The president and his family will undoubtedly honor Michelle's mother this Sunday, as they should. She provides a 24-7 live-in backstop for the busy lives they lead. No worrying about the kids, no financial stretch to pay for care, no scrambling when Sasha or Melia is sick and somebody has to stay home to provide love and chicken soup.
Wow. As a popular commercial would put it, her services are priceless.
Would that all working moms could have another live-in mom to take up the slack when they can't be with their children. Or at least be able to take a day off when somebody is sick, or find decent day care at a price that doesn't rival the mortgage payment. But it's not likely to happen in the good ol' U S of A any time soon.
As individuals, we're pretty fond of our mothers. But as a nation we don't value motherhood all that much. We lag far behind Europe in granting leave for the birth or adoption of a child, for example. Our system of unpaid leave applies only to those who work for the largest corporations, and most new mothers (or fathers) can't afford to take it anyway. CEOs and their lap-dog lawmakers say paid leave, the norm in most of the rest of the developed world, would cost too much. Guess it would. After all, we have to save money -- for two wars, corporate bailouts, and tax breaks benefitting the same employers that don't provide any family benefits.
President Obama (who doesn't have to worry about such things personally) included $50 million in his budget for grants to states to help with start-up costs for paid family leave programs. Who is he kidding? That's $1 million per state, which is just about enough to commission one study, not fund a real program. The gesture was clearly a sop to women's groups and kid's advocates, not to mention a cover-your-rear initiative for the next campaign season.
Even if it were $50 billion, why should paid leave depend on the state where you live? We need a federal program, period.
And child care? Forget about it. No president has had the guts to propose a comprehensive, federally subsidized child care program since Richard Nixon vetoed such a plan, calling it the "sovietization of American children." Most moms are now in the paid work force out of economic necessity -- but still make only 79 cents to a man's dollar -- so they can't afford private child care that can run $6-$12 thousand per year per child. The result is that we're going on two generations of children characterized by a phrase unknown to our grandparents -- latch-key kids.
In terms of national policy, the U.S. government and families alike tend to view child care as a personal problem, not a public responsibility. This is the opposite view from countries in other parts of the world that provide government -- supported child care. Public responsibility for kids too young for school is still too controversial in the U.S. (at one time public schools were also controversial, with the education of children viewed as a "family matter").
Conservatives believe women should be forced to bear children regardless of the circumstances of conception, and stay home to take care of them. Unless, of course, they are poor single mothers. Then they should definitely go to work, preferably at low wages with no benefits, leaving kids to fend for themselves with no oversight. And liberals? They give lip service to child care as being in the public interest, but do little to make it a reality.
On the heels of the health care victory and what's soon to be a financial fix for bank excesses, the President should be putting forth bold ideas for about fixing a system that doesn't work for moms. According to the New York Times using 2007 figures, the U.S. could have a year's worth of universal pre-school (half day for all three-year-olds, full day for all four-year-olds) for the cost of two months of the wars. And those numbers don't count Obama's current build-up in Afghanistan.
The majority of mothers, like fathers, now work outside the home -- they need the money to support their families. The country needs national policies and workplace practices that reflect that reality. June Cleaver doesn't live here anymore.