Blog Post #11

I think a really good example of this is in the movie “The Pursuit of Happyness” because it shows several real life struggles that people go throw when they can barely make ends meet, and have a child to be concerned with as well. I realize this movie is actually about the poverty that the male character experiences but I would like to focus on the female character, Will Smith’s wife. In the movie, it shows her as clearly working more than eight hours per day, and making very little money for her time. It shows what kind of labor a poor, unskilled women does. And it also does a very good job of portraying her as tired, haggard, and stressed out. Constantly, they are making imperative decisions about what bills to pay with the little money that they do have. Several times the parents argue over not having the money to pay all the bills. They had to make the decision to not pay the parking tickets in order to pay for day care. Also, they were about 3 months late on rent because of their needs for food and water. This movie also does a good job showing the type of child care that many low income children receive – low quality. In the movie, the father gets angry at the provider because she allows them to watch TV nearly all day. Eventually, the wife gives up and leaves her child alone with her husband but before she left, she portrayed a true women in poverty. And the truth is, if her character was a real person, which I am sure it could be, she is lucky that she has two incomes to help her child rather than just the one. All of these things that her character experienced are things that happen in real life, to real people every day.

Blog Post #10

The women that were greatly affected by the welfare reform of 1996 brought several survival strategies with them into their new life. Most of the women say they wanted to work and that they gained satisfaction from earning an income and raising a family despite the obvious amount of stress that lifestyle brings. Regardless of if that life is something they wanted, they knew what they had to do and they did it, and most of them did it well. These women are entirely resilient. It seems as if they have learned to handle anything that is thrown their way. While making remarkable work efforts and making significant economic gains, they still proved strong in raising their child(ren) and finding one child care arrangement after the next in order to keep moving forward. If there is one thing these women know how to do, its use their resources, and use them efficiently. They took the time to learn the social welfare system, and became very good at negotiating their way around it. A good example is of Sara who knew that getting her child into a Head Start program was based on need so she made sure her kid was in need in order to assure that she received a spot in the program. They know how to patch together what resources they do have in order to make an arrangement that works for them and for their child(ren). These women learn to adjust very quickly to ever changing job and care circumstances, mainly because of their inherent instability. They have learned to prioritize well because they must decide what they should base their decisions around. Should they be more concerned about their job hours or they child care hours? Also, they learn how to change their priorities as situations change and children get older. They persevered through all the tough times in order to make sure that their child was in the best situation they could get into given the current circumstances. Mainly, they became very good at making do with what little money and resources they had.

These strategies that these women have either brought to the table or learned throughout their lives on welfare have strong relations to both work and care, and how they related to one another. Mothers have spent much of their time and energy looking for accessible, affordable child care that works with the need of their family, whatever those may be; whether it is a schedule that works around work hours or a schedule that works around day care hours or something that satisfies the child’s developmental needs. Often, it tends to be the case that child care is the anchor around which to base other decisions. As previously mentioned, these women learn to prioritize and then use their resources in order to make sure everyone involved gets what they need. They must make changes to make child care and work correspond with one another; this seems to be a constant feat for most low income mothers. These women continually work as many hours and as many jobs as they can in order to make enough money to put their children in the best care possible. They end up spending a significant amount of their pay check on child care so they can work. And many times the care they can afford is low quality. However, they do learn to make the second best situation work. In the book Putting Children First, Uma explains that “the scarcity of adequate child care slowed down her own development and opportunity in her job but care for her child always comes first.” These women, unfortunately, need to make a decision between time with their young child and working enough to make enough money to meet the basic needs for their family. Many children that are forced into making this decision are very concerned about their child’s emotional, physical, and intellectual development but decide that economic stability is a precursor to adequate development, as they cannot develop without the bare essentials like food and shelter.

I feel like most of the critiques are generally the same as most of them cannot be argued with. It is true that our social welfare system has too many statutes in place that really do hold these women down and negatively affect the children born into poverty. What our country is doing to the poor is cruel. It is clear from both Chaudry’s book and the videos from the course material that there are clearly problems in the arena of child care for low income or poor families. The biggest problem is that most good child care is really expensive and does not accept government subsidies because they do not pay out on time. Another large problem with the system is that it forces women to work, and therefore make more money. When these mothers do that they tend to lose any government help like food stamps and child care subsidies, and they are right back to not being able to afford care for their child and therefore cannot work, again. It seems to be a never ending cycle. Care in general is very expensive is relation to the income levels of these women, and the quality care costs even more.
The affordable care is often low quality and lacking in continuity and stimulation that young children need. This type of care also tends to be unstable.

Blog Post #9

More and more children are becoming impoverished as the statistics for the amount of entire families entering poverty increases. Many people right now are losing their jobs and cannot get back on their feet so we are seeing many more children in poverty as a result. This can become increasingly problematic for those children who are younger than school aged children because the parents need to be able to provide them with care. Since the parents cannot even afford the basic things in life, they really cannot afford child care. This puts children who cannot go to full time school in a potentially bad situation as they cannot go into a quality day care that stimulates the development of the child. The 1996 Reform Act has forced more women into work. While this seems good, it forces these children into poor quality forms of day care. In the news story “More Families Find Themselves Homeless amid Economy,” say that those children who have experienced long bouts of poverty or homelessness experience depression. Also, Clinton said,: Welfare should not be a second chance, not a way of life,” but the reform forced these women to make more money which decreases the amount of government help they can receive and this greatly affects the children of these working mothers. The money these women are now making does not even come close to covering all of their expenses. The jobs that parents of young children work generally make less money because the people that work them tend to be young and inexperienced. Even though women feel more empowered, and seeing the mother go to work is good for the children, their quality of life has still not improved. Many of the women feel that employers are judging them and it stops them from getting good jobs. There has been a drop in the amount of children born out of wedlock which is a main cause of poverty but there is still a significant amount of children growing up in poverty. The statistics in now about 1 in 5 children are impoverished according to the National Center for Children in Poverty. Recently, we are seeing many more children going hungry or being food insecure. The prices of goods are rising but the wages we are paid are not. These children and families actually need the lunch programs at school in order to eat. In the video, “US families Struggle to Eat” one family talks about taking up hunting just to feed their children.

Blog Post #8

Urban poverty brings a lack of basic needs. These mothers not only have the stress of raising children and a family, but also the stress of survival. Even the women who are single and without children have a rough time living in poverty, and constantly wondering if they are going to make ends meet. Those with children have to worry about providing basic life necessities to their children as well as themselves, but they also have to consider how every decision they make will affect their child. To add to their stress, they have to work one or more dead end jobs for minimum wage which generally bring no benefits. Because they cannot work their way up the ladder in their jobs they feel as though they will never get out of poverty. When they do not have benefits from their jobs, they are likely to lack proper health care. These people living in poverty have to make the decision to pay for health care or pay for their rent. Many will choose the rent because they are unsure if they will utilize the amount of money the put into health care, but they will definitely need a roof over their heads. This leaves their children, and themselves without any form of health care which can be problematic in young children. Also, those without benefits generally do not receive any form of paid time off, or even unpaid time off so any little emergency could lose them their job, and sole income. These people could literally lose everything if they or their children become even minorly ill. When these impoverished women have children, they still need to work in order to make enough money to provide for their children so they need to find child care. Many time the good care is unavailable during the hours needed or all together, and/or it is way too expensive for these women. And because of this, many of the mothers have to sacrifice what they would like their children to have in order to make sure that their child at least has someone there, and that they can continue working. Many times the child care that costs less in not developmentally focused, and they have to many children under their care in order for a child to get any kind of special attention. This can cause development affects on the child. On top of that, the mother is working more and the child is away from their mother more which is another thing that can create developmental challenges for young children. This makes is more possible for the poverty circle to be repeated. However, one of the greatest problems that I have noticed in my studies throughout this course is that the government is helpful to those who make little to no money. But once a person gets a job and starts to make more money they cut off their assistance which throws them right back to where there started; living with barely enough to survive.
Those is mixed income neighborhoods tend to have great opportunity and better jobs. The fact that they are in a better neighborhood alone, helps them to find a better job. With a better it is more likely they will not work as much and they may have an opportunity for advancement. It seems that they better neighborhoods may bring better care options as well which is better for their children. These neighborhoods are also safer for the child to be in and go outside in, and they tend to have a slightly better education system so it is a good way to decrease the chances that the cycle will repeat itself.

Blog Post #7

Minimum wage jobs do not allow these mothers to have the time to care about anything other than the bare necessities for their children. It often become the case that poor, working mothers have to make a choice between supporting their children and providing for them, or spending time with them. And unfortunately, the choice has to be going to work in order to support them because they need things like food, clothing, and shelter. Often they have to make choices between the necessities as one girl from the videos, Jessica, discussed. She mentions that she has to choose between things like paying rent and fixing the car that she used to get to work. Sometimes these women are even forced to work more than one job. These low wage jobs are hard because they pay minimum wage or close to it, so these mothers have to work several hours just to make ends meet. Erin from “7 Days of Minimum Wage” describes that life she lives at minimum wage as emotionally and physically draining. She says she does not understand how a family could ever live on such a little amount of money. On top of that, women already make less money than men, especially low income mothers because of job loss due to children. Also, many low wage jobs have hours outside of the norm which makes it incredibility hard to find available, affordable, and quality care for their children. In the low-wage workforce, workers are rarely given sick days, paid time off, and vacation time so I child becoming ill may bring an end to their job. This forces these women to continually start over (at minimum wage) because the jobs are much harder to keep, as the workers are generally seen as replaceable, just as Jessica from “7 Days at Minimum Wage” talks about. Jobs tend to base what they are going to pay you on what you made previously, but what if that was not enough? And if you can keep them there is very little opportunity to advance. Mallory who is also from the video “7 Days at Minimum wage” discusses the fact that the best way to move up is education but since those living at minimum wage do not have any money to save, as they live from pay check to pay check, and cannot find the money to go to college or even a car to maybe be able to get a better job.

In the book Putting Children First, they looked at the life of Julia who is a working mother with three children, and her youngest, Julia. Before Julia was born the family was living in different homeless shelters but the day after her birth they moved into their first real place in section 8. She wanted to find a way out of poverty and welfare so she decided to go to community college and have Julia’s father watch her youngest two daughters. After the semester, she broke up with the father and that is when life got really hard. She did not do all of things needed to get food stamps so they were literally on the brink of starvation. The next care arrangement while Julia was back in school and doing an internship was to have her younger sister watch her kids, but this ended because of her sister’s job. The internship she was doing turned out to be no good. She took a short job working in a burger joint but didn’t stay long because she did not want her public assistance to get cut. She took a new internship after not working for a month because she could not find child care. At her new internship, she put her daughters in a care center but that situation ended because her public assistance kept messing up the payments to the provider. Next her cousin started watching them but quit when she was getting paid because Julia was cut from welfare when they lost all of her paper work. Julia continued to have to change the care arrangements to work around her job(s) or she would risk losing her source of income. Julia was forced to pay her new provider more money because her kids needed to be there longer, and past normal hours after she was offered her first real full time job. Once welfare realized that Julia had been working they cut off all of her assistance and she could no longer afford any care for her children because she was having a hard time paying rent and food.

Blog Post #6

Low-income, working mothers now need to use a wide range of care for their children in order to meet their family’s needs. If it is a two parent home, many times they will arrange their schedules so they work opposite of each other. Otherwise, single mothers use care that ranges from family/friend care, to at home day care, to child care centers. When these families can no longer afford real day care, they settle for what tends to be a patchwork of care by care centers and family members/friends which can be rather unpredictable. In Putting Children First, the mothers say the care ranges from “babysitting to “nurturing” to “developmental” to “educational” to “special needs.” These families must always be concerned with money, location, availability, and rules around subsidies first before they can worry about what is going on during the care. In the book Putting Children First, Brittany wanted to do an internship that was unpaid, but if she was successful at it she could get a job after 4 months. However, she needed someone to watch her daughter. At first she allowed Brittany’s uncle to watch her because he was not working and he was willing to accept the little amount she was given in subsidies, and he had immediate availability. He didn’t do much with her when he was with her, and then he started slacking and not showing up so she needed to find a new arrangement immediately so she did not loose her internship. So her sister took her daughter. The problem with this was that she lived far away from where the internship was located so she would have to leave her daughter there for several days at a time. These are both good examples of how many single, working mothers must sacrifice the needs of the child just to make sure there is someone there to look after them, and give them at least the bare necessities. After she was offered a job, she put her daughter in a child care program but she had to pay the full cost on her own for nearly two years. The arrangement ended due to a dispute with the provider over money. Her next provider seemed nice until she started acting weird and not answering her phone or door when Brittany was supposed to be picking up her kid. Finally, Brittany started taking her to work until she could get her subsidies and put her in a real center, not a home. She no longer wanted her child in home care.
It seems that one of the biggest challenges represented in both the videos and the book, is that when a family starts to make more money, they lose all or most of their child care subsidies which makes them unable to afford their care anymore. The first video, “Child Care Struggles,” showed a mother who received a scholarship for care which allowed her to pay only $206/week for 2 children. When she was given a $6000/year raise, the price was increase to $306/week. The problem is that she really only made $20 more per week, but now she needed an extra $100/week to keep her children in a day care center. She had to find alternative plans, which we not necessarily the best for the development of the child but it fit within her budget.
Parents would like to have their child(ren) in one ideal arrangement but many times they need more than one arrangement because the primary one does not meet all of their needs. This is sometimes because of the day care providers have set or limited hours that tend to run during traditional work hours but many low wage earners do not work traditional hours. However, most of the time, giving up their ideal arrangement for their child is due to a lack of funds. From the book, Brittany prefer that her daughter went to a day care center for care but many times she ended up using an at home care center or family members. Many of the home day cares or the cheaper child care situations turn out to be short-lived and unsatisfactory, offering poor quality care. In the news report provided, one person says, “I saw a center with 58 kids spread across three rooms and only one or two adults looking after them.” Clearly, these centers are not only poor quality intellectually, but they also offer very little attention to these young children which can negatively affect young children. Many parents would love for their child’s care to be developmentally focused, directed to involve parents, and provide parents with more than just day care services like the Head Start Programs, but this is not true of many of the second choice programs. These programs are often hard to get into, and they do not cover a whole day, normally just about four hours. So if a child can get in, they still have to receive some other form of care.

JUS 420 Blog #5

Chaudry argues that by we are asking the less fortunate to work harder, we are ignoring our public responsibility to the children born into these poor, disadvantaged families and communities because when we send these single, poor mothers off to work their kids need to go somewhere, and that somewhere is generally not good. These mothers already lack money, and forcing them to put their children into child care facilities forces them to spend more money they do not have. Some may argue that they are making more money now, and therefore should be able to afford it, but this is simply not true. Yes they make more money, but this also makes them qualify for less help from the government and less child care subsidies. So these mothers look for the cheapest care they can find, and most of the cheap places are lower quality. Child care is supposed to stimulate children to develop their full potential during their critical period for development of their bodies and minds but the cheap child care does not provide this. In his first chapter, Chaudry looks at the story of Annette and Aaron who experienced a many problems with the reform. She had a hard time holding down a job because she could not find reliable child care. When she finally found a child care provider, they said they did not want to watch him because he was troublesome shortly after they started watching him. Next, he went to his grandmother who did not treat him well, she yelled and hit him, and she allowed him to play outside in the projects often. The next place allowed him to watch TV all day and Aaron begged her not to take him there. All of these situations that she was forced to put her son in were not conducive to his psychological well-being and development. Annette finally found a stable, good environment for her son, but she worried that she did not know what was going on there because she had no time to talk with the provider. This is a good example of how many women are having a hard time striking a balance between making money and parenting, and many times they have to give up on the parenting in order to supply their children with the material things they need. Again, another thing that affects the young children of poor families negatively. The reform has neglected the needs of already disadvantaged children by forcing their mothers to leave them in bad child care facilities that are unconcerned with their development.

In the video, “Living with a hole in your pocket,” they address the fact that many times parents will have to work nearly 80 hours per week in order to make ends meet. This gives the children of these families nearly no time with their parents which is a necessary part of their development. The video also touched on the idea that these people have a hard time working their way out of poverty, and they call it “the vicious cycle.” When these children lack parental supervision throughout their lives and proper child care, it makes them more likely to lead a life similar to that of their parents because they were not properly equipped with the tools to get out. The video “Katherine Newman on America’s working poor” addresses this issue in more detail. She says, “The children fall through the cracks.” She says this because many children are left alone after school, making them more likely to get in trouble and repeat the poverty cycle. The problem also escalates because the key to upward mobility is education which is not easily available to these children.