Women Failing To Get Hired In U.S. Seen In Childcare Woes

[xchrom]

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-09-06/women-failing-to-get-hired-in-u-s-seen-in-childcare-woes.html


An event organizer speaks with job seekers waiting to attend a career fair in Midtown Manhattan, New York, on Aug. 15, 2012.

***SNIP

Sitting Out

Parents are sitting out of the labor force if they judge that their potential wages are exceeded by the cost of child care. Fifty-four percent of workers who lost a full-time job between 2007 and 2009 earned less than they had at their previous position, according to data as of January 2012 compiled by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Wage gains for non-management staff rose 1.3 percent on average in the 12 months through July, the worst performance since 1965, the Labor Department jobs report showed.

“What’s the point of working, being away from your children, for 30, 40, 50 hours a week if you really don’t have anything to show for it besides a stack of bills?” said Denise Rohan-Smith, a home childcare provider in Missoula, Montana, who has worked in the business for almost 30 years.

The average annual cost of center-based infant care exceeded 10 percent of the median income for a two-parent family in 40 states, according to the Arlington, Virginia-based Child Care Aware of America, an advocacy organization that works with more than 600 state and local child care resource agencies. The average annual cost of such care ranged from about $4,600 in Mississippi to almost $15,000 in Massachusetts last year, according to the organization’s 2012 report.
Reduced Budgets

Seeking government help is less of an option as states slashed budgets in the wake of the 18-month recession that started in December 2007. Funding for childcare assistance dropped 6.8 percent in fiscal 2010 from fiscal 2007, according to Health and Human Services Department data compiled by Bloomberg.

[xchrom]

2. what?!? nt

[gkhouston]

5. I believe the argument is that if you're a woman who lost a good-paying job during the recession,

you should go thousands of dollars into debt while working a shitty job for a couple of years in the hopes of getting a better-paying job at some undisclosed time in the future because that would be "paying dues". As if no dues were paid to get the good paying job you lost through no fault of your own. To me, that's a massive logic fail all the way around, especially when I think about a friend of mine who's had one shitty job after another for years.

[xchrom]

6. i was just surprised some one posted something so shallow and stupid. nt

[gkhouston]

7. People get lost in the internet, sometimes. n/t

[xchrom]

8. Tis true. Nt

[Zalatix]

37. Well, I'm about to see just how open and big tent the DU is.

They say we can't make people march in lock step with the party line and that there is no party line. Most famously, "This isn't Litmus Underground."

I'm about to test that theory right now.

[bad sofa king]

10. OK, sit around on the couch and remain unemployed. Tha's sure to help the situation.

Life is hard. It never stops being hard for some of us but being unemployed makes it harder and guarantees that it won't get easier. Being long term unemployed makes it borderline impossible to improve your situation as employers have increasingly stopped hiring the long term unemployed. So, if you spend 5 years sitting around being unemployed and feeling for sorry for yourself, you will probably spend the next 20 years doing the same god-damned thing. "massive logic fail" my ass.

[treestar]

11. They really have you programmed don't they

Life is hard? For who? It sure ain't hard for say Mitt Romney.

There are lots of people for whom life is not hard - the ones who inherit the money to not have to worry. Who can afford to gamble on stocks. Who struck it lucky. There are lots of people who get jobs without "paying dues."

[treestar]

15. Life is not hard for everybody

That's the point.

These individuals cannot get a job that covers expenses (basic ones). Now for a business that would mean it collapses. But these are people. But then you knew that.

If you keep sucking up to the lucky ones, they won't let you collapse? You may find out differently someday. That's why they are rich. No they didn't "work hard." Or, only at exploiting others. (Or their ancestors did).

You'll "work hard" for them as long as they let you, but never be as rich as they. They may even let you go early. Without a pension, well, except Congress passed a law restricting their freedom to do that.

[badtoworse]

20. How are rich people relevant to this thread?

Last edited Thu Sep 6, 2012, 02:22 PM - Edit history (1)

Saying that rich people don't have it hard is true, but it's not exactly a profound statement. Bad sofa king's point is pretty obvious also - putting up with a crappy job is more likely to help you in the long run than just sitting on your ass.

[treestar]

33. No one was sitting on their ass

They were pointing out that they can't cover basic expenses. And if you're a liberal you think they should get help. And the sofa king freeper was making the right wing point - the one where they claim it is whining and feeling sorry for yourself that you can't find a good job, blah, blah, blah. This board is for liberals.

[haele]

35. Ah, "Mom" was able to have a neighbor woman or kid watch you for maybe $2 - $5 a day or in trade.

My mom was able to do that too for a little while; she watched a neighbor's kid while the woman worked nights, and the woman watched my brother during the day. Of course, most neighborhood home daycares were not bonded, and most were pretty un-trustworthy as it was - my brother was found twice wandering down the street by another neighbor when he was supposed to be under the care of this woman.

Half your neighborhood moms were "home-makers" through the 1970's and into the 1980's. It started trailing off in the late 80's with the last Reagan recession when the jobs started going overseas and not coming back.


Child-care is not the same situation nowdays - high-schoolers Betty and Veronica are not going to watch your kid after they get out of school at 2 in the afternoon for under $12 an hour even if they don't have a shitload of after-school activity that they're doing on their own between homework and whatever it is extra-curricular they want to do.
And if B and V are responsible, they're also smart enough to know in most communities, they have to have a certificate showing they've gone through basic child-care training before they're legally allowed to watch your kid so that if something happens, CPS won't blame both you and them and put your kid in Foster Care until Family Court or Social Services sort it out.

IN MOST STATES, YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED TO LEAVE AN INFANT OR TODDLER UNDER THE AGE OF FIVE WITH A PERSON WHO IS NOT OVER FOURTEEN YEARS OF AGE, WHETHER OR NOT THEY ARE A RELATIVE.

The news is full of stories of a toddler getting into trouble while being watched by a 13 year old or younger sibling with no adult around - and the whole family loses the all their children to CPS.

As for neighbors - even if you're friendly with neighbors (which rarely happens anymore, thanks to all the "pick up and move with the job" or downsizing from the suburbs to a more inexpensive urban area), Carol-next-door, Bill-on-the-other-side, and Jane-down-the-street with kids of their own are no longer "housewives"; they're just as busy with work as their S.O.'s, even if they might look like they're at home - they're teleworking or running down commissions to make ends meet themselves. Old Mrs. Pickett, also down the street, is diabetic and has a husband on dementia meds and the kids all live out of state, so she barely has time to take care of her own house, let alone your kids.

As for daycares - most daycares that working are half or 3/4 day - not full day, and even the "cheap" bonded daycares for infants/young toddlers usually starts at $1200 and can get over $2000 a month per kid depending on the area for just the half day. And you're dependent on the hours they feel like supporting - if you need to work from six-thirty to four-thirty and depend on public transportation, if all the daycares don't open until seven or seven-thirty and request the parents pick the children up by three, you're seriously SOL. And other than the cost, that is the biggest complaint I have heard over the years about daycare - they are on their schedule, not your employer's.

The alternative is a cheap unbonded daycare - and they are to be avoided if at all possible, because no matter how nice and caring "Auntie" or "Grammie" seems, those places are either notorious rip-offs or are a home-business of last resort for a middling-poor care-taker trying to feed their own kids off what they can get watching your kids. Most of them just put your kid in a yard or room with as many other kids as they can get money off for, and your kids are pretty much left to their own devices in unregulated questionable sanitary situation - you'll be lucky if diapers get changed and your kid gets fed during the day and isn't playing in a sandbox used by the local ferals and raccoons as a litter box or on a lawn full of dog "land-mines". The lack of regulation often results in cases of child abuse - usually psychological or physical through either lack of attention or casual punishments - which is a major ongoing concern about these places. Your kid might survive without any lasting problems, but many don't.

It comes down to costs and safety - have you actually looked into what it costs to put just one child in a somewhat safe child care situation rather than caress nostalgic memories of a middle-classed childhood past where Daddy worked in the Factory and Mommy worked part-time at the store after her youngest was two and the old lady down the street watched all the neighborhood kids that needed watching?
Not to mention the cost of trying to place more than one child, or a special needs child. The cost of non-subsidized childcare is usually more than what any family with a median household income (in the $40K - $60K range).

Asking someone to break their back, endanger young children, and go further in debt, just so they could assuage some specious Objectivist idea that they are just Moochers that have to prove they're not also "Welfare Queens" is foolishly backwards.

Why not just admit that we're going to go back past the Happy-Daze 50's era straight into the 1890's where the very few rich were righteous, the middle-class few, quiet, and servile, and masses were the poor who worked dusk to dawn, died in tenements or gutters by the time they were in their 40's and 50's. When society could justify dead infants found in gutters and sewers on a regular basis and sending "orphans" as young as six off from the city to work of debt the parents "left" in farms, mines, and other interests until there was no more use for those children and they were let go to find their own way as ignorant, beaten down young adults. When Charity only given if one was willing to "serve" the entity that offered it and be properly "thankful" in that service.
So let's just toss all our poor working or non-working adults with no Capital, who don't have a certain amount of readily available cash - into company "towns" or debtors compounds to "properly" pay for their survival, take their kids from them and put them into orphanages, where the kids can be shipped out to corporate farms and factories. Heck, it would be great for business - look how well businesses in the Marianas have been doing. And that'll show those lazy moochers they need to get off their asses and work like "Real Americans" do - for no wages, even. Since animals like that breed indiscriminately, we should sterilize them too - that should keep those bad genes from spreading through society, and we don't have to worry about legalizing that evil, ungodly contraception.

...Do I really need a sarcasm icon here?

Sadly enough, everything that was spewed in the last section has really been part of the "reasoning" used to justify the harsh, un-American treatment of the poor and minority populations within this country since the "Know Nothings" tried to justify beating and discriminating against Irish immigrants and non-WASPs workers and later, freed slaves.

And that's also where a lot of the reasoning behind the rhetoric against government subsidies for the poor come from.

Haele

[Zalatix]

38. You can thank the sending of American jobs overseas for this mess.

And the kings of offshoring say back to you, "You're welcome!"

[laundry_queen]

14. You don't make any sense

working for the purpose of working, when working is costing you MORE each month because of the childcare and transportation costs, in hopes of an elusive, possible future better paying job is a big FAIL. It's like people who take out loans to buy stock hoping the stock will go up.

[bad sofa king]

25. that's a load of horse shit. Get a baby sitter. take them to grandma's. adapt. find a way.

you're just setting yourself up for failure otherwise because employers discriminate against the long term unemployed.

[treestar]

45. Why is that acceptable?

A person who is qualified to do a job should get the job, regardless of past bad luck.

[treestar]

46. Yes, looking at each of us as a business entity

you can't run a business that costs more to run than it earns.

[coalition_unwilling]

17. EPIC FAIL - Raising children is very important and difficult work. Welcome

to my Ignore list and where oh where is MIRT?

[bad sofa king]

29. don't tell me, tell the prospective employer that's trying to understand

what you have been doing for the past 5 years. You won't have to though because you won't even get the interview with a five year employment gap unless you at least went to school in those five years. Then maybe. Sorry you feel the need to ignore harsh reality btw. Good luck with that.

[treestar]

47. Taking care of your children?

If you are qualified for a job, what business is it of employers to judge what you did with your time?

[stevenleser]

40. I alerted and a jury hid the post, and yes, I checked the TOS box. You can be sure

that the pizza oven is warming up.

[Zalatix]

41. You can't have alerted before I did. I alerted first, I say! First!!!

Actually I don't care who alerted first. WAY TO GO. High five!

Anchovies!!!

[stevenleser]

42. High fives, definitely!

I prefer my Pizzas Hawaiian though, ham and pineapple!!!!!

[smirkymonkey]

44. You don't get it, do you?

If it costs you more in child care than what you bring in working for crap wages, you are at a net loss. What's the point?

It's better to save the cost of child care and be home with your children than to toil away at an unsatisfying job that leaves you in the red.

[hobbit709]

4. Huh? WTF does this have to do with the point of the OP?

[Viva_La_Revolution]

9. Fail

lemme guess, you're not a woman with kids. If you were you never would have spouted that.

[bad sofa king]

12. guess what, my mother was a single mother and she fucking worked for a living

My old man screwed her and me. She took shitty jobs at first but eventually hired into the post office where she continued to work her ass off but where she had a decent paycheck and good benefits. She never took a dime in welfare and she was a life long democrat and liberal. so is the old man btw.

[Viva_La_Revolution]

19. That used to be possible with one child

I had 3 (all under school age) in the same situation.. my daycare bill would have been MORE than half of my paycheck, and I never would have seen my kids but for an hour in the morning and an hour at night. I chose to accept welfare and raise my kids instead of letting someone else do it. When they were in school I was able to get a job(s) and we have never been on assistance since.

and when did it happen that raising kids wasn't WORK? going out work after being home all day for years was a RELIEF, even if my paycheck never did cover all the bills any better than welfare did.

speaking of shitty jobs, here's my list from the past 25 years...
Retail
Dishwasher
Waitress
bartender (2)
Fast food (2)
File clerk
Janitor
Factory production (4)
Food production (2)
shipping and receiving (3)
Warehouse (2)
Warehouse manager
Maid
Recycling center (working on the line)
Scale Master
Executive assistant
Construction Labor (2)
House painter
Drywaller
Elderly caregiver

[bad sofa king]

27. It used to be possible to spend 5 years unemployed and then land a job.

we all know that employers are discriminating against the long term unemployed these days as they get pickier and pickier. and honestly, I don't see too many shitty jobs on your list-the recycling center for sure. I've been there and done that too and stood next to a man with downs syndrome while I did it. Not what you would call a rewarding profession. I stood knee deep in tomato peels that were soaked in sodium hydroxide and scooped them out of an industrial tomato peeler with my hands one summer. I joined the Army infantry for 4 years. That was shitty. I worked next to illegal aliens in a hot Texas warehouse, while going to school and while being in the post 9-11 Texas National Guard. I just believe that not working for a living is never a good plan and that that is especially true these days. what's more, I really don't see the job market improving greatly. The current trend is that employers are becoming very selective in who they will hire. My employer won't hire you if you smoke for example and they urine test you to make sure that you don't. There's no way they would hire someone off the street who hasn't held a steady job for five years and I just don't see that pattern changing so I think an individual should think very carefully before they go down that path. If you absolutely have to than you have to I guess.

[Viva_La_Revolution]

34. yes, I see where you think a shitty job is more important than raising kids

so farewell to you.

[Zalatix]

39. There aren't enough jobs to go around. That alone destroys your argument.

[HiPointDem]

28. yes, work & lose money. that's the ticket. if it costs more to go to work than to stay home,

people will stay home.

that's the free market in action, bubba.

[bad sofa king]

30. and some people will use any excuse to not get a job.

I was born at night but not last night.

[HiPointDem]

31. your slip is showing, bubba.

[Zalatix]

43. I smell pizza.

[etherealtruth]

48. Oh thank God

I have not had a post hidden in the 6 or 7 years that I have been here ... that jack ass made me consider a profanity laden personal attack (if s/he/ it persisted I think it would have been worth it)

[HockeyMom]

3. I quit working in business

and went to work in the schools, and not until my kids were school age. The cost of the day care centers, nursery/pre-k schools, was around $450 a week per child. That was more than I would make. What is the point? When my sister-in-law's husband walked out on her with 4 (twins) kids under the age of 7, how was she supposed to work for her welfare? Leave the kids alone? I suppose these people don't think of that.

The benefits of working in the schools, when you have school age kids, is that your hours are the same as their's and you are off from work when they are. No job in business gives a mother that flexibility. A woman will have to make a LOT of money to pay for day care for multiple kids.

[laundry_queen]

16. Yep. I have 4.

When they were younger and my ex wanted me to go back to work (but refused to help me out at home with them) to pay off some debt he had accumulated (that I didn't know about) I priced out childcare and it turned out to be $2000/month, even with 2 kids in school full-time. There was NO way I was going to make more than that. So I refused to go back to work. Right now, as a single mom, I live in a different province and only have 1 child in care part time (because I now have older children to watch the younger ones for after-school care) and I'm fully subsidized and I STILL pay $400/month. I think people have NO fucking idea how much childcare costs. Most moms of multiple kids are better off to stay at home, watch other people's kids and coupon like crazy.

[Quantess]

18. Here is an article spotlighting a disturbing trend,

explaining how working and raising children has recently become a lot more difficult, in that it is becoming increasingly difficult to make ends meet.

And then some wiseass chimes in here, basically saying the article is whining.
Am I in the right place?
Who the fuck let this nitwit in?

[Nikia]

21. Child care is an example of something that is not seen as having value

Unless someone else is doing it and making money.
I wish that childcare was more affordable and that more U.S. employers that employed several or more people with children would offer on sight child care as a benefit. Anyone who wants to work should be able to work. As this article pointed out though, it does not really pay for some parents to work.
I don't think that any parent should be made to feel liker a loser when they choose to raise their child(ren) when going to paid work would cost them money or make almost nothing. The work (taking care of children) is still being done and parents should be supported in this and not need to apologize. The strange thing is that the decision to be a stat at home parent seems to be supported more for the upper middle class where people have higher income potential and could afford day care and still take home more than a few dollars. If they are poor or working class though, people seem to think that caring for their own child is worth nothing and that they should be slaving away at a job that does not make them any money after childcare instead.

[gkhouston]

26. When my daughter was very small, my husband's employer had on-site childcare and

I worked just a short walk away from them. It rocked.

And you're right, if your husband can afford to "keep" you, being a SAHM isn't considered laziness.

[progressivebydesign]

23. Interesting points...

I do take exception with the comment about "what's the point of working?" Well.. to better yourself, to get out of the hole you're in, to show your children what determination looks like. It's almost as if she's saying "why bother to work all day, if someone will pay me to stay home?" That's how we get generations of families on assistance. They have lost the ability to see how working creates more success. And what happens once the children are grown? Or they're old enough to be on their own after school? Will she go to work then?

There are numerous jobs in America now, for people who work at home. Legitimate call center jobs that can be done from home, and pay better than assistance, for companies like Uhaul, Enterprise, LLBean, etc. Perhaps someone should clue them in on that.

Also, if you go to job fair, probably should not dress like you're going to a nightclub. A basic course in appropriate job attire would be helpful, too. I guess if you plan on being a low level retail clerk for your entire career, then yes.. staying at home on assistance, is less trouble than working. But you need to be prepared to live in poverty the rest of your life. Where is the ambition? The kids go to school around 5 years old now, many go to Head Start earlier than that, so once your kid is in school, sitting at home because of child care issues, becomes an excuse.

[xchrom]

24. working doesn't always 'better' a person.

'work' isn't a magic talisman against all defects of character and misfortune.

[haele]

36. There's some stereotype talk for you.

"Don't dress like you're going to a night club" "To better yourself" blah, blah blah..." "Generational Welfare"...
As if most "moms" who find themselves on welfare are flighty young high-school drop-outs who were raised by their grandmothers who were also on welfare while their own moms were hopping clubs looking for guys to take care of them. Perhaps they even lived in - the projects....

What type of person is on welfare? I live a block from a Social Security / Medicaid / TANF/unemployment office in a highly concentrated (lots of section 8 and low income housing and apartments), predominately "immigrant" (Hispanic, Lao/Cambodian and Horn of Africa) area of San Diego that used to be the main African American neighborhood since the 1940's (and is still considered "the hood" in some places), so I see the people who are on welfare, or getting some sort of support both when I head out to work and come home.

The majority are elderly - obviously elderly. If they're taking care of kids, I seriously doubt they can work and take care of the kids.
Next group is a mix of men and women of all colors - not just the stereotypical people of color that tend towards "generational welfare), but a significant number of white (though those could be light latino) - and only half of those have children in hand. None of the women I have seen in that line have been dressed like they're going to a night club, or were out walking the streets.
Some have book-bags or laptop bags.
Some men wear day-labor clothes, some plain suits; some women wear appropriate work clothes that look like they come from Ross or TJMaxx, some are dressed in maid or food service type uniforms, some are dressed casually in clean jeans and tee-shirts. A few women are in a more cultural dress (Somali najib, the Lao/Cambodian clothes - the colorful pseudo silk brocade suit outfits with the embroidery) Very, very few women look like they're inappropriately dressed to be at a job interview for the level of work they would be looking for.

In fact, the only women I have seen in my neighborhood dressed like they were going to a night club were actually going to a night club or a party. Not even the gang-banger's women down the street dress like party girls or street-walkers unless they are out trolling or presenting.

Now, over the years, I've seen supposedly "better class" high school and college kids that are not living solely on various government subsidies dress like crap at job interviews and throw the 'tude, but the young people who grew up on government help are usually also getting help in presenting themselves for work and what sorts of attitudes are appropriate for what sorts of work.

Over the years working installation and electrical teams, I've interviewed lots of struggling young men and women who didn't know how to interview properly and ones that could fake it, but weren't too stable to begin with. The ones who can't straighten out usually have all sorts of other problems - early substance abuse causing brain damage, mental health issues, disabilities - that can't be addressed by "the dignity of work" aka, "tough love" and all that other crap platitude that supposedly works to fix your typical working or middle class slacker teen.
In those cases, "jobs" are basically hobbies, because until they get the root problems fixed, there is no way they can get off assistance. They'll just end up under nearest overpass area with the other head cases and beg in the streets or live off petty crime until they die of something preventable because there's something seriously, in fact a "needs health care for perhaps the rest of their life" type of seriously wrong with them.

Haele

[haele]

55. If she was wearing the jacket that goes with that skirt (that's a suit skirt), it's a good outfit.

I looked closer and it actually looks like she draped the jacket (there's a bit of scarf showing near her left elbow) over her other arm, and we don't see it. I've certainly seen more inappropriately-dressed young women working at discount stores where there's no uniforms.

Haele

[etherealtruth]

49. I was a stay at home mom with 3 kids and 2 degrees

My eldest is a college graduate, my middle child just started her second year at a competitive state university (in their honors program) and my 16 year old despises high school.

I did not return to the work force until I was 44 (I am now 50)

My children view me as a success (even though I basically lived in yoga pants and sweatshirts). THey do not devalue what a stay at home parent can bring to a family, nor do I.

[SoCalDem]

32. When my 3 boys were little, we did the math & it was cheaper for me to NOT work

Sometimes on paper, it looks as if it will all "work", but in our case, the estimates showed in plain old math that I would be clearing about $100 a month more than a sitter would be charging us..Hardly worth waking up 3 sleeping kids early, to drag them off to "not their house" for most of the day.

[etherealtruth]

50. You also hit the point ...

... where you think "what will more money really bring to our family?" vs "what will one of us staying home bring to our family"

I realize this is not a choice every family can make ... I also realize it is not the right choice for every parent/family ... but for some it is a very sound choice (a choice I am gratful was mine to make)

[gkhouston]

51. It can be tough, though, when people treat you like your brains fell out with the baby, just

because you're a SAHM. Then again, there are all the class parties and field trips and such when you go and see the look on your kid's face -- and the looks on the faces of the kids whose parents never come because they can't get away from work -- that make having less money and being treated like a lazy moron worth it.

[SoCalDem]

52. Money is not everything..

Our son, with the VW bug...missing a seat... was always the one kids wanted to go with..not the kids with the Escalade or BMW

[gkhouston]

53. LOL, you're right: the kids everyone wanted to hang with when I was in high school

all drove beaters.