What Kind Of Flibbertigibbet Single Lady Hasn't Already Started Saving For Her 'Baby Nurse' Fund?
Did you know that 'Merica is the most bestest country that ever lived? It's true! We are No. 1!!!!!!1! at everything: bankrupting our peoples what don't have health care; losing lots of monies doing war to other countries; and making single-parent families suffer extra hard because something about bootstraps and also we hate socialism. Here's some chick 'splaining just how much that sucks at the Motherlode (get it? Mother? hahahah) blog in the Style section of the New York Times, because that's where the Times puts all of its most important lady coverage:
It’s difficult to raise children in a society that assumes there’s a parent at home, and one in which the guiding philosophy for supporting families is “every man for himself.” That struggle is magnified for single parents.
Turns out, according to research and science and stuff, single-parent families in these United States are way worse off -- the "worst off," in fact -- than single-parent families in other countries because of that "every man for himself" thing. Hooray for us!
The Style section of the Times cites this one study in particular:
They have the highest poverty rate. They have the highest rate of no health care coverage. They face the stingiest income support system. They lack the paid-time-off-from-work entitlements that in comparison countries make it easier for single parents to balance caregiving and jobholding. They must wait longer than single parents in comparison countries for early childhood education to begin. They have a low rate of child support receipt.
See, little Johnny? If you'd wanted to eat or get some edumacation or go to a doctor sometimes, you shoulda picked a two-parent household. That'll learn ya. Because this is America, where THE CHILDREN ARE OUR FUTURE -- until they've been borned and then screw 'em -- and we do not think you should get to have those things at the taxpayers' expense because tax dollars are only for important things like bombing the shit out of countries we don't like.
If you wanted to enjoy those luxurious items, little Johnny, you should have decided to be born somewhere nice and socialistical like Sweden or Denmark or Somalia , where at least the pirates might drop some shit off for your village (oh, right, and the libertarian paradise also mandates 14 weeks maternity leave at 50 percent pay) -- you know, some un-American country that gives an eighth of a damn about assisting families. Or you should have at least picked a family that had the good sense to start socking away tons of cash for things like nannies and baby nurses and housekeepers, like this writer Hannah Seligson, who explains at the Daily Beast how she is smarter than your mom, obviously, because she and her husband started a "nanny fund" two seconds after shoving wedding cake down each other's throats.
Why? If I am going to continue “leaning in” to my career, even having a supportive husband is not enough to compensate for this dismal finding: When a husband and wife are both employed full-time, the mother does 40 percent more childcare and about 30 percent more housework than the father.
At least she knew her husband was going to be a useless bum when they finally procreated, but look, she "just did the back-of-the-napkin math," and it turns out that having a staff to help you raise your kids so you can pursue some high-powered career is really super expensive!
A full-time nanny costs around $36,868/year. Then there’s the baby nurse, because if you only take two weeks of maternity leave, as Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer did, it’s hard to work full-time and get up every three hours. That’s $1680/week ($10,080 for the six weeks). A housekeeper comes in at $25/hour. At a modest five hours a week, that’s $500 per month ($6,000 per year). Preschool in New York City can cost anywhere between $2,000 and $32,000. And full time daycare is no bargain, clocking in at $24,000.
As for those other mothers out there who are not trying to be fancy CEOs but still have to, like, have a job and stuff to support their families? Well, obviously they wouldn't even want to have baby nurses -- those are for fancy, upper-middle class white women, duh -- but that's why their kids suffer the most and will probably grow up to have kids who also suffer the most, according to Style section of the Times. Oh, if only there was something we could do about that. Something besides being smart like Ms. Seligson and preemptively starting a "nanny fund." But we can't. We absolutely cannot under any circumstances spend a single dime to help families with the cost of their child-rearing, because that would be socialism and what are we, a bunch of Hitlers? No. Hell no. This is 'Merica, damnit, so if you're too dumb to be born into a rich family with a nanny fund, you can just suck it, little Johnny. Because freedom.
I would love to see a protester outside an abortion clinic get a sudden fit of honesty: "Please don't kill your baby, ma'am. Please carry it to term and let it die any of a number of lingering easily-preventable deaths at the hands of a greedy, uncaring, callous, self-centered society."
It's tough medicine, sure, but we can disguise the moral repugnance of it by assuring ourselves that a few extra dollars in our paychecks is somehow good for America.