Fall in Love, Have Children, Stay Put, Save the Planet, Be Happy by Frank Schaeffer

Author:Frank Schaeffer
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Health Communications Inc
Published: 2021-11-02T00:00:00+00:00

Thank you, Medicare and Social Security!

Thus began the most (and most unexpectedly) satisfying days, weeks, months, and years of my life. Soon after becoming nannies, Genie and I had Social Security payments coming in and, at last, were covered by Medicare, too. As self-employed people, our medical insurance coverage had been our major and most crushing expense. Now we could afford to turn our attention wholeheartedly to our grandchildren—and I got to play again! And John and Becky never had to leave a child begging them to not abandon them to strangers. Their kids grew up with Genie and me as a daily part of their lives, since birth.

Besides getting Social Security and Medicare (thank you, government!), I feel that the sort of entitlement as White upper middle class Americans that made our choices possible, as well as help from the feds, must be extended to all. Only a few of us have the means to even make a choice for family these days in the way Becky and John did. School debt weighs millions of us down. Social pressure to conform to career worship hurts our chances, too. And where is the support and the options for young parents that we got as oldsters?

Genie and I could help our children out. What about people with less family structure, less money, less options? What about young single moms? The fact they can’t get the same level of support my children did is a national disgrace.

It is doubly disgusting that support is not there since it is “traditionalists” and self-proclaimed “conservatives” who have led the charge against extending family friendly help to others. They don’t really want to help a woman keep her baby like the antichoice protesters scream at the traumatized women seeking abortions. If conservatives did want people to have a child, America and not Iceland would lead the world in family-nurturing social programs that (for instance) keep pregnant high school students in school and supported and helped with parenthood, a place to live, and income.

It would be American conservatives leading the charge for parents having interchangeable roles about who stays home, and getting government help to do so. There would be real choices for anyone with a child or wanting to have one or not have one to become a single parent, married, pair-bonded, pregnant, or not. Until that happens, those on the “pro-family” right should just shut the fuck up, die of shame, or, best of all, change their minds and join the fight for social justice and the joy of parenthood.

But America is falling so far short of helping women start families that the number-one way, statistically speaking, to descend into poverty for a young American woman is to have a child with no partner. That is just the shameful truth. And it’s beautiful that Jessica and Becky met such supportive partners so young, but in our careers-first culture, that’s not the case for most young women. We don’t have a society like Iceland that promotes or supports young women in any way.

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