Sunday Night News: June 8
Welcome to Brain, Child’s Sunday night news update where we look at issues impacting women and children. Tonight we once again hear from Your (Wo)Man in Washington, Valerie Young of the National Association of Mothers’ Centers:
- Women are wondering Will the National Women’s History Museum Ever Be Built? In spite of almost two decades of work, it doesn’t seem much closer. No taxpayer funds will be used – the whole project is privately funded. A location has been found, and donors lined up. But the Congress hasn’t even agreed to officially consider the possibility – a bill authorizing a committee to look into it has only passed the House so far. Meanwhile, in spite of women largely being read out of history, the very notion of a women’s museum sends off alarm bells for some, fearing the creation of some sort of monument to “radical feminism.” Sigh.
- It’s not too late to get on board for the White House Summit on Working Families. Sign up for updates, follow the tweets, and see what’s already happened in major cities around the country when real people talk about what policy changes they need to get to work, raise their families, and hold on to economic security. Your (Wo)Man in Washington will be at the centerpiece event on June 23, so you’ll get an eye witness report.
- Data continues to accumulate about mothers’ economic contributions. Bryce Covert writes in The Nation: “So women are doing two kinds of work that benefits us all. On the one hand, given that they are still the majority of primary caregivers, they are the ones putting in that thankless, unpaid work to raise children. That produces future workers who will fuel the economy as well as future taxpayers who will support public programs. One paper found that while parents pay less in net taxes than childless adults, the future tax contributions of their children mean that the average parent contributes $200,000 more in taxes via their kids. Then mothers, by and large, go to work for paid employment and help fuel the economy that way.” We da bomb.
- As the American Dream moves further away for a lot of people, some interesting connections are coming to light. The ability to move from one income class to another seems to be greater in areas with more family-friendly laws. An economic policy think tank, Washington Center for Equitable Growth, released a report which tracks how single mothers are doing in different parts of the country. “But the upshot of this analysis is that states with more family friendly laws, such as paid sick days so that parents can take care of sick children and relatively generous parental leave policies so that new parents can spend more time with their newborn children, are more likely to have a relatively high rates of economic mobility despite high rates of single mothers—among them California, Oregon, and Washington.”
Sources:
http://workingfamiliessummit.org/sign-up/
http://www.thenation.com/blog/179700/mothers-thankless-work-building-economy-rest-us
http://equitablegrowth.org/research/regional-look-single-moms-upward-mobility/
http://www.damemagazine.com/2014/06/02/will-national-womens-history-museum-ever-be-built
