Motherhood should be recognized as a valid profession. It should be economically viable for a woman to stay at home and raise her own children instead of shuffling them off to someone not on our genetic ancestral line.
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Can you define what this actually means?
Can you expand on this so we can understand better what you are proposing?
Explain how recognizing motherhood as valid profession will have the result of making it economically viable for the mother to stay home and raise her own children?
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Well, personally, I took off 11 yrs. from the âworkforceâ to raise my own children & homeschool. So with one income we lived at the poverty level. I still do as my Social Security is a lot less than others. There are no perks from the gov or IRS. No validation for one of the most important jobs on the planet.
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ââŚeconomically viable for the mother to stay home and raise her own children?â Right there - those two things do not go together. I consider motherhood a divine calling that our culture needs to support. Where would we be without it? 
It all boils down to economy. Iâm 77 yrs. old and when I was little, most mothers stayed home and raised their own children and the fatherâs income was sufficient.
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Should Fatherhood be equally as recognized?
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I think a stay home Dad should be equally supported.
I consider motherhood a divine calling that our culture needs to support.
I agree. Where we may differ is what does âsupportâ look like. I believe we should encourage motherâs to stay home with their children to nurture them and for you to teach them your values. What I donât agree with is providing monetary support, except in extreme cases.
when I was little, most mothers stayed home and raised their own children and the fatherâs income was sufficient.
It was like that for me too. What we have to ask ourselves is what changed? Why is the fatherâs income no longer sufficient? Of course there are easy answers to this question. Answers like: Things are more expensive than they were then, but on the other hand wages are higher now they they were then. Or we may point out that the gap between what is earned and what things costs is greater now than it was then, this may be true. This still leaves unanswered the question of why.
In order to fix a problem we first have to understand the root cause of the problem. It would be like an engineer designing a bridge that collapses, before rebuilding the bridge the engineer first needs to understand why the first bridge collapsed. Without addressing the whys you have no hope of success.
The high prices and the wage gap, are a symptoms of the problem. Throwing money at the symptoms will not fix the problem. In the short term it will make everyone feel better, but soon that will not be enough and the money will have to be increased. It is a vicious cycle that will not end until the problem is addressed.
No, what I mean is, what does it mean for motherhood to be ârecognized as a valid professionâ?
Thank you for your reply. As far as providing monetary support, I donât think it should be like Welfare - economy isnât my strong point - but what I think is that the wage earner should get a tax break for raising children - geez, thereâs a complicated rabbit hole - taxes. There used to be a joint income tax that helped. Homeschool should be supported just like the Board of Education. Maybe community projects that involve the kids, teaching them about how to improve their community and that would save the town money that could be translated into groceries or building materials. My town wastes so much money & supplies that could really help people. Some low income people could really help governments be more thrifty and then pass that on to the people - right now the people get taxed to pay for bad money management. The waste is tremendous.
When you consider the higher quality of goods in the âold daysâ as opposed to our throw-away, buy more culture - people bought less, things lasted longer, were made in America, people were proud of their businesses, cared for their customers - we had our âgo toâ businesses usually around the corner - we supported them/they supported us (like taking our vegetables for a store credit - Walmart wonât). Low incomes came up with barter and the tax dept. ow puts that on your return. Eek every penny you can get out of low incomes to support the waste of higher incomes.
There needs to be Import regulations - for instance, on Ebay - people buy a bag of cheap parts from China and jack up the prices a lot which makes low income people order directly from China who has some amazing shipping deals that costs them way less than we pay.
Corporations are out of control - more regulations needed. They outsource manufacturing to countries who use slave labor then charge us more than most Americans can afford which feeds the credit card companies. Things are set up for the big corps but not for the people.
More and more businesses are returning to the US - yay!
Well, I hope there might be some foundational ideas there. You sure gave me something to meditate on
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We need perks - like tax breaks - funding for homeschool - more Social Security when weâre older so we donât have to live in poverty, etc.
We need sound money. Wages have not kept up with costs, and cost of living. Not even close. On top of that inflation constantly devalues what is earned and saved. Inflation is theft.
It never used to take 15 years to pay off a house 80 years ago, let alone 30.
Many people/families appear to be succeeding, but are deeply in debt. Everything they âownâ is on credit. And really the only thing they are married to is corporate jobs. Everything has to go right for 40 - 50 years in order to ever eventually own anything.
It requires a lot of self sufficiency, team work, and inter family cooperation to live well without debt.
We need perks - like tax breaks - funding for homeschool - more Social Security when weâre older so we donât have to live in poverty, etc.
The American family, in the 21st century is being crushed financially. As discussed in this thread, this is caused by many factors, the high cost of goods, wages that do not keep up with inflation, and taxes (the high cost of government).
Since the government produces NOTHING the only source of funding comes in the form of taxation, fees, tariffs, etc., in other words our government is funded primarily by money confiscated from its citizens.
Our goal is to minimize the crushing effects of the high costs of modern living. Governmental âperksâ do not do this, in fact it does the opposite. When the government provides the perk of a tax break for one group, this is always done at the expense of another group. For example, a certain group is given a tax break; however, in order to maintain the governmentâs âstandard of livingâ that income must come from someplace else. So in order to make up for the cost of the tax break it is decided an entity called âBig Corporationâ has the means to absorb the additional costs. The problem is that Big Corporation does not absorb the additional cost, they add it to the cost of goods they are producing. I should also point out that Big Corporation marks up the cost of goods by a percentage, so when their cost increased due to higher taxes, they also add profit to the new taxes imposed on them. Bottom line is the consumer is paying less in taxes, but what was saved in taxes is now being paid to Big Corporation, and we are back where we started.
I donât know what the answer is, at this point I just believe it is important not to make the problem worse. The question is what needs to be fixed? It is likely that it is not one thing, but rather a host of things that are all converging and producing the symptoms our society is experiencing.
I can agree that if a mother stays home to raise AND homeschool her children (relieving the state of the responsibility to do so) then the aspect of Homeschooling of children (not the mothering, per se) should be considered years of work towards oneâs Social Security which requires 40 quarters, I believe. I congratulate any parent who homeschoolsâproviding they really are doing so. (I know many who do so, and their kids are outstanding scholars winning many scholarships at important Universities) The teacher should be awarded 1/2 the salary credit (though not getting the actual salary) of the breadwinner in the home towards their Social Security for those years. HALF? you might say. Yesâbecause they are not actually paying anything into the Social Security system; merely saving taxpayerâs dollars by schooling their own children.
For a starting point, Social Security is a mess regardless, and it shouldnât be expected as the end-all-and-be-all of âThe government will take care of me when Iâm oldâ.
Then you have the question of why canât that âtake care of youâ be addressed by a mix of the husband and the children?
The government taxes us & invests our money in their agendas. We donât get a choice on how itâs invested or how much interest weâre receiving on OUR money. Social Security isnât welfare - itâs a return on investment.
Why should we look at our children as caretakers? And what about people who didnât have children?
IF we paid into a system, we deserve a return.
Just like the insurance scam - if youâre a good little boy or girl and you never file a claim - you deserve a return.
Thanks Bill! That was enlightening.
Well said! Another messed up thing Iâve run into are seniors who have paid off their mortgage and should be able to relax find that they canât pay their exhorbitant property taxes & have to sell.
I am a homeschooling mom and completely understand what you mean. We have chosen to live with sacrifices to raise the children in a one income home to pass on our values. Realistically though, who would pay moms? The government? Thatâs the American people. How would we get paid? I am a caregiver for my mom as well and canât get a job. I know some blue states pay those caregivers, but this is the taxpayer money. It gets tricky in that it becomes a form of socialism. On paper itâs great, but in reality it creates more problems.
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There isnât any âinvestmentâ from social security; otherwise there wouldnât be any concern about it ever running out.
Social Security works by taxing money from one group of people in order to give that money to other people who are over a certain age.
That is the entirety of how the Social Security system works.