Cutting Child Care, Welfare and Head Start - On the Backs of Women

http://counterpunch.com/flanders05272010.html


As states scramble to stay afloat -- how are they balancing their budgets? On the backs of working women of course.

The new big trend is to cut subsidies for child care. And with child care -- poof - a critical lifeline to working moms is disappearing.

The same states that cut welfare entitlements in the 90s, forcing moms out to work, are now cutting the subsidized child care that was promised in return for workfare.

While the Obama government has provided some aid to states to keep subsidies up, it is not nearly enough, and some states are just calling it quits.

In California, Governor Schwarzennegger, whose respect for women is well known, recently proposed to eliminate the entire state welfare and child care program entirely, affecting 1.4 million people, two thirds children.

In some places, Head Start programs that have been in place for five decades, are competing for contributions from hedge funds and running street fairs. Many will have to charge tuition for the first time this September, exactly the opposite of the vision of the program.

The bottom line: remember that line about poor women being the canaries in society's coal mine. That sound you hear is them choking.

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america so loves its children

not

wants to help raise them. Just stop having kids, maybe someone will notice. Oh wait, they have already- that's why they want to make contraceptives illegal while also making it impossible to women to afford to raise kids. Nice society we got going here.

Several studies have compared children who participate in HeadStart to those who do not but would qualify and tracked them over their school years, factoring in extra costs like special education, enrichment classes, summer school, and other costs incurred by the school district. Every dollar spent on HeadStart for a child (on average) results in at least a 4x savings over the elementary and secondary school years. Some rank even higher and as I recall it was for areas with higher impoverishment (mostly rural).

No, I don't have a handy link, but I've read the reports over the years. My wife was a head teacher for Head Start in the mid 80's and has maintained an interest in the program. She had some real doozies, too - like an aunt and nephew in the same class (same age) from a mother/grandmother (same person) who would scream obscenities so loudly that she could be heard on the far corner of the upper-most level of the church basement her classroom was located in. Curiously, while HeadStart was not allowed to expel children, they DID have the authority to expel disruptive parents. :D Unfortunately, this resulted in her pulling both kids out of the program.