Moms can't rise alone

(I'm taking a break from the endless discussions of Little Shmoo's health today...and trust me, I need it. More on the plan there another day...)

I've been following the energetic and impassioned work streaming out of Momsrising.org, and of course I'm down with them, think they're great and brave and smart...but I'm not sure how I feel about the current push to end "discrimination against mothers."

Now, that sounds awful, doesn't it? How can I be conflicted about THAT? The problem they're discussing today is that an employer in Pennsylvania (and many other states too) can ask a woman in an interview if she has kids and/or a husband, and the rationale those employers give is that a single mom will cost more in health insurance, so they'd be justified in hiring someone else, or paying the single mom less to cover the increased benefits costs. Well, now, on the surface that looks really despicable. You hire the best person for the job, right? You shouldn't care what else is involved -- and you pay that person a fair wage for the work done.

However, I am a libra, and we libras always see both sides, whether we agree with them or not. I think to myself, hmmm, if I was an employer and had two candidates for a position, equally qualified, but one was going to cost me a ton of money in benefits and the other wasn't, I'd hire the cheaper one. Am I discriminating against mothers by doing that? No, I'm discriminating against people who cost me more money. Discrimination against MOTHERS comes in when I have to choose between a man with kids and no wife and a woman with kids and no husband. For both of them, I'd have to pay the health insurance on the whole family. If I chose the man just because he was a man, I'd be discriminating. That doesn't mean the situation is fair, or good, but I think it's unfair to represent it as evil employers versus poor mothers. Compensation is a package -- break it into pieces (salary and benefits) and see what kind of employee you can afford.

The way this government/country cares for families pits companies against them, and that's why we have situations like this. I don't know ANYTHING about national health care or how it would work, but I know that it would certainly resolve the issue that MomsRising is illustrating with regard to benefits. Of course, then the question would be about single parents versus dual-parent homes, and single parents unquestionably have a harder time with logistics, days off for sick kids, etc. If childcare were a part of every workplace, or if it were somehow subsidized, that would certainly go a long way. MomsRising talks about the military as a great childcare model. Now, I don't do implementation, folks, I just dream the big dreams...but True and I figured out that I needed to make $25/hour before taxes in order to make it worthwhile to actually go to work and put our two kids in childcare. How many people make that much an hour?

So, as long as the country overall does not make families and their needs a priority of the nation as a whole, we cannot expect individual employers to shoulder the burden. Maybe gigantic corporations can afford to eat the cost of an additional health insurance premium for a family, but certainly small companies cannot. I don't think their probing, self-serving questioning should be limited to women entering their offices, but it shouldn't exclude them, either. Any employer should be allowed to determine whether or not they can afford to take on an employee. Whether or not they can be a mensch about it is another story.