I appreciate this thoughtful discussion about care work (found you, Leah, via Gracy Olmstead, and found Gracy via Joe Waters at Capita).
For decades, I've been involved in the grassroots nonprofit organization Family and Home Network (original name: Mothers at Home). With our Campaign for Inclusive Family Policies, we call for policymakers to turn away from the focus on 'working families' and instead make policy for all families. Families with children paid no taxes in the 50s and 60s, due to the value of the exemption, which wasn't pegged to inflation so its value eroded over time (it was adjusted somewhat in the 1990s but not to its comparable value and it wasn't pegged to inflation).
Recent decades have seen a focus on "working families" which grew out of advocacy for working mothers. There is a lot of money and power devoted to advocacy for working families as well as to shaping public opinion. Claims are made that all families want child care. Statistics on employment and mothers are misused. Surveys of parents themselves (see Pew Research Center) show most parents don't want their infants and toddlers in full-time child care.
One inclusive policy proposal is pending in both the Senate and House: The American Family Act of 2019-20 (S.690; HR1560). It would increase the value of the child tax credit, make it fully refundable and payable monthly - and millions of families with children would be lifted out of poverty.
Many other policy proposals are not inclusive - when it comes to the care of children, funding 'child care for all' without funding for parents doing the care themselves is discriminatory. This is our Campaign for Inclusive Family Policies:
We have been meeting with the Global Women's Strike (which grew out of the Wages for Housework Campaign) and the Women of Colour in GWS - including the founder of Wages for Housework, Selma James. Family and Home Network endorsed their Care Income Now! letter to governments:
I appreciate this thoughtful discussion about care work (found you, Leah, via Gracy Olmstead, and found Gracy via Joe Waters at Capita).
For decades, I've been involved in the grassroots nonprofit organization Family and Home Network (original name: Mothers at Home). With our Campaign for Inclusive Family Policies, we call for policymakers to turn away from the focus on 'working families' and instead make policy for all families. Families with children paid no taxes in the 50s and 60s, due to the value of the exemption, which wasn't pegged to inflation so its value eroded over time (it was adjusted somewhat in the 1990s but not to its comparable value and it wasn't pegged to inflation).
Recent decades have seen a focus on "working families" which grew out of advocacy for working mothers. There is a lot of money and power devoted to advocacy for working families as well as to shaping public opinion. Claims are made that all families want child care. Statistics on employment and mothers are misused. Surveys of parents themselves (see Pew Research Center) show most parents don't want their infants and toddlers in full-time child care.
One inclusive policy proposal is pending in both the Senate and House: The American Family Act of 2019-20 (S.690; HR1560). It would increase the value of the child tax credit, make it fully refundable and payable monthly - and millions of families with children would be lifted out of poverty.
Many other policy proposals are not inclusive - when it comes to the care of children, funding 'child care for all' without funding for parents doing the care themselves is discriminatory. This is our Campaign for Inclusive Family Policies:
https://familyandhome.org/articles/campaign-inclusive-family-policies
We have been meeting with the Global Women's Strike (which grew out of the Wages for Housework Campaign) and the Women of Colour in GWS - including the founder of Wages for Housework, Selma James. Family and Home Network endorsed their Care Income Now! letter to governments:
https://globalwomenstrike.net/careincomenow/
On your first question, about managers looking at care work, this tweet has been making the rounds! Lots of good comments about including care work on resumes: https://twitter.com/heatherbarr1/status/1328394978914131971