If mum didn't work, we'd starve.

[HereSince1628]

[stray cat]

1. A truth for most of life

[Warpy]

3. And all of human history

PBS ran a series of time travel shows a few years ago, and one of those shows covered pioneer families on the prairie. An important part of family income was made by the women, working within the home producing bakery goods, butter, cheeses, jams and jellies, knitted and sewn goods. When the crops failed, as they so often did on the prairie, that was the only income.

Abandoned women did laundry for bachelor men in the area, yeoman ranchers or farm hands. Laundry was a family enterprise, requiring the cutting of firewood and hauling of much water, not to mention making the soap and doing the actual laundry when all the materials were assembled. It was a miserable way to feed one's children.

Women have always had to work and most women had to do it for income. The only difference now is that women have to leave their homes to do it, necessitating arrangements to have children cared for in their absence.

[Book Lover]

4. Word!

[Cleita]

5. Not only that in hunter/gatherer societies, if the men don't

bring home the meat, it's the nuts, roots, fruit and small game that the women bring home, because a lot of it can be stored, that feeds them until the next hunt.

[HereSince1628]

2. True. n/t

[DiverDave]

6. Mom took care of 4 kids by herself

she was a waitress, and, yeah, we were poor.
But I cannot say that I went hungry.
RIP Ma, you did good.

[TexasObserver]

7. I blame the high arrest and incarceration rates.

In the past 30 years, there has been a juggernaut to criminalize many men and boys of the underclasses. Demonizing those men and boys has served well those who use fear to motivate voters to give money and power to those who seek it. That fear drives the quest to stop, search, arrest, convict and incarcerate millions of young men.

These arrests drain subcultures of resources required to fight such prosecutions and prevent many men from supporting their families. Women are left to take up the slack. If they take aid, they can't make much working. If they work, they probably can't get aid. Every way they turn, there's not enough money, and not enough daddies.

We incarcerate at least twice as many as we need to incarcerate, and we arrest ten times as many as we need to arrest. It's a factory that eats up young men and tears up their families.

[cutlassmama]

8. +1

[TexasObserver]

9. It's also about disqualifying those men from voting.