Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!orion.oac.uci.edu!ucivax!gateway
From: turpin@cs.utexas.EDU (Russell Turpin)
Newsgroups: soc.feminism
Subject: Re: (Sharing the costs of) Child making and rearing
Summary: Government aid to computer programmers is not made
	 sensible merely because some programmers are poor.
Message-ID: <11145@cs.utexas.edu>
Date: 13 Aug 90 23:15:56 GMT
References: <KFLETCHE.90Aug1204607@sun222.nas.nasa.gov> <10848@cs.utexas.edu> <3047@dftsrv.gsfc.nasa.gov>
Organization: U. Texas CS Dept., Austin, Texas
Lines: 37
Approved: tittle@ics.uci.edu
Nntp-Posting-Host: blanche.ics.uci.edu

-----

In article <3047@dftsrv.gsfc.nasa.gov>, xrarp@amarna.gsfc.nasa.gov (Aliza R. Panitz) writes:
> No!  We are not subsidizing the *parents*.  We are subsidizing the
> *children*.  Although the subsidies end up disproportionately in
> the hands of the voting-majority middle class, I would be willing
> to argue that the greatest INCREMENTAL improvement in standard of
> living is to lower-class and poor children.  For example, parental
> leave and subsidized day-care become much more important in a
> single-parent home.

Both versions of the federal day-care bill include requirements
that states enforce various regulations that may shutdown most
day-care provided from the caregiver's home.  This kind of
day-care is much used by poorer mothers, and also provides some
of them an income.  It is far from clear that these bills will
provide a greater incremental improvement to poor children than
to middle-class parents.

There is a more important point here.  One cannot justify a
program by appealing to benefits that are secondary to both
its goal and the effort put forth.  For example, social security
cannot be justified as welfare for the aged poor, because social
security benefits are not means tested and in point of fact, most
people over sixty-five are not poor.  If one's only objection to
ending social security is that a part of its effect is to help
the aged poor, then one does NOT have an argument for continuing
social security.  Instead, one has an argument for *replacing*
social security with a welfare program aimed at the aged poor.

It is possible to structure programs that benefit poor children
without subsidizing parenting in general.  Government programs
that subsidize parenting in *general* create a political
opposition of interests between parents and non-parents.  It is
these programs that are at issue.

Russell