Here’s what we learned from the in-depth report on how women are doing in post-recession America.
–1 in 3 American women, 42 million women, plus 28 million children, either live in poverty or are right on the brink of it. (The report defines the “brink of poverty” as making $47,000 a year for a family of four.)
–Nearly two-thirds of minimum wage workers are women, and these workers often get zero paid sick days.
–Two-thirds of American women are either the primary or co-breadwinners of their families.
The interesting common thread here are the statistics dealing with single mothers with no male in the household and resultant “poverty”. Also we have spent trillions on government programs since 1964 to solve the problem, yet look at the numbers. Even Democrats ought to be looking seriously at why we are thowing more money down a dry hole. Of course, they won’t.
Here we have the dark sides of two popular modern ideas. First, the “emancipation” of women to work just like men has put further pressure on family time and on women’s well-being. Secondly, the ideal of free enterprise has put American workers into competition with third-world workers, forcing both parents (if both are even present) to work at low wages. This further weakens family life.
As a “single mother of four with no male in the household” I was invistigated two years in a row by the IRS because they could not believe that we lived on less than $3,000 a year. We were poor, but we were not “poverty stricken”; there is a difference. We, my children & I had a vegetable garden in the back yard. We harvested the wild asparagus and wild berries. We baked our own bread and canned fruit that grew wild in the mountains or that was given us by neighbors who didn’t want to mess with the apples and peaches that grew in their yards. My sons (starting at about 9 years of age) did yard work, shovelled snow, and delivered newspapers to buy their own school clothes; my daughters kept the neighbor’s 3 children while she worked. My parents helped when they could…if my dad had work himself…construction is seasonal in Colorado. We were not “statistics” we were a functional, hardworking family.
None of my children (now in their fifties) are in jail or on welfare… nor are their children.