Response # 10

The adaptive measures that chaudry subjects used to over come the welfare reform act were stressful recoveries for a woman who is trying to make a living not only for herself, but her family. The major adaption was the use of Kin care. Kin care is the basic of childcare. Asking someone whom you may know through family or may not know at all to watch your child. This became very hard for people to use this type of childcare due to the inconsistency. They caretakers were not always the most educated people and often times were not very friendly to the mothers. Many mothers couldn’t turn to family to watch their children because there was so much tension between them.

One of chaudry’s interviewees was a women form Guatemala. She moved to New York City to live with her mother so her child would be born in the US. This would giver her child the opportunities that she never had. Her and her mother did not get along very well and therefore, she could not use her mother as a babysitter for her young daughter. So therefore, she had to turn to kin care. She found Puerto Rican women who lived down the hall form her mother, which made it very convenient while she tried to finish school. This woman took very good care of her young daughter. Her daughter was also very content even though she was very young. The babysitter also did not take any money and if she did it was around $5 a day. After a few months pasted, the babysitter began to convey comments to the baby’s mother on how she was not suitable to be the baby’s mother anymore. She was to young and would never be able to support the baby. This began to worry the mother very much. Finally, the mother was showed a stack of paper that was written by the baby sitter relinquishing all parental rights from her child to the babysitter. This scared the mother dearly. She began to worry tremendously while she was at school if her baby was going to be there when she got home.

Some of the recommendations that Chaudry uses to help with this problem were, increase available care options and supports for families and infants, make educational investments to foster early childhood developments, improve access to child care systems and promote continuity in care, and provide child care assistance to all eligible families.

All of these options would help mothers who are trying to get solid ground underneath them not have to worry about the burden of childcare, their children could be watched by people of education and integrity. There would not have to be a continues search for who will be the next childcare watcher. Nor would they have to worry about whether or not their children are in good watch while they are away at work or school. This would alleviate the kin care option and help ease the family’s tension that may exist due to the hostile environment that may exist between families. Chaudry, gives these recommendations with the hope that one day some of these will be implemented into the poor working woman’s life. We cannot keep suppressing women by giving them hurdles that are impossible to overcome. As we try to solve the poverty issue through this country and world there needs to be multiple factors that are taken into account. We cannot settle on the simple fact that poor people are lazy and that’s why they are there. We also cannot pass policies that prevent woman and other people from becoming something other than government provided lives. We live in one of the most sophisticated countries in the world and yet, we have millions of children who go to bed hungry every night, living on the street, and moving from home to home. This is unacceptable and ignorant for our country to let in continue. We are not all born with the same opportunities but however, our government should be providing us every possibility for that to happen. If we continue to overlook this situation it will only become a larger problem than it already is.