Unit B - Blog 10

Ajay Chaudry based his studies off of working poor women who had to deal with being in the welfare system and what to do after it failed. Many of these women had no choice but to find adaptive strategies outside the system because welfare programs were simply too full. A preferable choice would be father care if this is an option. Most mothers desired for their kids' fathers to be around, but only if they were positive influences in their kids' lives. For people like Julia, she was not happy with the laziness that her kids' father presented and eventually they broke up and she never heard from him again. The most common choice that these women went with after father care was kin care. This is of course the most obvious and probably best choice for many women. Family is someone that you can trust and rely on to actually love your kids and provide a home life setting...or so most people thought. In the case of Julia and Jacqueline, Julia asked her cousin to watch her three children but she complained that her cousin was "lazy" and only willing to help because she got paid the welfare checks. When the checks were delayed, her cousin actually denied Julia childcare assistance. This is a problem that many women face-they do not have family that either lives nearby or is willing to provide the care. At this point, many women had to find outside child centers. This could be in people's homes or actual businesses that are set up for child care. Many women found that the cost and strict time limits at these centers were very hard to keep up with. However, mothers also liked the stability and structure that it gave to their children. If it was a center that was run right they felt that it was the best option outside of their own care. But in some cases, such as Jasmine's, she felt that her child was being neglected at her care center and she knew she could not leave her baby there another day. What I found most interesting too was that the hours provided by care centers do not really match up with a work schedule. If a day care is open 8-5, most people have to be at their place of work BY 8 and cannot leave UNTIL 5. This leaves the mother in a jam, be late to work and leave early, or pay the extra fees to pick up a child late?

This leads into how work and care are related in so many ways yet treated by society as two completely different entities. Working hours and day care hours cannot be the same time. Day cares need to be open before and after normal working hours, for at least an hour, to allow time for traffic, accidents, meetings, etc. How can we expect mothers or fathers to make it to and from jobs at exactly the same time everyday? And how can a person ever grow within their company if they are late or leave early every time? If a mother loses her job because of this she can no longer send her child to day care and the day care loses a client. Work and care also directly impacts a child and how they grow up in the world. This is probably the biggest effect of a working mother on her child. Even if a mother has a part time job working 30 hours a week, that is 30 hours where the child is awake that he or she must interact with someone outside the home. In many cases these outside resources made children feel uncomfortable, sad, or bored. Many mothers recognized the changes in their children but because they were young they were not able to communicate what was really wrong. In most cases though mothers were working full time and usually more than 40 hours a week or like Julia, she was working and going to school, needing well over 40 hours a week in child care. This of course is a lot of separation time between a mother and her kids.

Lastly what Chaudry's critiques run along the same lines as those that we have been learning about throughout the semester. There is simply not enough being done on the part of welfare reform. There is no way for these mothers to make a decent living without the assistance of child care. People keep saying these mothers need help getting an education, and they do, but no one bothers to mention that when they go to school there needs to be someone to watch their kids. I mention this throughout my blogs, but unless we bring attention to this serious matter, nothing will change because we are not forcing politicians to deal with the problem at hand. Welfare needs to stop being seen as a vice in the American eyes and instead be seen as an aid in helping mothers who truly are trying to just take care of their children and provide them with a decent life.