How to End the Criminalization of America's Mothers

[Scuba]

"Our public policy suggests that women shouldn't have the audacity to parent while poor."


http://m.thenation.com/blog/181333-how-end-criminalization-americas-mothers

Nightmarish stories about about the criminalizing of motherhood have been making headlines of late. There was Shanesha Taylor, arrested on child abuse charges for leaving her kids in a car to go to a job interview; Debra Harrell, locked up for child abuse for letting her 9-year-old play at a nearby park while she worked her shift at McDonald's; Mallory Loyola, the first woman to be charged under a new Tennessee law that makes it a crime to take drugs while pregnant; and Eileen Dinino, who died serving a jail sentence because she was too poor to pay legal fees from her kids' truancy cases. Other countries provide social programs and income supports for poor single mothers; in the United States, we arrest them. This week at The Curve, we ask contributors what, in their view, is driving America's assault on mothers, and what is the remedy? —Kathleen Geier

...

I wrote at Salon about the arrests of Shanesha Taylor and Debra Harrell for not being with their children while they pursued a job and were at work, respectively. I argued there that we should see the NYPD's notorious arrest of Denise Stewart, dragged half-naked from her Brownsville apartment, and her 12-year-old daughter as part of the same pattern of criminalizing black motherhood in particular, of not just devaluing the work done by black mothers but implying that their parenting is bad, dangerous, criminal.

The demonization of poor mothers but particularly of black mothers was used to sell the "welfare reform" policy signed into law by Bill Clinton, the precise policy that made it necessary for mothers like Debra Harrell to go to work at McDonald's and not to be home with their children, a policy that shoved parents into work and did nothing to provide them with childcare. This same stereotype of the lazy bad welfare queen serves to reinforce our idea of childcare as a private responsibility rather than a community good, and thus leaves us all without a childcare system that works.



The time has come for feminists for revive the long-dormant dream of a free, universal childcare system. Getting there won't be easy, but we can start by building on efforts that are already afoot. Paid family leave, which would enable parents to take paid, job-protected leave to care for a newborn, newly adopted or sick child, is a reality in several cities and states. Just last year, Congress took a major step forward when Senator Kirsten Gillibrand and Representative Rose DeLauro introduced a bill that would create national paid family leave for American workers. Campaigns for universal pre-K are also gaining ground. President Obama supports universal pre-K and the program which already exists in some states and localities, including Georgia, Oklahoma and New York City.

[Laelth]

1. It is, indeed, time to raise the minimum wage. k&r for exposure. n/t

-Laelth

[FSogol]

2. K&R. n/t

[CrispyQ]

3. Free childcare for everyone.

"...a policy that shoved parents into work and did nothing to provide them with childcare."

The right wingers love to talk about their love for the children, but they really only love some children, the well-off, white children.

[indepat]

4. We ain't likely to see an increase in the minimum wage 'cause government is intent on keeping

its priorities in order like fostering a plutocracy by gorging the plutocrats.

[Quantess]

5. Meanwhile family planning options

Are being eroded by the republicans.

[NaturalHigh]

6. K and R

Universal healthcare and universal childcare would go a long way toward a more fair society.