Readings for Thursday's Show: The Child Care Crisis

The Child Care Crisis by Ruth Rosen

"What kind of society have we become? Before members of Congress departed for recess, they gave President George W. Bush—hardly known for his wisdom or compassion—the right to define what constitutes torture and to suspend the constitutional right of habeas corpus. But our elected representatives couldn’t find time to pass the Labor, Health and Human Service appropriations bill which, among things, funds child care."

The Care Crisis by Ruth Rosen
"A baby is born. A child develops a high fever. A spouse breaks a leg. A parent suffers a stroke. These are the events that throw a working woman's delicate balance between work and family into chaos."

What The Daycare Crisis and the Housing Meltdown Have in Common
"Many would argue that figuring out the logistics and cost of child care is up to individual families; if that burden falls harder on women and people lower down the income pyramid, so be it. This notion—that American individualism is incompatible with shared responsibility—is a shopworn talking point of the Chamber of Commerce set. We confront a related fallacy when it comes to the economic crisis. It has been presented as if the problem were one of homeowners too stupid to live within their means, when in fact, in the absence of sensible regulation, financial institutions chose not to live within theirs. Yes, maybe we were all kidding ourselves when we fell for the home-equity sales pitches; surely we were anxious for economic security at a time of vaporizing pensions and disappearing jobs. But let's not forget that the financiers who sold us this fantasy were taking out the equivalent of gargantuan home-equity loans—only without even an overleveraged house to back them up. Talk about irresponsible borrowing."