blog 10

Some of the women talk about living in shelters and going on assisted living to get out of bad living situations. These women go through very poor situations only to put themselves in a shelter and try to make enough wages to support themselves. This is yet another reason that single mothers shouldn’t not be as heavily taxed they are working they are trying but they have more obstacles then average families or low wage men. The video with tent city residences was hard to grasp because although there are tons of homeless shelters there obviously isn’t enough. With the economy the way it is and more and more people drowning financially it is not hard to imagine where women stand in these hard times. Women are usually up against more when they try to begin a job or career. Sexism is one problem but so is being a mother, single mothers have to figure out child care, and a lot of their options are not good ones. Educational child care isn’t usually an option with social networks such as grandparents neither are neighborhood day care centers that are most often too expensive. No one realizes that the unemployment rates are rising and that those numbers are made up of a lot of women. A lot of women with children, who need food, education, care, and medical treatments these families cannot afford any of these necessities and fine themselves in a increasingly bad situation.

Looking towards other countries would be fine, but many times looking at other cultures government acts on things concerning family will not work here in the United States. For one many countries (which have laws regarding children and family) have lower poverty rates, some have higher senses of family or have bigger families so social networks of child care are easier to find. Also in many countries education and school start at earlier ages so finding more child care once the child gets older isn’t always an issue. We as a country, need to acknowledge the growing child care problem and provide more pre schools and after school as well as day care centers for the growing number of working mothers. Although minimum wage has gone up little by little so have the price of living wages, that are earned in low wage jobs don’t begin to cover the expenses.

Chaudry says that most single mothers want to work and take the options given to them depending on what is best and works for them and their family. This isn’t always the best choice for the family, but it is the only choice. There is only so many options for single mothers when they aren’t making more than minimum wage. Children are not responsible for the poverty they were born into, yes it was the card they and their parents were dealt but children shouldn’t be second class citizens because of their parent’s economic status. President Clinton changing welfare and moving more people into the workforce, which is great it helped our economy and got people to start taking charge of their financial situations but now that the economy is on a serious downgrade what happens to the people who already make minimum wage? Low income workers are usually the most expendable and are usually the first on the chopping block when recession hits. Child care which is a necessity for working single mothers becomes unattainable when they either have no job or a low wage part time one while they struggle to keep what they have. The recession can also be blamed on low wages because more and more people go into debt sending more and more companies into bankruptcies. There is no escape like ‘OB’ said in the video ‘The Other America’, the vicious cycle is hitting everyone but low wage workers that don’t have a high level of education and therefore are not qualified for higher paying maybe even more stable jobs.