insomnomaniac

Stay-at-home-Mom's United?

Back when I wrote this post, in honor of last Mother's Day to be exact, I didn't expect to receive any responses from anyone. Well I never did get a response from the President (not even the form letter...*sniff*), but I did get a lovely note from a reader who agreed with me and who--despite living in Hillary-territory--is no fan of the left-leaning "soccer-mom"-mocking, illegal "undocumented worker"-defending crowd (poor thing must feel trapped in hell every time she leaves her house or turns on the local news).

She is on board with the notion that we SAHMs need to do something, but neither of us can figure out what that something IS! We agree (it seems) on the following:

• Being overtaxed is killing the middle class, and SAHMs and their families are feeling the pinch the most


• Taxes are forcing some to go back to work just to pay the taxe burden, while others opt out of working entirely to avoid it (welfare moms), and still others leave jobs because they don't pay enough to cover the costs associated with leaving kids to be raised by others AND the taxes on that second income


• If we had some of the money currently going to taxes back, the entire society would be better off, not just our families

What do I mean? How would me having more discretionary income help society at large? Well, let's assume first that I'm a good mom, and that my husband is a good dad. We love and want to spend quality time with our kids--time that includes teaching them right from wrong, polite from impolite, hard-work from laziness, caring and compassion from callousness and English from gibberish, for a start anyway!

Then let's assume that having more discretionary income would mean we'd be better able to:

• Save for their education, so they'd rely less on gov't (i.e., taxpayer subsidized) loans and grants


• Spend time supervising their homework, peer interaction, Internet usage and diet, all of which could end up--if left unattended to--costing the government (i.e., the taxpayers of our society) more money later in the form of remediation efforts ranging from federally funded tutoring, to lost productivity due to obesity-related illness and early death, all the way to more police and bigger prisons for kids who turn to crime (or needlessly become victims of it, as in Internet and other predators)


• Expose our kids to a wider variety of experiences--educational and recreational--that would hopefully stimulate true tolerance and imagination, thus making them better able to compete in a global marketplace of ideas


• Feel more in control of our destinies, less bitter, happier and thus better able to be good examples for our kids to follow. Does this country really need MORE people on anti-depressant medication or in rehab?


• Argue to our kids that we live somewhere worth fighting for. Ours is still an all-volunteer military, and if our kids see their parents coming home late, beleaguered and bereft of joy, having worked for several months out of a year just to pay the "government," how willing will they be to defend what they perceive to BE that government in a time of war? (Answer? Not very, we see it already)

Bottom line? We know we need policies in place to support families--in particular middle-class families in which one parent (usually mom) stays home to do the job the family signed up for when they brought kids into this society. Their decision should be commended, to be sure, but if that's not the job of government (and it's not), then it should at least be REGOGNIZED from a realpolitik perspective, shouldn't it? Shouldn't someone sit down and calculate just how much LESS the government would have to spend of OUR MONEY if this happened?

Problem is, the government won't do it because it is OUR MONEY. They want us to continue being forced to give it TO THEM. Who are THEY? They are the ones with less than no incentive to let us keep our coin, so how do we do it? What is the carrot (or the stick)?

My suggestion was--for starters--that we (SAHMS and SAHDS)--simply stand up and be counted. We need to first make it impossible for the politicians to continue to define us as "soccer moms" who have plenty of money and time to kill, and who are naive, ignorant or myopic (as in only care about choice or school funding) when it comes to policy making. We need them to see that--first and foremost--we are HOME ECONOMISTS. We know what we spend, where and why, and we control the purse strings. We may not earn the money, but we say where it goes once we get it--after taxes--so why not let those who are taxing us fight to get what they get in the first place?

To me, standing up and being counted is the first battle. Anyone have any other bright ideas? The President and Wall Street can insist all day long and twice on Sundays that the economy is going gangbusters, but SAHMs aren't feeling it. And if we aren't feeling it, you can bet our families aren't either. And if our families aren't, well then, you have what's commonly called a "low opinion" of the government in charge!

There's no such thing as a "base" that doesn't include SAHMs, no such thing as a constituency that matters without us, and yet as a group we are largely SILENT. Why????

Well I say it's about time we spoke up. How? I'm working on that, but I'd appreciate any and all feedback from y'all as to how exacty to do it!

Posted by insomnomaniac at May 11, 2006 11:40 AM | TrackBack