Childcare for Single Mothers
How can we help single mothers pursue happiness in America?
I see an America where we can be dreamers. Where we can be the first in our family to go to college and earn a Ph.D. Where we can take over the family cattle ranch, build a multi-billion-dollar company, be a CIA operative, play in the NFL, or dance in a musical on Broadway, no matter your background.
This is the America of today. Many of our heroes came from humble beginnings and achieved distinction.
I can also see an America where we don’t have to give up on our pursuit of happiness if we fall short of our goals.
Where even if we don’t get that letter of acceptance from Stanford Law or that dream job as the Chief Technology Officer at John Deere, we can still afford a cozy house with a backyard and have enough money left over to go to the local pub for taco Tuesdays. Maybe we have to sacrifice for our family, but we can still find meaning and satisfaction in our careers, savor our food, toast our wine, and share our laughter.
Even if we don’t go to college. Even if we grow up in the inner city or in a trailer in a blue-collar town, and we get made fun of at school for our torn clothes. Even if we are a woman abused by her once high school sweetheart, who is scared to leave because she doesn’t know how she will feed their children.
The United States has the world’s highest rate of children living in single-parent households. 23% of children in America live with only one parent. Most of these children live with their mother as the sole caregiver.
Single-mother families are five times more likely to live in poverty. Families raised by racially diverse, sole breadwinner mothers fare even worse.
We can lament this condition, but we can’t say it isn’t so.
I say again that I can see an America where we don’t have to give up on our pursuit of happiness if we fall short of our childhood dreams.
For many, this isn’t the reality of America today. How are we going to get there?
It’s a complex problem, and there isn’t a silver bullet solution. But there are some certainties. Children who have better sleep and nutrition perform better at school. Emotional and physical safety dramatically influence graduation rates. To achieve these conditions, a single mother must be a working mother with the means to provide for them. While mom is at work, young children have to be supervised.
There’s another certainty:
Americans don’t want handouts, and don’t want to contribute to handouts. Many social programs fail to reach those in need. Many treat and speak of the poor as undeserving of any government benefit. America is an individualist nation. We believe hard work and perseverance decidedly influence the outcome of your life.
Not all single mothers are the same. They come from different backgrounds, have different levels of education, and face different challenges. So, any solution to the problem of single mothers in poverty needs to be flexible and adaptable.
They are often portrayed as victims or as failures. But the reality is that many single mothers are strong, resilient, and determined. They are raising their children on their own and making a difference in the world.
In sum, we need an approach to set conditions enabling working mothers to provide for their own childcare needs. And for long-term success of our approach, we need to focus on options that treat single mothers with the dignity they deserve and are not a burden on the American taxpayer.
What can we do to help single mothers pursue happiness in America? Let’s think through some options.
We can choose to do nothing.
Doing nothing is a deliberate choice to let the free market dictate the environment. Doing nothing got us to where we are today, fighting over government program funding while working mothers and their children live in poverty.
I mention this as an option because it’s a possibility I hear often.
It fails to achieve the first goal of setting conditions enabling working mothers to provide for their own childcare needs. We know it won’t attain this goal because it doesn’t achieve it today—why would it do so in the future?
It fails to support the dignity of working mothers because it denies them the pride of being able to provide for themselves and their children.
Because it fails to achieve the goal of enabling working mothers to provide for their own childcare needs, deliberately choosing to do nothing opens the door for taxpayer-funded programs. There are too many compassionate Americans to think this will not continue to be so, even if funding for these programs ebbs and flows through administrations.
Over the long term, the only way to reduce government programs is to act on behalf of Americans to set conditions to enable them to provide for their own needs.
We can enforce child support payments by the father.
Single mothers don’t become mothers on their own.
This option might support mothers and their children more than doing nothing, but it has significant shortcomings. The mother may want no contact with the father for safety or other reasons. The father may be unemployed or incarcerated. The father could be missing. Many possibilities would make enforcing child support payments difficult or unachievable. For this reason, this approach likely won’t significantly improve the lives of children in single-parent households.
The biggest shortcoming of this option is it fails to respect the dignity of the mother. Rather than enable the mother to provide for her children without question, it makes her still dependent on waiting for a payment from the father, who may no longer be a part of the children’s life.
We can raise the pay rate for mothers across the working class.
Businesses don’t raise wages as a result of goodwill. Businesses grow wages as a result of competition. They might raise salaries to compete for trained workers or raise wages to compete for workers to expand their market share. But businesses don’t raise wages because there are kids to feed at home.
This isn’t an attack on American businesses. They aren’t charities. We need strong companies, and we need to keep business taxes low. Companies compete with each other and with the global market. Businesses raising wages for their workers when their competitors don’t raise salaries makes them less competitive. Less competitive companies fail.
On the other hand, someone desperate to feed mouths at home will work for low wages because they have to.
How would we convince businesses to raise wages above the poverty level while simultaneously leveling the competition playing field for the businesses? If mothers don’t have marketable skills to command a higher salary, who is their negotiator?
To make this option successful, we need a champion of the working class. That champion of the working class is the American people. The executor of the American people’s will is the government. The leveling of business competition is government regulation.
Regulation sounds like this:
Employers shall pay full-time wages representing a rate no less than the poverty level plus 50%, assuming the worker and three dependents, for that locality.
This option achieves the first goal of enabling mothers to provide for their own childcare needs. It achieves the second goal of supporting the dignity of mothers. It achieves the third goal of being no burden on the American taxpayer.
We can provide assistance to single mothers. This could include expanding childcare availability, food stamps, housing assistance, and healthcare subsidies.
Describe this however you choose; providing assistance through additional resources or reduced prices are taxpayer-funded subsidies. Subsidies aren’t inherently wrong, but they do not enable Americans to provide for their own needs. Instead, the American people support the single mothers and their children with taxpayer dollars.
Similar to doing nothing, I mention this as an option because it’s a possibility I hear often.
This option fails to achieve the first goal of setting conditions enabling working mothers to provide for their own childcare needs. This option further fails to support the dignity of single mothers and fails to achieve the goal of presenting options that are not a burden on the taxpayer.
This option creates government jobs, and lines, and forms, and bureaucracy.
And if we can’t agree to raise wages, this is the remaining viable option to help single-mother families rise out of poverty.
What can we do to help single mothers pursue happiness in America?
If we strive to be an individualist, capitalist America, we have to set conditions for Americans to succeed as individuals.
If we set the rules such that individuals fail, government programs rise to take their place.
I can see an America where we don’t have to give up on our pursuit of happiness if we fall short of our childhood dreams.
Thanks for considering my perspective.
May God bless the United States of America.
