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Life of Colleen: March 2006
Hmmm...
posted by Colleen Shirazi
2006-03-18
at 10:17 AM (Pacific)
Child-support plan prompts outcry
Does no one see the significance of this bill? That it is the first time ever...to the very best of my knowledge...that I've ever heard of...ever...that anyone has ever talked about putting a monetary value on the time a parent spends taking care of kids.
No one's ever done this before. Sure, day care workers and babysitters have a price; before this bill, it was understood that taking care of kids constitutes "work" only when the kids belong to someone else. i.e. as long as it was only the women taking care of their own kids, it wasn't even "work," much less paid work.
Now men are doing it; by all means let them assign a price to that work. Let them put a price on the time they spend taking care of their own kids. Once that time has a monetary value, then, and only then, can women who "stay home and take care of the kids" expect to be taken seriously as working people.
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Here it is...
posted by Colleen Shirazi
2006-03-08
at 12:41 PM (Pacific)
New Hampshire Seeks to Change Child Support Formulas
Oh, crap, there isn't a transcript. There is only a "listen" button.
I heard this on the news this morning and almost laughed aloud from joy. Finally! Finally! Finally! I was not quite sure I'd live long enough to see this day, but here it is.
By this I do not mean I'm jumping around because New Hampshire seeks to change their child support pay formulas. Not at all. It is because, for the first time ever, someone is acknowledging that taking care of children is work and therefore should be compensated.
Am I asking so much?
I knew it... I knew it would be men who would push for this, just as men have pushed for many other "women's rights." Not because men are saints, but because they already have the upper hand; they play things the way things work best for men. If something women have been struggling for across the centuries suddenly suits men...abortion, birth control that works and doesn't make you sick, women in the workforce, women in the military, fill in your own blanks here...men make it happen overnight.
So! Now that men are sharing custody of their children with women, that means men are doing the W.O.R.K. of taking care of the kids. Suddenly! A revelation! This is work and I should get paid for it! Even if you're the parent? Oh yeah, what's the difference? Work is work, isn't it?
Yes, it is indeed.
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