Why isn't guaranteed maternity leave a "pro-life" imperative?

[QwertyGirl]

I don’t deflect. However, I think we were talking past eachother for a bit. No harm, no foul in that regard. This is a heavy issue.

 

[Xanthippe_Voorhees]

No, I understand it’s very hard and our working poor are on a treadmill they can’t just jump off. That’s why I said our society needs to make a shift, it’s very hard for the individual to fight the current.

a 1500 square foot house was quite large in times past btw, now it’s the bottom rung.

I know that a 1500 sqft house is enormous compared to the past. The historical villages have smaller houses where 10 or more people lived. My point is that we searched sales of the past 3-5 years (5 by the time we bought our house) and if you wanted land there was literally NO way to buy a house under 1500 sqft. Building a home isn’t an option, either, as it may have once been.

No one thing will fix things and it WILL take individuals figuring out what works for them and bucking trends to fix things. Just look at what Uber and Lyft are doing to the new car market. Those in cities with somewhat reliable public transit are giving up or never buying cars.

 

[Theo520]

Our expectation of the basics keeps rising and guarantees most will always feel they are just getting by.

 

[Xanthippe_Voorhees]

Our expectation of the basics keeps rising and guarantees most will always feel they are just getting by.

Which is pretty much what people feel for all of humanity. I know very few people who are 100% satisfied with what they own or do.

But this mindset can’t cloud that things have changed very much for the poor of the US and that fixing the issue goes far beyond defining income, sqft of living space and access to social services.

 

[Theo520]

But this mindset can’t cloud that things have changed very much for the poor of the US

Can you elaborate here?
How have they changed

 

[Xanthippe_Voorhees]

Xanthippe_Voorhees:

But this mindset can’t cloud that things have changed very much for the poor of the US

Can you elaborate here?
How have they changed

The social structure is completely different. The government has both stepped in where it shouldn’t have and withdrawn support where it needs to be.

It often acts as “father” to children of single mothers to provide food, housing assistance or welfare housing, heat and medical care. But it doesn’t fix the issue.

Better than providing food and limiting that to “healthy” food (ie WIC) would be to provide better education of healthy living in public schools. Home ec was dropped because gender-focused classes are completely wrong. However, it should be mandatory for all students to learn nutrition. Many companies have piolteated taking over free after-school programs that have had incredible success in the health of their students and overall well-being of

Better than housing assistance would be clear tax breaks funded by states and town to encourage builders making new real estate to make a dozen 1,200 sqft houses that sell for $200k rather than 3 or 4 $2400 sqft houses with garages and pools that sell for 500k. Laws that have been written about taxation have encouraged the building of grander structures over smaller ones. Require much more aggressive street planning for communities so as not to create inescapable mazes but connected pockets. Also, break down some of the zoning laws that prohibit commerce in residential areas, many put in place by NAMBY folk in the 80’s and 90’s. This created food deserts. More walkable neighborhoods would be a big boon to seniors and to families.

Regulate the right parts of energy so there are more buried electrical lines and more solar and the means to store it so people can heat their homes.

Regulate medical costs in a less arbitrary way. Insurance =/= care. Obamacare has nearly destroyed our family’s health care plans. We had an amazing one that cost around $300 a month and pay for everything. When Obama care occurred our costs went to around $700 a month with a $2000 annual per person deductible and a $8k family one. And we still pay 20% after that! It’s great that my friend who was unemployed got insurance but the cost to those in my segment of society was incredibly problematic.

 

[meltzerboy2]

Especially in places such as New York City. I know because I was once among the working poor and knew others in my situation. I was working BOTH a low-paying full-time job and a part-time job. And even though I now consider myself part of the vast middle class, it is still difficult to make ends meet.

 

[philipl]

You have no clue what your are writing. Please show any provable facts that women are less likely to be hire or more likely to be let go because they may have babies? You opinion isnt worth a hill of beans, it want proof.

 

[meltzerboy2]

Yes, in urban centers we are not talking about homes. We don’t have money to buy homes. We are fortunate if we can find rental apartments these days that we can afford. Even a one-room studio apartment costs a lot. Further, landlords are converting many rentals into co-ops which you need money to buy. This double whammy makes it difficult for the working poor to survive.

 

[runningdude]

The Pro-life message is simple: choosing life is the only moral option.

Everything else is a political issue that reasonable people could disagree upon; adding “imperatives” would only distract from the central message.

 

[QContinuum]

Yes, and part of that is more people competing for jobs now that women, by and large, are not homemakers.

And those women who work spend more money and create more demand for services, in turn creating more need for jobs. They also create a demand for childcare, early education, house cleaning, grocery delivery, textiles (need work clothing), automobile purchases and maintenance (need a car for work), etc., etc.

You eliminate working women from the economy, immediately you reduce the size of it by half. If women wholesale checked out of the workforce, we’d be in chaos.

I suspect a large reason for why the costs of living shot up were due to inflation, secondary to a fiat monetary system that is completely divorced from any real value since Nixon fully eliminated the gold standard in the 1970’s.

 

[Pup7]

a 1500 square foot house was quite large in times past btw, now it’s the bottom rung.

That depends on where you live.

Here in the PNW existing construction for a 1500 sq ft house - not even in a fancy neighborhood - can set you back more than $300K. With no yard and street frontage. Needing work.

And that’s cheap. These aren’t fancy homes. These are middle class entry neighborhoods.

Rent isn’t much better. Hence my living on base up here. I don’t want to deal with the real estate market because it’s ridiculous, and I have no idea how the average Tacoma resident does it.

I suspect a large reason for why the costs of living shot up were due to inflation, secondary to a fiat monetary system that was completely divorced from any real value since Nixon eliminated the gold standard completely in the 1970’s.

Exactly. It has nothing to do with ChaosGamma’s assertion that it’s because women entered the workforce en masse.

The Pro-life message is simple: choosing life is the only moral option.

Everything else is a political issue that reasonable people could disagree upon; adding “imperatives” would only distract from the central message.

Maybe, but it seems counterproductive to say “choose life” and then say “but we’re really not going to back or even entertain anything that might make that option more attractive or even somewhat easier for you because that’s a political issue”.

Pro-choice crowds have indeed turned abortion into a political issue, have they not?

Plenty of reasonable people are pro-choice, for that matter.

 

[runningdude]

Plenty of reasonable people are pro-choice, for that matter.

Well, no. Abortion is an inherently unreasonable option.

Maybe, but it seems counterproductive to say “choose life” and then say “but we’re really not going to back or even entertain anything that might make that option more attractive or even somewhat easier for you because that’s a political issue”.

That’s not it at all. The OP asked why a specific, individual proposal was not a moral mandate.

The only moral mandate is to choose life. Everything else is subject to discretion.

 

[Vonsalza]

You have no clue what your are writing. Please show any provable facts that women are less likely to be hire or more likely to be let go because they may have babies? You opinion isnt worth a hill of beans, it want proof.

Please actually read the content you’re responding to before crafting your response.

I wasn’t talking about young women in general. I was talking about expecting and recent mothers. And the evidence that they have hiring issues is to be found in spades. Of course, in a world where flat-earthers seem to be making a comeback, what one accepts as evidence can be very subjective.

But back to my main point; high literacy is an assumed given in written dialogue. Please read what you’re responding to before responding.

 

[JanetF]

Yes. For many hundreds of years, Catholic women have had babies (and not abortions) without any maternity leave at all.
Apparently “full time homemaker” is not the cherished and honored role it once was. Maybe that needs to change.

True that women have had babies without any maternity leave at all in the past, but the economy of the world has changed, and unfortunately most families require two incomes to function adequately. I would have loved to have stayed home with my daughter when she was little, but I needed things like health insurance which my job provided including for my self-employed husband. The full-time homemaker role is still cherished IMHO, it’s just not economically feasible as it once was.

 

[anon10271182]

So, either people were economically better off in the past, or they simply got by with less?

So much for progress in the “post-Christian world,” yes?

 

[philipl]

was talking about expecting and recent mothers.

Even in the government sector my wife works in, she knew darn good and well that applying for a different position was a practical impossibility when we were still having kids.

The above are both from YOUR post. So unless your wife remained pregnant then you werent only talking about

expecting and recent mothers

In a highly competitive employment setting, she’s less in-the-game late in the pregnancy and completely out-of-the-game for months afterward.

Over the past 30 years I have known dozens and dozens of pregnant women, my wife had two children while working in the corp world. None of them lost their jobs. Yes they are at a disadvantage when they return to work because they have been out for 12 weeks, but that is no different than someone who goes into the hospital for surgery and is out recovering for 3 months. The companies that I worked for Pregnant women were treated better. They were paid 100% of their salaries, but people that go on disability only received 60% at least where I have worked.

Not an attractive employee, particularly on long projects. I completely understand why, from a purely business perspective, pregnant women are bad investments. Of course, you don’t let them go due to pregnancy. That’s illegal. You let them go because you needed to scale back or because she was a poor fit. And you made completely sure that “pregnant” wasn’t present on any correspondence that could be traced to you in the discovery period prior to court.

so no proof is proof.

Of course, in a world where flat-earthers seem to be making a comeback, what one accepts as evidence can be very subjective.

You are right here, the only evidence you can produce is anecdotal and is very subjective.

 

[philipl]

People got by with less.

 

[anon10271182]

That’s my gut reaction too. It’s a materialism issue, at least in part. And I’m not picking on mothers here–I think we’re all infected with materialism today.

 

[philipl]

But material things are not a bad thing. It is when people place material things (wants) over what they need to have. If you cant pay your electric bill yet you have a cell phone bill with a $800 smartphone you are wrong. If you can not pay for food and yet you smoke, you are wrong. If you can not pay for kids cloths and yet you have tats all over your body, you are wrong. Buy material things isnt bad if you can afford them. It is a good thing. It provides jobs and improves the economy.