Blog Entry 8 - 3/21/07

According to Hafner-Eaton and Pierce, what are the reasons why some women prefer to give birth at home with the assistance of a midwife? What is your opinion about the best setting for giving birth?

Giving birth at home, assisted by a midwife, goes along with the view that childbirth is a normal biological event. Women who select this option believe that a midwife is more attuned to their psychological and physical needs and that the home environment is less anxiety-producing than being in a hospital. In other cases, this option is simply less costly than using a physician and being admitted to a hospital.

It seems to me that if a woman chooses to be assisted by a midwife, such a person should have adequate training and a formal connection with a physician in case of an emergency. The best setting would be a compromise between a hospital and one’s home–some sort of birthing center.

The article reveals that in western nations other than the U.S., the midwife option is quite common and has a good track record. Although home births have increased in our country, legal and medical issues arise which need to be addressed. It appears that a framework should be put into place that would make such an option available to those who want it. There would be a need to establish standard training for midwives and an option for health insurance coverage.

How did the legal ties between parents and children change over time? How have adoption laws changed? Historically, what was the purpose of formal adoptions?

Parental control over the child has lessened over time. For example, the government has taken over the responsibility adult children once had for aged parent care. Additionally, the law has come to acknowledge the young child as a distinct individual, giving him/her legal rights to a safe home environment and a mandatory education.

The first “true” American adoption law, passed in 1851 in Massachusetts, was the first statute that required a formal procedure for adoption. Adoption laws from that point on rejected the idea that a blood relationship was necessary to be part of a family. Legal adoption procedures evolved from the drawing up of “deeds”, to court proceedings that judged adoptive parents as to their ability to properly care for the adoptee. Laws then cited the right of the adopted child to inherit from adoptive parents. The law currently tends to treat adopted and biological children equally with regard to property and inheritance.

Historically, formal adoptions could make a child someone’s heir (thus securing inheritance and property rights), acknowledge illegitimate children, and provide security for orphaned relatives.

Friedman’s article brings up the issue of race with regard to adoption. The tide has changed from trying to “match” children with prospective parents, to race-blind matches, and back again to matching races so that children would not lose their original cultural identities. Meanwhile, no matter what their ancestry, the author notes that they are part of the American culture, inferring that eventually being American will be all that matters. Angelina Jolie is setting the example that a family is what you make it and she is purposely making hers as diverse as possible, by adopting children from Africa and Asia.

According to Sharon Hays, what are the conservative and liberal views of welfare? What are the main differences between the requirements introduced by the welfare reform of 1996 and earlier welfare policies? What are the two contradictory visions represented in the welfare reform? What does the welfare reform tell us about the values of our society?

Conservative and liberal views of welfare reflect the debate of morality versus money as the source of welfare problems. The conservative view of welfare is that it perpetuates and increases poverty by promoting laziness and single parenting. It blames poverty on people’s indolent, promiscuous and dependent behavior. The conservative view considers problems of morality to be the cause of economic hardship as contrasting with the liberal view that moral problems are the result of poverty. Liberals emphasize that welfare policy must focus on providing better economic supports so that the poor can break the cycle of poverty.

The beginnings of welfare can be traced back to laws of the early 1900s which provided financial support to widows so that they could care for children at home. Aid to Dependent Children in 1935 was an even more expansive program, based on the family ideal of an employed husband and a care-giving wife. Government would support mother and children in the absence of a husband. The rise in welfare demands in the 1960s through the 1990s eventually gave rise to the Personal Responsibility Act of 1996. Before it was passed, welfare mothers were encouraged to get training for work, and stringent criteria were drawn up for two-parent families allowed to receive aid. When it was instituted, the welfare reform of 1996 drastically changed the welfare system by demanding welfare mothers to join the labor force. It ended welfare as an entitlement program and placed a total time limit of 5 years of federal benefits to those meeting the criteria for support. (There is also a component that aims to promote two-parent families and discourage out-of-wedlock births.)

The contradictory visions represented in the welfare reform are the “work plan” and the “family plan.” In the so-called work plan, job requirements force women to become independent, self-sufficient, and economically productive members of society. The family plan utilizes the job requirement as a penalty for being a single mother as a result of divorce or having children out of wedlock. On one hand, welfare reform promotes the work ethic and promotes gender equality to some degree. On the other, it reprimands the state of single-parenting in that mothers do not have adequate support for childcare.

The welfare reform as it stands reflects the conflicting values of our society. Children need their mothers for nurturing, or a quality substitute in their absence, but if they are forced by the state to work without state support for childcare, what is to become of the children? They are destined to repeat the cycle of poverty.

According to Block, Korteweg, and Woodward, how do countries such as Norway understand poverty? And what is the prevailing theory of why poor people are poor in the U.S.? How does this theory operate as a self-fulfilling prophecy? According to the authors, what can we do to make the American Dream more accessible to the poor?

Countries such as Norway, Belgium, Germany or the Netherlands assume that poverty is caused by economic and structural problems as opposed to self-destructive or anti-moral behavior. Substantial government intervention is utilized in combating poverty. Conversely, U.S. views are preoccupied with the moral breakdown of the poor and assume that they can avert or escape poverty solely through hard work. Policies with complex rules that focus on preventing welfare fraud create obstacles to getting help for those who are needy. Since programs provide less assistance than required, welfare recipients break rules by not reporting all their income. The resulting dishonesty proves the original assumption that the poor lack moral character, and so the view of immorality as the root cause of poverty becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The authors contend that The American Dream is out of reach for many because the price of required elements of the dream—housing, health care, high-quality child care and higher education—has risen quite a bit more sharply than wages and the rate of inflation. Therefore, we need to increase the supply of these goods and services for poor and working class families; assure that the minimum wage rises with inflation; and provide poor families with sufficient income to cover food and shelter even if they have no earnings. Assistance should be coordinated through the tax system so that a household’s income would improve as work earnings rise. Finally, we need concentrated efforts through community groups and government programs to address the structural issues of poverty in order to restore the possibility of the American Dream to those it now eludes.

According to Clawson and Gerstel, how can we improve the child care system in the U.S.?

Based on successful European models, a new U.S. child care system should be publicly funded and available to all, rich and poor, at no cost or moderate cost with subsidies for those who are needy. Trained staff would receive wages commensurate to public school teachers to ensure topnotch caliber. Participation would be voluntary but attractive in terms of quality so that a majority of children would enroll, and the programs would enjoy strong public support. Additionally, parents would be offered a period of paid parental leave in order to enjoy quality time with their children. An expensive system such as this would pay off in the long run, nurturing well-adjusted children and providing parents with peace of mind, so they could then be more productive members of the labor force.