Saturday, October 10, 2009
Blog #5
Chaundry argues that “we are asking the lest fortunate to strive and work harder, we are deeply discounting our public responsibility for the children born into the poor families and disadvantaged communities” (p. 14) because the focus of welfare reform was getting people working, while discounting the need for support and opportunities for child care. Chaundry argues that the welfare reforms put child care and working in separate spheres, forcing mothers to choose low-quality care because there were no other options available. Rather than increasing support and opportunities available to the working poor to help communities as a whole, welfare reform brought very little new support and cut off other support to working families. With welfare reform, the public is putting an emphasis on work and economic self-sufficiency for the poor, and therefore, it is our public responsibility to offer support and equal opportunities for the children of poor and low-income families. The videos identifying the working poor support Chaundry’s perspective that it is a public issue, not a private one. Most people in the video identified the working poor as people working for minimum wage. One man said that the working poor are the people that are working but still cannot make ends meet because housing, healthcare, and child care is too expensive. The video, “Living with a Hole in Your Pocket,” asks the question, “why doesn’t working work?” The most significant reason is barriers that the working poor face. The quirks and catch 22s of the system make it impossible for the working poor to make it out of poverty. It becomes a vicious cycle for these families. The video states that the quirks in the system have gotten worse and are making it a very public issue. The apparent increase in systematic barriers must be publicly addressed in order for the working poor to break the cycle and move out of poverty.
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After looking at all of the different kinds of care that these women use in order to keep working, I question why no one thought of what the consequences would be of forcing women with children to work? I mean I understand the idea behind why we want women on welfare to work. Obviously, we want them to be off welfare eventually, and we wanted those who abuse the system to stop. But why did no one stop create a social policy that gave these newly working mothers with young children somewhere to take their kids? It is hard to maintain a job when you are constantly dealing with unstable child care. I feel like our social policy should be more concerned about the children in poverty than the adults in poverty. I guess I feel this way because I am a huge advocate of early childhood intervention, and I feel like if we focus on giving these disadvantaged children more and better opportunities maybe we can end the cycle of poverty.
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