An Accident Waiting to Happen, The Price of Motherhood Chapter 12

One does not realize the full-impact of what it means to be a stay at home single-mother until she is forced to attend “how to find a job workshops” forced by the government to find menial employment, making less than seven dollars and hour, and having the income break even at zero after the cost of childcare all in the name of having state funded health care. Who decided that single-mothers should not be able to stay at home with their child, and that it is best for everyone to have that mother work? These were some of the choices that I had to make as a single-welfare mom, and one I chose not to take as I took the academic high route. However, the cost of childcare did not go away and neither did its necessity.

Reading “An Accident Waiting to Happen” crystallized the internal feelings I had when I chose to put my two-year-old in daycare, and the failure I had felt as a mother. I quickly realized that failure and guilt that I had felt on the inside, should have been projected to the outside, as it is clear that lack of adequate childcare is not an individual failure, but a systematic failure. Working women face a terrible choice: they either go to work and risk leaving their children in unsafe hands, or stay at home and risk loosing their livelihood and financial independence. The official disregard for child care affects every child's safety and every mother's piece of mind, regardless of income or class (p. 219).

What does this all mean for the working mother and the future of women? We'll never have women leaders. We've reached a peak, and gone as far as we can go...Women are now opting out of the labor force because they can't handle everything. If we want to have women in positions of power, if we don't want men to be the rulers forever, then those women can't be cooking-baking, at home mothers of the myth; someone else is going to have to take over that role (p. 231).
Why are these our only choices? Why can't men step up and share the responsibility of child-rearing and the personal sacrifices that come with the parenting vocation? Is it because then they might loose as much as we have? I argue that they have nothing to loose, but everything to gain as relationships will be strengthened with the child, the mother, and all employers will have to take notice—this is the beginning of a better model. Work should support family, not the other way around.