April 22, 2913

New Reader Alert – this blog is a sequential release of a longer written piece. Each segment works hard to ‘stand alone,’ but inevitably, they make more sense in context, which means reading from the beginning post through to the latest post, which is actually the current ‘end.’ Thank you for stopping by – please leave a comment; it would be great to hear what you think about these ideas.  With appreciation, Laurie

Serfdom in Modern America:

Forging Our Own Chains

The term “latch keykid” was coined, and a new industry, known as “daycare” was born for children who had previously been raised at home by their mothers. Organized child care facilities had previously only existed in primarily communist nations that deliberately separated children from their parents for ideological and economic reasons (weakened family ties contributed to state security, as did female labor participation); now they were to become the new “normal” in American child rearing. 

As women entered the workforce families and society struggled to replace the ghost of the missing mother. Services and conveniences exploded in the market place at this time, gaining momentum as we morphed into the greed-based culture of the 1980’s.  A slew of consumer products now were absolutely necessary for the “working mom” to be able to put in her 40 hour week and still remain the primary care and service provider in the home, which countless future studies would prove she would be. 

Women worked more than they ever had been before, and now were paying for services that only the wealthy had utilized in previous years. They paid for cooking (but it was bad - HamburgerHelper, Pop Tarts, frozen microwave dinners and fast-food drive-through meals hardly replaced the nutritious cooking Moms once provided, and came at a much higher cost), they paid for laundry (husband’s shirts now went to the cleaner along with Mom’s work clothes), they paid for childcare like they had never paid before, and on top of all that, the women who entered the workforce paid taxes.

Where their work had never been taxed before, and belonged only to themselves and their families, it was now a commodity of the government: “employed” workers pay taxes. Previously, 100% of these women’s efforts had accrued to their families; now, depending on tax rates, only 50 – 60% of the pay for 100% of their efforts would find its way into use by the family, resulting in a huge net loss to women and to families (the gender pay gap never goes away, so taxes diminish what is a small piece of the pie to start).

In fact, by the time women paid for the costs of employment – taxes, the costs of services at home to replace a fraction of the work they had done for the family in the past (despite the need for the cruel and inhumane “second shift” which immediately developed), the actual costs of working, such as transportation and wardrobes and worst of all, the loss of the safety net a non-employed adult represented as a reservoir of potential income in times of emergency, it is hard to believe that all of this could be accomplished on a fraction of the pay that men were earning for the same work, and still make it worthwhile for the family unit for the mother to go out of the home for paid employment. And it couldn't. 

http://livingwage.mit.edu/