There has been a clash of ideologies called the Mommy Wars between stay at home moms and working women all over the media and social media. ALL women are working, for pay or not is the elephant in the room, oft not stated. Ann Romney has many perks including staff to help with her duties as a stay at home mom. She does not receive a traditional paycheck. But lives a life of privilege most American women and mothers do not. It is disingenious for the Romneys to pretend that she is a typical stay at home mom. She is not.
What is also missing from the conversation in most of the media,liberal and conservative, is a discussion about the economic realities of women, both stay at home moms and working outside the home women. The two articles below give excellent facts, figures and info about how important women’s work is to our economy. And how women’s reproductive freedom factors into the mix. Without a woman being able to determine her own destiny and control her own body, there is NO choice NO freedom. And this impacts everyone.
If the GOP think being a mother is hard work, then why do they not want to pay mothers (some think equal pay is even a nuisance and should be repealed)…
“United States is the only remaining industrialized nation that doesn’t require at least some employers to offer a paid maternity leave.”
for all too many families, if mom didn’t bring home the bacon, there wouldn’t be any food on the table.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/04/13/the-myth-of-the-stay-at-home-mommy-job.html
“Why do women who contribute by producing the whole workforce have to plead for maternity leave that would allow them to recuperate from childbirth, get to know their children and their children to know them, and feed babies the best possible food?
Why are such basic and humane demands so controversial?”
http://womensenews.org/story/books/120414/unwaged-breastfeeding-small-farming-sustain-globe
Double standard? Romney wants poor mothers to work outside home, yet his own wife stayed home and never worked outside home (see below). Welfare to work has NOT worked, too much bureaucracy has caused mothers to do whatever it takes to feed their kids including steal and stay with abusers
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/15/mitt-romney-mothers-welfare-moms_n_1426113.html
“The fact that the welfare rolls have risen less than 10 percent since December 2007 while food stamp use has soared by 40 percent—an amazing one in eight Americans now uses them—suggests that welfare isn’t reaching poor families: either women who apply are being turned away, or the programs are so minimal, or so onerous, that people aren’t signing up. How do they manage? Sharon Hays, author of Flat Broke With Children: Women in the Age of Welfare Reform, writes in an e-mail, “They get by in the same way the poor of New Orleans and Haiti are getting by, by cobbling together every available source of aid and support, and then trying to learn how to adjust to constant suffering and insecurity. Increasing rates of domestic violence are just one hidden story here.” And what about women who have reached their state’s time limit—two years, three years, five years—and can’t get welfare for the rest of their lives? Jane Collins, the author, with Victoria Mayer, of Both Hands Tied: Welfare Reform and the Race to the Bottom of the Low-Wage Labor Market, writes, “In Wisconsin, most people who have used up their time limits are simply out of luck.”
“Let’s pretend that Ann Romney is, like the 143 million other women in the country, not the wife of a multimillionaire Mormon Bishop and talk about her unpaid work as a stay-at-home mom. According to the Wall Street Journal, an average housewife would make $138,095 if she were paid for her labor (that is what she would have to pay someone else). Ann Romney is not your average housewife, but, let’s go with it. Ann Romney’s lost wages for 30 years of providing 24 hour unpaid childcare for her husband, running a household, nursing sick children, being a chauffeur, food shopping, cooking, being executive assistant to six boys and men and other assorted duties is $4,142,850. She also did this, graciously, while struggling with major illness. Ann Romney, like all “non-working” mothers, is not financially compensated for her labor. (She is however, also like other married women who work, taxed for her efforts.)…
“…INCREASED ECONOMIC ACTIVITY. Women’s ability to plan and manage their pregnancies — with or without men — spurs economic growth. This is true all over the world. Countries with high gender equity indices usually have stronger economies because they understand the value of the human capital that women represent. As noted here, “In mature economies, attitudes toward gender equality and the actual possibilities for combining parenthood with gainful employment are decisive. Countries governed by traditional male-dominant attitudes run the risk of long-term economic stagnation.”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/soraya-chemaly/either-way-is-motherhood-_b_1424056.html
More than 50 percent of children born to women under 30 are born to single mothers.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, mothers works fewer hours, have to work part time more and cannot take on overtime.
Fully 55 percent of stay at home moms would like to work, for pay, out of the home.
“…The majority of men supporting children “by themselves” are in married relationships and have a spouse working to care for the children which adds tens of thousands of unearned income to the household. The majority of women supporting children by themselves are single and have no one contributing unearned income to the household, providing free childcare, and other types of stay-at-home services. However, the women are making only .77 cents to each $1 a man earns. They can’t afford to hire it either. Tell me again who needs to be making more to support their families – the men or the women?”
http://spiritwealth.wordpress.com/2012/04/14/why-equal-pay-for-equal-work-is-morally-right/
”The United States is one of only four countries in the world that doesn’t ensure new mothers can afford to stay home even for the briefest of times after they have a baby. Not surprisingly, millions of American mothers who’ve given birth go back to work before the six weeks needed just for healing. The majority of new mothers return before 12 weeks.”
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/04/13/1083244/-Stop-the-War-on-Mothers
“IF Mrs. Romney does move into the White House next January, she will be the only First Lady born in the 20th century to have “never worked a day” in her life, as Rosen perhaps clumsily put it.The last unemployed first lady was Mamie Eisenhower, born in 1896 and married to Ike at 19—the same age Ann was when she married Mitt. That makes Mrs. Romney as dubious an expert on the economic concerns of women as Mamie, an Army wife who moved 28 times, lived in a hotel during World War II, and played canasta and the electric organ.”
CeliaSue 