What’s so bad about American parents, anyway?
...the United States is one of only three countries in the world, along with Swaziland and Papua New Guinea, that have no federal paid parental leave policy. After President Richard Nixon vetoed the Comprehensive Childcare Act of 1971, which promised to ensure quality, affordable child care, American parents were left to fend for themselves. In a country that pays its child-care workers less than its janitors, that is a time-consuming, expensive and often fraught search. Child-care costs, which consumed 2 percent of the average family budget in the 1960s, now take up 17 percent, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, second only to a mortgage or rent.That paragraph jumped off the screen at me as I read Brigid Schulte in today's Washington Post, a piece titled as is this column, What’s so bad about American parents, anyway?. It is piece well worth the time to peruse and ponder it.
Let me be clear - I read it not from the standpoint of being parent, for we by choice have no children of our own, freeing us to be loving aunt and uncle to those of our siblings, and also freeing me to devote the time I do to my teaching. But the stress - and the guilt - I see among many of the parents of the children I teach came to mind as I read this piece.
We are in many ways NOT a family-friendly nation, at least not in many of our policies. Our approach to health care is certainly one example. As the words I have quoted from Shulte demonstrate, our approach to child care is certainly another.
But there is more.
Secretary Panetta, pull Limbaugh from Armed Forces Radio now
It is not bad enough that he provides partisan blather, that he demeans our President.
He has regularly demeaned women.
His remarks this week were well beyond the pale of what should be broadcast to our military and their families, supported with our tax dollars.
I have a moral objection to my tax dollars being used for such a purpose.
You should move immediately to cancel any further broadcast through government facilities of his venom.
I speak as an honorable discharged United States Marine.
I write as the teacher of students, male and female, now on active duty, including overseas, including in the past Iraq and currently Afghanistan.
There is no excuse for the US Government in any capacity giving this man an audience.
It is an insult to the honorable men and women who serve this nation.