately true.
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Kaufman, M. (2006, May 6). Unwanted Pregnancies Rise for Poor Women. The Washington Post, Retrieved from http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/04/AR2006050400820.html
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
Blog #10 - Working Poor Women’s Unpaid Labor
After the welfare reform Chaundry tried to paint a picture of what women were still going through when it came to working and balancing childcare all at once. Of the women interviewed it painted a pretty clear picture of what I assume is occurring in the masses of single working mothers who also support their children. Usually when you get into your adulthood you want to have a great career, stable family, and to be able to provide for them as well. However, what happens when you have established that career but now need to work around childcare? Do you put your career first or childcare for your children? Cassandra, an individual profiled in the reading talked about how she at first she would adjust her childcare around her work schedule. However, as things started happening at the childcare she had to reevaluate her situation. She in turn, had to adjust her schedule around the timings that she could get her children taken care of. SO in turn, she started working the 4pm-midnight shift. This allowed for her to be home when her children would get home. The neighborhood babysitter would stay until the youngest went to sleep, then she was ok with the oldest being the only one home until she got home.
Another interesting case study was the interview with Jasmine. She was someone that had a career, and placed her small child into a care program while she went to work. However, one day when she went to pick up her child she saw her child on the floor with a wet diaper and the other kids running all around. At that time, Jasmine knew right away that this was not what she wanted for her child. She quit her job, and stayed home to watch her child. Now for the purpose of this article we won’t focus too much on this scenario as we are trying to focus on struggling working women. With her quitting so quickly, I would imagine that she had another source of income coming into her home. I wanted to show the point that she just up and quit her job; again, putting her career to the side for the care of her child, in my opinion that is very admirable.
Now having the ability and the dedication to work and have your children go to childcare is a decision that takes quite a bit of work to deal with. However, what happens when you need to work and the only option that you have is to send your child to a care center? What happens when you can’t afford childcare? It turns more into what you can afford, and not about what kind of care you want your child to receive. Obviously, placing your child into a care facility that is structured and well balanced between social interaction and learning activities is something that is very pleasant for both you as a parent, and usually the consistent structure that your child receives is usually nothing less than remarkable. Now when you can’t afford this sort of thing, you look to other options. The next most common thing being in home daycare, now this is usually just someone that stays home and watches children. In the long run its not a bad thing if its ran correctly. However, when worse comes to worse, and the children come from a home that is considered in the poverty level what do you do? Well, currently there are 13,000,000 children that are part of this group. Usually we see subsidies come from the state to help these parents. Unfortunately these sorts of programs are running very thin and the resources that are sunk into them are becoming sucked dry. Sad thing though these programs are usually not all that great either.
In the end, there are many different forms of childcare out there. In the perfect world, we would all love to place our children in a childcare facility that has a structured learning curriculum, a safe place for them to be, and the ability for social interaction. It’s a proven fact that when this sort of thing is provided to you children their development skills develop at a faster pace than a child that has not been in this environment. Unfortunately this is not always the case. Luckily the government will help provide some different sorts of financial assistance that helps offset the cost, sad part is that its sometimes not always enough.
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Another interesting case study was the interview with Jasmine. She was someone that had a career, and placed her small child into a care program while she went to work. However, one day when she went to pick up her child she saw her child on the floor with a wet diaper and the other kids running all around. At that time, Jasmine knew right away that this was not what she wanted for her child. She quit her job, and stayed home to watch her child. Now for the purpose of this article we won’t focus too much on this scenario as we are trying to focus on struggling working women. With her quitting so quickly, I would imagine that she had another source of income coming into her home. I wanted to show the point that she just up and quit her job; again, putting her career to the side for the care of her child, in my opinion that is very admirable.
Now having the ability and the dedication to work and have your children go to childcare is a decision that takes quite a bit of work to deal with. However, what happens when you need to work and the only option that you have is to send your child to a care center? What happens when you can’t afford childcare? It turns more into what you can afford, and not about what kind of care you want your child to receive. Obviously, placing your child into a care facility that is structured and well balanced between social interaction and learning activities is something that is very pleasant for both you as a parent, and usually the consistent structure that your child receives is usually nothing less than remarkable. Now when you can’t afford this sort of thing, you look to other options. The next most common thing being in home daycare, now this is usually just someone that stays home and watches children. In the long run its not a bad thing if its ran correctly. However, when worse comes to worse, and the children come from a home that is considered in the poverty level what do you do? Well, currently there are 13,000,000 children that are part of this group. Usually we see subsidies come from the state to help these parents. Unfortunately these sorts of programs are running very thin and the resources that are sunk into them are becoming sucked dry. Sad thing though these programs are usually not all that great either.
In the end, there are many different forms of childcare out there. In the perfect world, we would all love to place our children in a childcare facility that has a structured learning curriculum, a safe place for them to be, and the ability for social interaction. It’s a proven fact that when this sort of thing is provided to you children their development skills develop at a faster pace than a child that has not been in this environment. Unfortunately this is not always the case. Luckily the government will help provide some different sorts of financial assistance that helps offset the cost, sad part is that its sometimes not always enough.
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Blog #9 - Working Poor Women’s Unpaid Labor
Living in poverty is never anything that we want anyone to go through. It’s something that is just nothing short of sad. Then when you throw a child into the mix it becomes even worse. As sad as it sounds there unfortunately is a correlation it seems between single family homes and children living in poverty. From watching the videos, there are many working mothers out there trying to make ends meet and yet still provide for their children. However, what do you do when the work is just not there? You have to revert to the public programs. According to the data from the NCCCP “National Center for Children in Poverty” there are close 13,000,000 children living in poverty, this in turn equates to 18% of our nations children who live with families in the United States. That is an extremely sad number. Now with a problem of this magnitude what do we do as a nation? Well there are a few different options that are currently out there. There are many different government programs that help feed children. One of the biggest ones is the school programs that will feed the children for a reduced cost all the way to a free meal. Now when school is out what do you do? There are many different shelters that will provide a meal to children that are on summer vacation. Overall, the meals are usually small and not always there for every child. I think with this data that is shown, we need to look at this problem from a broader level. Why are these children living like this? One of the biggest problems is that their parents can’t get a job or any monetary compensation. Why can’t they get a job? Could it be that possibly we as a country are allowing for a lot of work to be relocated overseas? Let’s put stricter regulations on this sort of thing for large business, tax the hell out of them to help subsidize this sort of thing, which in turn may influence them to bring the work back to our own land. What do you think? What options would you think could help fix this problem?
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Blog #8 - Working Poor Women’s Paid Labor
Urban poverty is something that seems to possibly never escape us. Currently you have many different situations across the country that involves the different families and the reason that they are part of our nation’s poverty level. Currently, in today’s recession I think it’s even more prevalent than ever. Mothers are having a hard time getting into the work force and the different issues that they are facing are very serious. What do you do when you are a mother with children, and can’t get a job to help provide for them? It’s something that many males do not necessarily think about however, it’s something that we need to. As I have said many times coming from a single family home raised by only a mother I can speak to many of these issues because a lot of them I grew up first hand experiencing. However, even though my mom was able to keep a consistent job, and work 2nd odd and end type jobs there was always one thing in common she always did whatever was necessary to make sure that we had what was needed. In the video on urban poverty this seems to be a little bit different. It was more about how women would work and still not able to make the ends to support their home meet. I thought it was very interesting how some people in the video would either live in their own guilt or they would go about finding ways to make best of the situation at hand. I think a great example of this would be in the video it shows how a family could not make the ends of living on their in turn they ended up moving in with the grandparents. This allowed for them to save a little money, however, was not enough of relief for them to save up money to get back out on their own. It also was very prevalent that the grandmother needed the financial assistance as well. Overall urban poverty is a problem that we still see quite a bit. With the rise of living cost, and financial wages staying the same something has got to change here. What do you think?
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Blog #7 - Working Poor Women’s Paid Labor
One of the best things that can be provided to a child is the consistent routines to helping the child develop and grow. With this when you are able to keep the child’s mind continually stimulated it will payoff for them. This is one of the best things for a child when they are in a day care environment. Usually when you use a very large or very organized child care this is one of the main things that are provided in their program. However, if you can’t afford this type of service you probably will not have very much luck finding this sort of service of poverty wages.
With minimum wage jobs you have a hard time finding this sort of service to provide it to your child. Like everything else in our country this sort of thing costs money. When you are looking for a service of this magnitude it can become very pricy when you are already having a hard time making ends meet. With that what usually occurs? Well, you usually find people reverting to the less organized daycare. This is the sort of daycare that when you drop your child off you are not sure really what they are going to do. One day they may play outside all day. While the following day they may be put in front of the television to be kept occupied as usually these sort of daycares are ran out of someone’s home that is a stay at home parent looking to make a little income.
In the videos a few of the parents reference working from home, while some parents may adjust their schedules so that one works early and the other works late so they can afford childcare. While other parents are more concerned about having that consistency; one of the parents in the third section spoke about how the grandmother is always home for the child. As unfortunate as that sounds, it’s a little bit better because they are consistently dealing with the same parent.
For this section I hate to be the pester of the group but it’s very prevalent of the trend of these people that want someone to just come in and say I’m sorry here let me help you since you are not doing very good. If the people of our country took more of an initiative we may not have such a problem with poverty level families and them dealing with such a problem with money and childcare.
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With minimum wage jobs you have a hard time finding this sort of service to provide it to your child. Like everything else in our country this sort of thing costs money. When you are looking for a service of this magnitude it can become very pricy when you are already having a hard time making ends meet. With that what usually occurs? Well, you usually find people reverting to the less organized daycare. This is the sort of daycare that when you drop your child off you are not sure really what they are going to do. One day they may play outside all day. While the following day they may be put in front of the television to be kept occupied as usually these sort of daycares are ran out of someone’s home that is a stay at home parent looking to make a little income.
In the videos a few of the parents reference working from home, while some parents may adjust their schedules so that one works early and the other works late so they can afford childcare. While other parents are more concerned about having that consistency; one of the parents in the third section spoke about how the grandmother is always home for the child. As unfortunate as that sounds, it’s a little bit better because they are consistently dealing with the same parent.
For this section I hate to be the pester of the group but it’s very prevalent of the trend of these people that want someone to just come in and say I’m sorry here let me help you since you are not doing very good. If the people of our country took more of an initiative we may not have such a problem with poverty level families and them dealing with such a problem with money and childcare.
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Blog #6 - Cost of Child Care
We all know that the sooner we have our children learning about life the better their development will be in the long run right? So then what do we do when we can’t provide that to our children? A lot of people look to child care to fill this gap. With the rising cost of child care and wages staying the same what is a struggling family to do? Well first off, why is child care going up? Is it that we are being lazier as Americans and raising the wages? Salaries are pretty much staying the same, so is this a career that people are choosing so that they can be home with families?
Those of us who need to use childcare but can’t afford the normal places that are out there are struggling big time. They are looking for different means of getting their children into places at an affordable rate. When you should be able to focus on how much your child is going to learn you have more people looking at the cost of that childcare. So it now becomes a matter of what do I owe you a week, instead of how much knowledge and learning actives do you plan on providing my child.
With this being the case in there was again a common trend that I saw in the videos. The individuals that were being interviewed had some sort of sob story. The second video where the lady missed the open window of time to report a status change lost her child care certificate. In the interview she says “I understand that there are time limits, but they should understand things happen.” I have a hard time dealing with people like that. I am more than confident to say that there was probably a large window of time for her to report this. People just think they don’t have to abide by rules like that. Unfortunately they do. Trust me I understand things happen, however, I am not a fan of how much money is thrown to child care. I understand that it allows for people to get out and work, but let’s first make sure we can afford children before having them. In a perfect world this would probably not even be an issue.
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Those of us who need to use childcare but can’t afford the normal places that are out there are struggling big time. They are looking for different means of getting their children into places at an affordable rate. When you should be able to focus on how much your child is going to learn you have more people looking at the cost of that childcare. So it now becomes a matter of what do I owe you a week, instead of how much knowledge and learning actives do you plan on providing my child.
With this being the case in there was again a common trend that I saw in the videos. The individuals that were being interviewed had some sort of sob story. The second video where the lady missed the open window of time to report a status change lost her child care certificate. In the interview she says “I understand that there are time limits, but they should understand things happen.” I have a hard time dealing with people like that. I am more than confident to say that there was probably a large window of time for her to report this. People just think they don’t have to abide by rules like that. Unfortunately they do. Trust me I understand things happen, however, I am not a fan of how much money is thrown to child care. I understand that it allows for people to get out and work, but let’s first make sure we can afford children before having them. In a perfect world this would probably not even be an issue.
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Blog #5 - Identifying the Working Poor
This is going to be a very tough blog for me to try and not let me personal opinion come out on. I however, on the other hand have a lot to say about this particular subject. As I have said in many other blogs I come from a single family home. I know the meaning, alongside the exact feeling of what it’s like to live with a ‘hole in your pocket.’ My mother always worked very hard, yet always felt like she had barriers in her way of becoming outside the poverty line. Now the difference is that she had too much pride to go and get help from the government so we never had that sort of added income into our favor. Now to the videos and chapter, people that live below the poverty line and have issues with trying to make ends meet had one thing in common to me it felt like they are waiting for the other person to come and rescue them. In the video “Living with a Hole in your Pocket” It really bothered me how the lady that was a waitress stated that during the month of January she is always slow, however, all she does it pray that something will come her way to help make ends meet. My question/problem with people like that wouldn’t if you know you are going to be slow around that time of the year and only work 25 hours a week proactively seek to get a second job a month or two before that slow time? The videos definitely support Chaudry’s thought that if you’re not born with a golden spoon that you will have a difficult life. Now on the other hand I also feel that if you have a strong enough drive you can definitely beat that statistic and make something for yourself. I personally feel that I am a living proof. Now some people live in this sort of condition because it’s all they know and they are comfortable with that life style. Even if you or your family come from that sort of life does not mean you have to stay living in that condition. I know that I am one who strives to not live in that sort of thing. To those that choose too, more power to you. That’s one great thing about our country you can choose how to live right? My only thing is if you are going to choose to live a life like that please do not complain about being broke. Now those that have unfortunate circumstances occur to them putting them into that life its complete different.
Another interesting of this section was about people entering back into our community from incarceration. Being justice studies major and wanting to enter into law enforcement I have a very opinionated answer. I think the way things are now are just fine. I sure do not want someone who committed a major crime working in a job that has quite a bit of importance. For example, at my bank we will not hire anyone with a history. I think that is just fine. Why? Well, would you want an ex-criminal handling your money, knowing where you lived, or your personal net worth? I know they paid their times but temptation can get the best of you.
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Another interesting of this section was about people entering back into our community from incarceration. Being justice studies major and wanting to enter into law enforcement I have a very opinionated answer. I think the way things are now are just fine. I sure do not want someone who committed a major crime working in a job that has quite a bit of importance. For example, at my bank we will not hire anyone with a history. I think that is just fine. Why? Well, would you want an ex-criminal handling your money, knowing where you lived, or your personal net worth? I know they paid their times but temptation can get the best of you.
Word Count (559)
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