November 12, 1999

My fellow Americans/Solanoans: Are we lame, or what? The subject du jour is recent forums of several councils, associations, and special interest groups who gathered to wring their hands about the shortage of publically sponsored child care in Solano County. They also decried how few public organizations match those of low-to-moderate incomes with high-quality babysitters.

The inevitable state of "crisis" was announced, which always means some contingent wants our money. There was the usual song and dance about severe underfunding, imminent loss of certain programs, and the requisite comparison of our county's services to those of others. In this case, we learned that Sonoma County has three times more after-school activities than we.

Whenever advocates for and employees of government programs do this number, taxpayers should be ready to use their best parenting voices to say, "If (Whatever) County let its officials throw tax dollars off the Golden Gate bridge, would you want us to allow it, too?" What really got me was descriptions of daycare jobs as a combination of demanding vocations that leaves its providers isolated and quickly burned out. Well, yeah. Been there, done that.

I can remember being the only stay-at-home mother in an entire townhouse complex where we lived back in the early Eighties. I often felt as though I'd slipped into a "Twilight Zone" episode in which no other people existed. But I kept walking the kiddies to a nearby park and slowly made a few friends who'd also chosen to live very frugally in order to raise their children themselves. Stressed, lonely, burned out? You better believe it, yet every monetarily poor moment was worth it for such an emotionally rich time with my two little boys.

Here's the thing: If people would take advantage of the abundance of free birth control, get married, and establish at least one spouse in a job that can support the family on at least a subsistence level, one parent could stay home with the kids. Or both could work, staggering their schedules to keep one parent home at any time. It can be done.

But that requires planning and unmarried parents in dire straits have refused to take responsibility for their actions. Young people who have kids and fail to marry and work together as a family--with help from the extended family and friends--shouldn't be supported in their mistakes by taxpayer-provided child care, they should be encouraged to adopt-out their children.

© 1999 Cynthia Hahn