If we want upward mobility for the poor, they need transportation and childcare

[Meursault]

Single women weren't getting pregnant any more frequently post-1963. But they were keeping the children they had, rather than pawning them off to support services.

[Badger]

Though both have contributed to the growth of single motherhood, the decline of manufacturing jobs paying at least lower-middle class wages--the loss of which made many non-college educated men essentially un-marryable--has spurred this phenomenon far more than Great Society welfare programs ever did.

[dead0man]

You could solve one problem completely and put a dent in the other by putting some of the single mothers to work watching the other single mother's children.

[traininthedistance]

I am not suggesting specifically targeting better transport and childcare options to poor single mothers - these are things that benefit everyone.

I once mulled over taking the bus to work for a couple of months to help save some money to pay back a student loan. I went to the website for Houston's transit authority and it was literally not possible for me to use public transport to get from my house in the suburbs to my 9-to-5 job in town. For me, it was an inconvenience - I had a car anyway and just had to find other ways to cut back. But for someone who can't afford a car, how is that person supposed to get a job? If she can't get back until 8pm because the bus only runs two trips a day and she has to leave her kids at daycare longer, that's eating up whatever meager wages she's getting. If she gets fired because she was told to work an early morning shift and had to say no because there are no buses at that hour, what do you expect her to do then?

1) This is another good example of why single motherhood is a scourge on America. A couple has more options.

DC, this article might help you understand why a poor, uneducated woman has nothing to gain from staying with the poor, uneducated man who dumped his little swimmers in her one night.

You might be interested to hear that Houston is in the process of maybe totally rehauling its bus system to be far, far more useful without costing a cent more.  I don't actually know what the public comment period is over there but it may still be going on, and good words from someone like you who might conceivably be convinced to use the bus system if it was better might be useful.

[Antonio the Sixth]

You could solve one problem completely and put a dent in the other by putting some of the single mothers to work watching the other single mother's children.

What is they have different career interests? Why do conservatives hate the idea of making people's lives better with such a passion?

[dead0man]

You could solve one problem completely and put a dent in the other by putting some of the single mothers to work watching the other single mother's children.

What is they have different career interests? Why do conservatives hate the idea of making people's lives better with such a passion?

Why do bleeding hearts hate the idea that non-bleeding hearts might care about the poor too?

I never mentioned anything about anybody being forced to do anything, but great job with your stereotypes.

[Badger]

You could solve one problem completely and put a dent in the other by putting some of the single mothers to work watching the other single mother's children.

Paid by whom? Government funding presumably? There's the rub, Dead-O.

[dead0man]

Paying single, jobless (likely skill less) mothers a living wage to watch other single mother's kids while they go off to work seems like the exact kind of thing we should be spending money on.  Something like Head Start, but with much lower goals and costs.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

Paying single, jobless (likely skill less) mothers a living wage to watch other single mother's kids while they go off to work seems like the exact kind of thing we should be spending money on.  Something like Head Start, but with much lower goals and costs.

Ugh.  That sounds like a recipe to disaster myself.  Why is it people tend to think child care is an instinctual skill females have in great gobs without needing to be trained?  Doesn't sound like such a program would deliver even average quality child care, much less good child care.  And with it being practically a guaranteed job, I suspect that a number of them will be less than motivated to provide even average quality child care.  I suppose that we could hope that such a system would be able to at least provide adequate physical care so that the kids subjected to it wouldn't spend hours in crap-filled diapers and would get fed in a timely manner, but without a heavy leavening of professional trained child care providers, I wouldn't count on it.

[Indy Texas]

Something like Head Start, but with much lower goals and costs.

Paying uneducated, poor women to watch other uneducated, poor women's children is basically what Head Start is, and is part of the reason it's not an especially effective early childhood program.

[dead0man]

Paying single, jobless (likely skill less) mothers a living wage to watch other single mother's kids while they go off to work seems like the exact kind of thing we should be spending money on.  Something like Head Start, but with much lower goals and costs.

Ugh.  That sounds like a recipe to disaster myself.  Why is it people tend to think child care is an instinctual skill females have in great gobs without needing to be trained?  Doesn't sound like such a program would deliver even average quality child care, much less good child care.  And with it being practically a guaranteed job, I suspect that a number of them will be less than motivated to provide even average quality child care.  I suppose that we could hope that such a system would be able to at least provide adequate physical care so that the kids subjected to it wouldn't spend hours in crap-filled diapers and would get fed in a timely manner, but without a heavy leavening of professional trained child care providers, I wouldn't count on it.

So, what you're saying is, single mothers don't know enough about children to watch them for several hours a day?  If that's the case (and I'm sure it is in plenty of cases), perhaps a short class for the potential baby sitters?  Watching kids isn't hard, I did in when I was 13.  12-14 year olds do it for millions of hours every weekend.

So I've had people argue against it because those poor skilled women wouldn't want to baby sit and they shouldn't be forced to AND against it because these women are morons who can't watch a couple of kids without putting them in the microwave.

Something like Head Start, but with much lower goals and costs.

Paying uneducated, poor women to watch other uneducated, poor women's children is basically what Head Start is, and is part of the reason it's not an especially effective early childhood program.

Except as I've said twice already, I don't want an effective early childhood program.  It's baby sitting.  Remember the OP.....one of the problems with single mothers is lack of childcare?

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

Baby sitting is fine when you occasionally need someone to take care of their physical needs while you go out, but it doesn't take the place of the sorts of enriching activities those young children need if they aren't going to end right back in the same trap as their parents.  They need more than someone who will change their diapers, give them a drink and a snack, and plop them down in front of the boob tube to keep them pacified.  They need to be active, both mentally and physically.

[dead0man]

Sure, in a perfect world....but was I just aiming to solve one of the problems the OP brought up.

But apparently asking out of work mothers to watch other mother's kids is just too much, better to maintain the status quo.  I should thank you for at least engaging the other side, much better than Drive By Insult Tony.  Hell, even Ziggy added more substance.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

If we only had the resources to do what you propose, then yes, it's better than nothing.  But we can and should do more than the minimum necessary to get our serfs working in low wage low skill jobs.  Targeting the kids so as to have a chance of breaking the cycle in the next generation, is the next step beyond that.  In an ideal world with unlimited resources, we'd target both kids and parents, but definitely the kids should get the priority.  That good child care would also enable their parents to work is an added benefit, not the primary goal as far as I am concerned.

[dead0man]

I wouldn't be against something bigger that did more to help the children of the poor.  We're always going to have poor people (at least until the Star Trek utopia comes on line), it just sucks that if you're born poor you've got a 85% chance (or whatever it is) of being there as adult.  Anything we can do (within reason of course) to give those kids a fighting chance is a good thing to me.

[Mordecai]

I think, perhaps, that it would be better for those single mothers who were unable to look after their offspring for the state to step in, remove their children, and put them up for adoption. It would be better for both parties.

May I humbly suggest ever so lightly, that maybe--just maybe--government stepping in to make transportation and childcare more accessible to poor single moms just might be a less intrusive and more practical act than government taking their kids away to foster care?

A potential problem with such policies is that they could be interpreted as condoning single parenthood. I mean, free bus passes for single mothers? Free childcare? Not that single parenthood is something that the majority of women, I'd imagine, want to befall them, but attempting to ameliorate such an lifestyle (that of poor single women with kids), is not, in my view, a particularly practical solution to the problem, as its hardly an incentive not to have kids. No, taking children off the hands of single parents and enabling them to be adopted by couples and families of means is a far better solution in my view; the mother no longer has to care for the child; the adoptive couple get a kid. Of course, this wouldn't neccessarily have to be a compulsory program; no, it could just be a voluntary one. Practicability is an interesting point, but I'm not sure of the feasibility of attempting to effect improvements in transportation and childcare facilities for single mothers (such efforts would have to be targeted very specifically).

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