I have way too many of my own problems to spend a lot of time reading about President Trump's budget plans for social services or the outrage which the media, which COULDN'T CARE LESS about the rights of poor people, has ready to throw at him no matter what he does. From what I know, Republicans slash welfare whenever they're in office, and Democrats say they won't, and being poor is pretty much the same year after year, no matter who's President or what anyone says about it.
My parents were poor during my mother's pregnancy, and they depended on the WIC program. However, they both worked until my mother was ill, and then he worked almost every day, including weekends and a lot of holidays. They soon stopped qualifying for welfare, and I was their last child. Many people who have welfare for years don't even try to work; I know that from personal experience. Everyone who is homeless or who works in homeless services knows that people disappear at the beginning of the month, when they're paid their checks, and they reappear at the end of the month, when they're broke. The homeless system does almost nothing to give them skills for upward mobility, and the inhumane conditions of most homeless shelters also do not help people to work or do other productive things.
I never wanted to have to depend on welfare, and it's only the conglomerate's neverending vindictiveness toward me that damages every productive, independent thing that I try to do. I am also in the process of accepting that I'll probably never have children, and one of the reasons for that is that I don't have the money to take care of them.
Life is full of difficult decisions. People who prioritize their careers, whether they are male or female, should not have to have the playing field leveled for people who prioritize having children.
I think that parenthood is probably a nice thing to be able to do. Some people who would be good parents can't, and some people who can have children shouldn't, because life is not fair.
People should be able to have parental leave that meets their needs, if their needs are reasonable. If you want to have a lot of kids, that's your choice, but your employer should not be obligated to configure his or her business around what you want your life outside of work to be like.
Women can have healthy children when they're 40, and even older than that. Men can have healthy children during most of their lives. Is anyone talking about telling the public to save money not only for retirement, but to be able to take a couple of years off from work if that's what people want to do when they have children?
Many people start working when they're 16. Even if they don't start working until they leave college, there's no reason that they can't save money for a decade so that they can take a couple of years off from work when they have children.
If you have never earned or saved the money to buy a nice car, should your employer buy the car for you? Wouldn't most people answer that question by saying no? Aren't children more important than cars? So why shouldn't people have to take care of their finances if they want to be parents? The world would be a better place if the proven capability to save money were a prerequisite to parenthood, although of course that's a truth that will always be theoretical, because you can't tell people that they can't have children. What you can do is tell them that the children that they have are their responsibility, and not restrict access to safe, legal abortion and family planning services.
I was born in the United States and have lived here for all of my life. No matter what the television has said during my almost 43 years of life, there's always work to be had, and immigrants always know it. They don't take the jobs that Americans want; they take the jobs that Americans don't want.
The media COULDN'T CARE LESS about women, children, or the rights of poor people.
Copyright L. Kochman, May 23, 2017 @ 1:49 p.m.
