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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