With all due respect I do not believe that Democratic candidates sound like traditional sexists. Rather they get boxed in exactly on the issue of taxes or rather the idea that they are going to increase taxes on the bulk of taxpayers in order to help a select group of beneficiaries. Social Security and Medicare are so popular because as social insurance programs they take some from everyone and benefit everyone.

As an aside I do not think women can demand both the right to full employment equality and also extra family leave and other benefits because they are women. Setting aside the justice of demanding both sides it is a good way to alien white men and give Republicans a lock on their vote.

It seems to me that all these issues have to be looked at from an insurance perspective and demonstrating that not just the costs but the benefits will be spread to everyone in society.

I agree with much of what you wrote.  Have you read the Two-Income Trap  by Elizabeth Warren?  Do you agree with what she wrote?

I'm a stay-at-home mother so perhaps I don't quite identify.  I attempted to work part-time but stopped due to too little pay for too much time.

There is no one, repeat, no one I can turn to when my child is ill.  Either my husband or I must stay home with her.  We have no family living nearby and my friends, with children of their own, are unwilling to help in this way. 

Many of the highly-paid two-career couples in this town employ 9-5 nannies which seems to work reasonably well, but that's an expensive option.  Business trips are still a problem even with this set-up. 

In the two-career couples that I know, one is the designated parent.  Whenever a crisis hits, that's the parent who takes time off or juggles their schedule.  A practical but unattractive solution since only one spouse takes the career hit due to putting family ahead of the job. 

I would dearly love to work part-time.  I may have an opportunity as my daughter gets older but I will continue to be the designated parent to protect my husband's career.

I think this post is spot on.  The Republicans have done a great job with tax rhetoric, and we need a clear and simple statement on this front.  What is more, all working class Americans see big chunks of their pay checks going to health, retirement, and housing--if they have any insurance or retirement planning!  Tuition is climbing throough the roof.  The social safety net is unraveling.  Why don't we have a coherent national party message on these things?  It would be 3 or 4 talking points, and all of them would resonate with "middle America" where the crisis is hitting right now.

We are not going to succeed in reducing federal spending. If you look carefully at the federal budget you will find that eliminating all programs entirely other than the military, entitlements, and interest on the debt, does virtually nothing to the size of the budget. Increasingly, the federal budget is for those three things only, and interest on the debt will go up drastically due to Bush's irresponsible tax cuts, which will eventually drive up the interest rate. Unless we can persuade the voters that government is a solution to some major problems, and is worth the price, there is no solution to the rapidly rising national debt, and no wiggle room to introduce more government programs.

We should cut defense spending significantly. We'd have fewer wars that way. Remember, the founders distrusted standing armies for a reason.

 Children are an enormous benefit to all society, and those who don't have kids should be picking up a lot of the cost of raising them. I'm not sure about the practicality of trying to legislate some kind of better balance between work and family life.  However, the problem might be addressed more efficiently by simply raising the incomes of families with children so they can live comfortably on one income. (What an innovation, a return to what we basically had 40 years ago.) With that in hand, families could make their own adjustments. 

I don't think this is quite fair. I've advocated for three things, one of which is primarily for people who are unemployed or underemployed (safety net) and one for all Americans, working or not, that helps them get healthcare coverage, pay for their and their kids eduction, build retirement security, and ensure affordable housing. That seems to be a lot that benefits everyone, poor and middle class.

The only thing I'm not as excited about is some kind of program to facilitate work-life balance. The reason is simple: what you're asking for is the right to work shorter hours without it affecting your career. I think that's a fairly unreasonable demand.  There are tradeoffs in life. Easy, cheap access to dependent care is one thing I might support (it helps people with their parents' care as well as their childrens' care)--maybe that should be the fifth item on my list. However, shorter work hours for everyone (without some offsetting sacrifice of career opportunities or wages) I think is a pipe dream.  

Cutting defense spending isn't that easy either. So much of it is for salaries and benefits for soldiers, for maintenance of equipment, for military bases that are the whole economy in many small cities, etc. It is also political suicide to cut defense spending when democrats do it.

You're free to believe what you want to believe and I'm free to believe what I want. Just don't tell me your belief is better than mine and I should therefore subsidize yours.

Skimmed the article (didn't read it all)--but the impact of population is a combination of two variables: number of people and average consumption of resources. It is true that population growth is slowing (though it's still growing), but consumption rates are increasing at very fast rates.  The impact on the environment is growing greater. Just wait till we run out of oil in the next couple of decades . . .

That's a silly thing to say. Nobody is asking you to raise their kids. That's like me saying "Please dont' ask me to foot the bill for your retirement." Because as a 26 year old, that's what I'm currently doing. I don't have a choice. It's called paying one's dues. 

Children are the youngest "workers": I dont' know why people in this thread can't identify them as such, like labor economists often do. This isn’t a personal/ “lifestyle” thing, so let that go. Collectively, we commit resources to raising and educating kids; not because they're cute, or because it is morally correct, but because we have a strategic interest in having the best workforce in the world. We also need someone to pay for our retirement and health care in old age--that's them. Kids do that. They also add to the risk pool for things like health insurance, thus driving older people’s costs down.

You can make snide comments about the "personal responsibility/choice" that goes into parenthood, but that does nothing to reduce our collective—purely economic—need for children. And in America, people are having fewer of them. Fiscally, that's very bad news in the not-so-long run for the U.S.--look at Japan, if you think I'm overstating things.

Frankly, from a purely economic perspective, childless people get the best society has to offer, without paying any of it back. Take this from a review of the Phillip Longman book referenced further down the thread:

 “One study finds that it costs $200,000 to raise a middle-class child these days, and some estimates place the "opportunity cost" of having a child -- lost wages, lower pensions, etc. -- at $1 million. Meanwhile, Social Security spreads the wealth generated by younger generations to all of the elderly, including the childless. One group raises children, but everyone gains from their labor. "To put it bluntly," Longman writes, "child-rearing is fast becoming a sucker's game."

No wonder some are opting out. Low fertility rates have reached crisis proportions in Western Europe, but even in the United States the current child-bearing generation is not producing enough progeny -- an average of roughly 2.1 per couple -- to replace itself. As a result, while today there are 3.3 workers for every retiree, in 2030 there may be 2. Worse, Longman argues, there's a correlation between youth and entrepreneurial verve. The older an economy skews, the less productive it is.”

Bringing this back to family-friendly workplace policies: American professional culture has become deeply incompatible with child-raising. No longer do people work 40 hour weeks, they work 50 or 60 with time on the cell phone and the email and the Blackberry, and fewer jobs qualify for overtime pay to offset the additional hours. The bright line that once existed between work and home life isn’t there anymore. Also, you make a very neat assumption that families can just lose one income stream when a couple decides to have children—one parent just drop out to stay at home. Take a look at bare bones employment statistics—not personal anecdotes. That is simply not an option for many, many Americans.  Nor do we offer comprehensive supports to families to offset the steep cost of raising children—a la comprehensive (universal) child care, for one. 

We need people to keep having kids, and it is in our economic self-interest to make that as viable an option as possible for Americans.  I don’t know why this is so hard to understand. Think like economists. Or hell, if you can't do that, then like cynical political strategists. For Democrats, this is an untapped resevoir of very intense concern that has not yet been activated in the political sphere. We can go a lot further than Family Leave.

Here! Here! I'm sorry, I'm sick of people with kids expecting those of us without kids to bend over backwards to help them raise their kids. Like no one in the world ever had children before!

My wife and I made a reasoned decision not to have children--because we had other priorities in our lives. Constantly, though, our siblilngs with children expect us to "babysit" for their kids--because we have "all this free time" that they don't have. Well no. We made a choice in our lives that we didn't want to have kids, precisely so we'd have that time to do other things that are more important to us. They made a different decision. I can respect theirs (kids are great, I know, and I think it's a wonderful choice if that's what you're into). But please, respect my decision. If I had wanted to babysit kids, I would have had or adopted my own. And if I happen to get a promotion because I work 85 hours a week, well maybe I deserve that over you, because you're only working 35.  Hopefully the tradeoff is worth it for you. You have great kids. I have more money and status at work. I think a lot of people would choose the great kids over the money and status. And I have no problem with that. But you can't expect to have everything, all the time, great kids and a great career unless, well, you're willing to put in very long hours. Life isn't that easy.

Anyway, I know I'm ranting a bit on this, but I keep hearing this same "my kids are the center of the universe" attitude from 30- and 40-something yuppies with children and it's starting to bug me.

By the way, I'm perfectly happy to help out poorer people (and poorer relatives) pay for their kids' education and health care with my additional money from my successful career. And I take my nieces and nephews (and neighbors' kids) fishing whenever I get a chance. And my wife buys them clothes and books and lets them sleep over at our house for fun (they really love their iconoclastic aunt). It's not that we're Mr. and Mrs. Scrooge. We just made different choices that give us more freedom to do other things with our time. Please respect that and don't tell me your kids are so damn important . . . and we should all have to accomodate you and them all the time just because you've got 'em and we don't.

Oh, and one other thing, since I'm thinking about my grandmother and what she endured. The women who come in to my office when I'm there late at night and clean the floors--those are the women I really want to help with my money. They are the one's I think deserve the breaks. My colleagues making six figure salaries who may not get to be EVP because they have kids. Well, no. I'm not so interested in worrying about their careers and accomodating them.

It's so weird that this is such a personal thing for people--nobody here is going to show up on your doorstep tomorrow with 3 kids and say "Here, it's your duty that you care for my children. See ya."
This isn't about "beliefs" or "lifestyle" decisions. If that were so, then I'd be entirely justified in saying, "Listen. You're entitled to your lifestyle and preferences, but since you're older, I'd prefer not to pool my risk with you when it comes time to pay my health insurance. No hard feelings, I just don't belive I should have to risk spending more to accomodate you older people."
Or: "I'm not going to pay in to Social Security because I  have quite a bit of money already, and I'll be fine in retirement. No offense, but I'd rather not spend my cash on you and your wife. I mean, you could have saved for your own retirement. It's not like you didn't know you'd get old one day."
See how absurd this sounds? Medicare and Social Security are not for everyone--they're for old people. Work/family supports can be for people with young children.  Yes, we'll all grow old some day. But we all started out as children, in families, that needed support in various ways--college loans, child tax credits, etc. You're not exempt from that experience simply because you chose not to have children later on.  Living in a democracy means that sometimes you don't directly benefit from every single program your tax dollars are spent on. There's no cafeteria plan for social investment. That's just the fact of the matter. 
Overall, children are not a choice. They're a necessity. Societies need them to replace their parents when they grow sick and old. Nobody is setting out to compromise your citizenship because you chose not to have children. So you're childless! Who gives a damn? What does that have to do with anything? I'm childless too, I very well may be for the rest of my life. I'm 26, and have no plans to turn into a 30-40 year old yuppie any time soon. But this isn't about me, and it's not about you. 
Besides, your example doesn't make a lick of sense. This isn't about Big Government putting her thumb on the scale of personal professional achievement. Nobody is talking about taking away your promotion, for pete's sake. But it is it such a sacrifice to offer a woman her position back after she takes a maternity leave? Is it such a huge deal to offer families subsidized or universal child care so that two parents can work and sustain their family? Will it be taking the skin off your back to support a law protecting a parent from being fired if he/she refuses to work overtime because they have a child to care for? This isn't about yuppies, and this isn't about people who (annoyingly, I agree) make their children into little kings and queens at the center of the universe. Can we just refrain from penalizing hard-working people for having children, of all things? Take a good hard look at what labor economists have to say about economic stability, and about what (economically) it takes to raise a family today. And then look at how that has changed from 50 years ago. So maybe it was enough for your parents to get a tax credit and a college loan when they raised you. Times change, economies and workplace cultures change. It takes more than that today.
It's not about having the Best Job or the Best Promotion--good grief. For many, many Americans it's about not falling through the cracks. 

Listen to what I'm advocating:

Universal healthcare
Universal education
Universal retirement security
Universal affordable housing
and even (someone convinced me) universal dependent care

What I don't like is all the whining about having to sacrifice something of a career because you have kids. Well, sorry, that's a tradeoff you make in life and need to come to grips with.

Women should be able to get their jobs back after they've had kids. But yeah, taking the time off could hurt their careers a little. Maybe that's not totally fair. But for those of us in the office picking up the slack while they're gone--well maybe we deserve a reward like a promotion. We're not taking care of kids, but we're also not off partying somewhere. We're working hard to make it possible for them to have that time off with their children. If we get promoted because of it, don't gripe about how unfair the workplace is.

Well, I wouldn't quite say I hate affluent yuppie women . . . I actually know and like lots of them.

And, if people could get beyond the fact that I said I wasn't for forcing employers to give more time off from work to accomodate people with kids (at least not without some tradeoffs for those who take advantage of such accomodations and those who pick up the slack when they're gone), I am advocating (and I'll repeat) government-funded universal healthcare, education, and retirement security, as well as affordable housing and now universal dependent care (for both the young and the old). Plus some kind of income guarantee for people who are under- or unemployed. This is a very expensive set of programs, of course, and I'm advocating reducing defense spending to help cover the cost. No more $300 billion ventures in Iraq, please. Let's spend the money to help the Dominican immigrant who cleans my office send her sons and daughters to Harvard. I'm all for that. She's not going to benefit from flexible work hours, unfortunately, because her employer isn't going to provide them. But if we can fund her healthcare, make sure her kids have an education and some kind of dependent care when she's at work, ensure retirement security for her, and help her get an affordable place to live, that's not bad.

At some point, though, we have to limit government programs, because our budget isn't infinite. I think focusing on the five or six essentials listed above is the best approach. The more we try to expand beyond the basics, the more we're going to scare people who pay the tax bills.  And the more we try to force companies to accomodate every need, the faster they'll move to China. 

  

The real problem is how overly competitive and family-hostile modern workplaces are. 

Mimikatz . .  I agree with you about this. But what do we do about it? Personally, I think the problem is that too many of us expect to have everything--the great big house, the fancy car, kids, dogs, flat screen TV, the perfect career, etc--and so we get caught up in the rat race. If we want more peaceful lives, we need to sacrifice things. Maybe choose not to have kids. Or maybe have the kids, but sacrifice the fancy car or the big house. Commercialism is the root of all this evil in my mind.  And we're all so damn seduced by it. In America you can have everything! You deserve it! Well, maybe that attitude just makes us miserable. Maybe we all need to be more . . . Buddhist or something.

I decided to give up on the kids. It's made my life more peaceful. I can go birdwatching and fishing and hunting and take trips to fun places with my wife. But I live in a little house (that lacks furniture) and I don't have kids. But I'm not complaining. I think I'm pretty fortunate. I'm pretty happy.

I just thing too many of us want everything. Consume, consume, consume.  It destroys the environment. And it destroys our souls.

No JoeK has a good point here. I guess I'm now in the wealthy, well-connected, well-educated category in his view. But I understand where he's coming from. The average American is really struggling just to keep a job, never mind needing flex time. And while people in "nice" salaried jobs will (and do) get flex time, the reality is those who are really struggling--those in the dwindling manufacturing jobs, the people who are picking vegetables, the people cleaning floors or babysitting for the better off--these are the folks we really need to help. Flex time isn't at the top of their list. Job security and healthcare security are much more urgent. And that's exactly where I want to put my tax dollars. And exactly where the Democrats should target their policy. Toward people who really need help. Not upper middle class suburbanites like me (and I suspect Karen and Josh too). We need some kind of safety net if we fall on hard times (and it can happen to anyone)--but we should be putting our tax dollars toward those who seem perpetually fallen on hard times because they don't have the Ivy League education and all the advantages we have.
 

I have several questions--are users taking issue with Purple State's insistence on family aide being given only to the poor and not lower and/or strictly middle class women w/ families?  And what if some legislation were suggested by Dems that allowed women to maintain a career path that is less instense and/or pay that is comparable to an original salary because of family demands--wouldn't the reaction be similar to Affirmative Action's?  How would businesses maintain bottom lines if such a situation were adopted?  How much support should the government foot the bill for?
I'm a twenty years old woman who distinctly remembers my father quitting his corporate job for one in academia so that he could take care of my sister and me while my mother worked.  Yes, things (as in money) were tough, but my mother wanted to continue to work and further her career.  Why, if legislation were to be entertained, must it be restricted to women?  Could there be a choice for the family as to who should receive the help?  If these questions were answered in previous posts, my bad--I got a bit confused with the order that they appeared.
Thanks--and I love the site!
Lyds