Obama's War on Homemakers

[Valin]

Bloomberg View:

Ramesh Ponnuru

Jan 22, 2015

 

Democrats have a knack for stumbling into trouble with mothers who aren't in the paid labor force.

 

In the late 1990s, Senator Chris Dodd said that being a full-time homemaker was a "wonderful luxury" for women who "want to go play golf or go to the club and play cards." In 2012, Democratic talking head Hilary Rosen had to apologize after saying that Ann Romney, who raised five sons, had "never worked a day in her life." And a few months ago, President Barack Obama seemed to suggest that for mothers to leave the labor force for a few years is "not a choice we want Americans to make."

 

I don't think Obama meant to say that all women should keep working through their children's first years. But Democrats do seem to have a blind spot -- to put it charitably -- about women who choose differently, and about some of the realities of family life.

 

Two of Obama's new proposals reflect this blindness.

 

(Snip)

 

 

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I have this vision of my mother or grandmother talking to Chris Dodd. Neither of these women suffered fools well...or for long.

[Cyber_Liberty]

FTA:

 

Given these preferences, it would make more sense to enlarge the child tax credit -- not the child-care credit -- and let parents use it as they see fit rather than requiring them to use the commercial day care most of them try to avoid. Some of them, it's true, might use the extra money to let one parent scale back from full-time to part-time work, or from part-time work to leaving the labor force.

 

I can see what the liberals' problem is with simply extending the tax credit. As Ramesh says, "let parents use it as they see fit." Relinquishing that power is something the left simply cannot abide. Parents might make "the wrong choices." They might refuse to enrich the commercial day-care centers. (I like his characterization "commercial day-care.")