This in my morning’s emails:
<OzMud…>
Please send an email to your member of Congress to support the Woman’s Option to Raise Kids (WORK) Act, which gives low-income women with children under age four the choice to stay at home to raise their kids. Click here to send an email.
Now that Republicans have flip-flopped on their decades-long denigration of mothers and decided that staying at home to raise children is work—or at least, it’s work when Ann Romney does it—some House Democrats are telling them to put their money where their mouth is by introducing the Woman’s Option to Raise Kids (WORK) Act.
The WORK Act allows raising children under the age of four to count toward the required “work activity” defined under the 1996 Temporary Assistance to Needy Families Program. If Republicans really valued the work mothers do, they’d support legally defining raising young children as work so that more low-income moms can make the same choice Ann Romney made.
However, with Democrats calling their bluff, many Republicans are folding. When asked about the WORK Act, Rep. Jon Mica (R-FL) said being a mother “isn’t work in the normal sense.” Teabagger Rep. Steve King of Iowa compared the hard work of motherhood to washing his car.
Please, send an email to your member of Congress in support of the WORK Act. It’s either time to give all moms the same choice Ann Romney had, or to put an end to this sham outrage.
Keep fighting,
Kaili Joy Gray, Daily Kos
Excellent update at the Daily Kos on how the Republicans have downgraded their stand on defining stay-at-home moms from real workers to- you know – people who don’t really work at all. Well that didn’t take long, did it…
April 25, 2012 at 9:08 am
I guess it is work to hire all the nannies, maids, lawn and pool men, going to luncheons at the Country Club,hiring the clowns for the birthday parties. It can be a lot of work not taking care of your kids for stay at home moms with lots of money. Can you imagine how many groceries she would have to carry in and cook for those 5 growing boys. Wonder if those boys ever set the table,, washed the dishes, took out the garbage, picked up dog poop, mowed the lawn, put their folded clothes away, cleaned their rooms when told. How many times the nannies got up during the night with the newborn baby and fed them while mommy got her beauty sleep. How many work shirts she had to iron for hubby the next day at midnight! How many times she packed his suitcase for his many trips, and took him and picked him up from the airport so she would have a car while he was gone? No, a stay at home mom doesn’t do anything.
April 25, 2012 at 9:35 am
You said it all, spot on!
I still can’t believe poor idjits in the US fall for the GOP crap.
April 25, 2012 at 10:34 am
The majority of us don’t! Obama/Biden 2012!
April 25, 2012 at 11:03 am
Oops, bad wording on my part! I shoulda typed “there are some financially poor idjits” instead of “poor idjits”.
I know the majority don’t, I just hope they all vote this time. I’ve always felt that if everyone eligible to vote did so in an informed manner then there wouldn’t be a GOoPer left in office anywhere.
April 25, 2012 at 1:35 pm
Amen!
April 27, 2012 at 3:42 am
I hope they are all ABLE to vote this time. With all the GOP voter suppression laws the GOP has passed, I’m worried about that. God help us all if Romney is elected.
April 27, 2012 at 1:17 am
Bingo. No “double-shift” for Ann, poor woman.
April 25, 2012 at 9:51 am
I was a welfare mother in the late 70s when mothers were still allowed to stay at home until your children were in school – before they changed the laws. Honestly, if it hadn’t been for that provision I don’t know how I would ever have managed to raise my kids. It was hard enough when the kids started school and I got full time employment – any working mother can tell you about the daily struggle.
What got us through the rest of the years was the stable family foundation we were able to create because I was there for them during the most critical years of a child’s development – those first few years of life when children need their mothers the most. I had no behavior problems with my kids as they grew up – no problems with police, drugs, violence or any of the many societal problems that are so prevalent with kids these days because of that. Because we had that time to bond, my children were able to weather the rough circumstances of our lives and grow to be loving, responsible adults and good parents themselves.
I would never have been able to do any of this if had I been forced to put my kids in daycare while they were still infants and go find some minimum wage job that doesn’t even pay enough to cover the cost. That just sets up a downward spiral for everyone and few can escape it. Infants don’t belong in day care centers. They belong with their mothers.
P.S. Fuck you Mitt Romney and your clueless bitch wife Ann.
April 26, 2012 at 2:27 am
I love you Gloria, tell it sister!