UNIT B: Blog 7 : Working Poor Women’s Paid Labor

Blog #7

When Julia gave birth to Jacqueline days after her family consisting of themselves, her two other children and Jacqueline’s father were granted a housing arrangement. At this time was getting public assistance, but wanted to get off welfare so she started to attend community college. One factor that contributed to her instability for child care was the fact that she didn’t have money and was living on assistance. While she started college the first child care arrangement was with Jacqueline’s father who watched her and Julia’s two other children. After her first semester Julia and Jacqueline’s father broke up and Julia took care of the children during the summer because she was still on assistance. Later she reflected that this was one of the hardest points in her life because they did not have food stamps and starved, and she had no way of getting money. During the next semester of college Julia’s sister moved in with them to help, but again this was only temporary because after five months she couldn’t anymore because of her own work related issues. Another factor that caused her instability was the fact that she not longer had family members that she could turn to.

At this point she had no options for child care so she tried to an Agency for Child Development and was put at the bottom of the list. This forced her to work more and be the primary care provider for her child which in turn caused her to stop attending classes at the community college. Through the Work Experience Program (WEP) she was able to get child care benefits which let her use family day care and let her go back to school. Another instability issue with her child care was the fact that WEP was late on payments for the family child care and this made Julia pay for their mistakes. After this she used a nanny which stayed with them for a while, but in the end she could not afford the $8 an hour that she had to pay. She then had no choice, but to leave her children with their grandmother who was ill.

In Chapter 3 this story was picked because as the author states, it was a information and good story to show how unstable child care is for mothers that are living in poverty, welfare, and trying to get out by bettering themselves, but them system of child care providers keeps brings them back down. The fact is that women that are not making enough money, working in minimum wage jobs, and have no other options that choices for good child care are slim to none. This is shown in Julia’s case. Julia was working at a burger place where she got minimum wage, her expenses and debt were adding up so she had o get rid of the only care provider that she and her daughter actually liked; she could not afford the good and quality child care the she needed. In “7 days @ Minimum wage” Jessica has four children that she has been raising for 16 years and she makes minimum wage at only $5.25 an hour. She is living in a very low income neighborhood, does not eat some nights so her children can, can not afford to shop at anything but thrift stores and can not get out of her minimum wage living. She goes to work early and stay hours late, but yet she does not get paid more. She can not find a higher paying job because they will only pay her what her occupation job is paying her. So, she is stuck in a cycle of minimum wage work life. She is a hard worker that does anything and everything to get ahead, but she can not get out.