Pronatalism (basically, promoting more births) serves a variety of purposes, which you may variously like or not – but be on the look out in the coming months for texts that claim to be pushing babies on you for your benefit. There may be other logics at work and groups seeking to benefit as well.
March is women’s history month, but this year we’re getting a special kind of history lesson. The anti-woman agenda being ram-rodded through legislatures this term is ancient. At least since Helen of Troy, our leaders have been actively denying women the right to choose how to run their private lives.
a href=”http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-gregory-birthrate-20110109,0,2745694.story”>Here’s a link to my op-ed today in the LA Times.
But the two kinds of “women’s work” — the labor done outside the home (for 23 percent less pay than for men), and the bearing and rearing of the citizenry done at home (for nothing) — are entirely interdependent. Failure to pass the PFA will give women yet another reason to have fewer kids.
So how do we expand childcare access now?
One direct way would be to pass the Paycheck Fairness Act. Just like in all those studies of women around the globe who will much more reliably spend extra cash on their kids than will the dads, if you put more money in American women’s pockets (as in, give them the raise that a fair wage would involve) and they’ll spend some important part of that on finding better care for their kids. A point you might make to your senators in the next week or two. Can the lame ducks fly?
The new show NURTURE: Stories of New Midlife Mothers, which pairs great images with the first-person stories of how those families were formed.
In the US, delay of family is a common means of raising income – so as to have more to raise kids on when they do arrive. In the Indian program, the program adds a direct payment to the raised income that delay brings on its own.