Caring for Children

I was raised by a stay-at-home mom.
My parents were both raised by stay-at-home moms.
I never met my father's mother, but my maternal grandmother used tell me stories about growing up.
She was grown, old enough to vote, when the 19th amendment was passed.  She was also married by then.
She had wanted to go to nursing school, but her family talked her into normal school.  She never got to work as a nurse, which was her life dream--she also never got to work as a teacher.  Married women could not do either of those jobs.  Thus, stay-at-home mom.
My own mother never knew a world where women couldn't vote.  She was a WWII bride, marrying right after high school graduation.  And while she had worked in the family business after school and weekends (think depression, think survival of the family) she only worked outside the home a very short time, while her husband was in the army.  She did find jobs after my sister and I were grown, and it seemed to make her feel better about herself, more capable, more independent.
The baby boomer generation of women are split about in half between those that didn't have to work while their kids were home and those that did.  It was a complex dynamic, with some stay-at-home moms doing so because their families were very traditional and so they carried on with a family constantly on the brink of poverty.  For others, the decision was based on the ability of the husband to support a family without a second income.  More than a few working mom's and poor stay-at-homes were envious of those women.

My own mother was that brink of poverty, stay-at-home.  She was always there for us.  All our meals were homecooked.  Most of our clothes were homemade or hand-me-down,  My father bought a house that hadn't been finished and finished it himself.  My mother was never very proud of that house.  It looked like he had finished it himself.  Not hillbilly, but the cabinets looked more like 1900 farm house than 1960 factory.  We had a "picture window" that he made from scrap metal and a welding torch.  It looked fine to me, but it didn't look exactly like the neighbors' picture windows.  She wasn't the only stay at home back then, but there were a few working women.  Most were secretaries, but one was moving upward in a corporation.  The other stay-at-homes were either married to white collar workers or were home with teenagers.  She had a huge garden, canned and froze everything she could grow.  She sewed and repaired clothing.  She took in laundry and ironing. She was called by more than a few of the other stay-at-homes to get rid of a mouse or help with a kitchen disaster. Her dentist called her a firebrand.  She was busy as a stay-at-home mom.
By the time I had children, there were very few stay-at-home moms.  There was jealousy of unemployed welfare moms and of rich men with  country-club wives and nannies.

AND there was childcare.

• It was expensive--if you made more than it cost, it often made the final NET very close to minimum wage, which was better then, but still hard to live on.  A husband with a good income was a perk, and if it was good enough, it was possible that staying home was as profitable as working.
• It was scary--it didn't pay well and because women were not valued and mothers were not valued and caring for children was seen as a thing that "Any old fool can do" the people you left your precious little connection to the future with was barely educated, very young, possible suffering from some chemical issue--who knew--the media tweaked that fear up pretty high a few times in the past, add some real abuse/deaths and it was so scary that living at poverty level seemed good.
• It was limited, as in most catered to 8:00 to 5:00 workers, but all those women in nursing, factory work, shift work, weekend work had no options or maybe one distant, very scary option involving an index card--i watch kids, 24/7 any day cheap--desperate mom or what?
• There was family, but no one wanted to use 40 hours of their week for your kids.  And, if they weren't working they wanted compensation and didn't want to pay taxes on the little money, so bye-bye tax credit (when that started--when did that start?)  That frequently meant an obsessive search for relatives that liked your kids, would watch them for a day or were open to shifting them to someone else for part of the day.  

When my children were little, there was talk of employers opening daycare centers so they would be open when your job was, in a hospital or a never-close store, that is important.  They needed to be affordable, we all wanted them to be a job perk, but business is business, and childless people are the first to make comments about their own mother's staying at home or the personal choice of whether to have kids or not and poor people shouldn't have children if they can't afford to care for them.  I always wondered if they thought those working mom's should have just drowned them like kittens since they weren't born into a proper home.
They are still talking about workplace daycares.  And now there is griping from people whose children are grown and who have no children because of the possible 1 year maternity/paternity leave.  Yes, we all want a year off paid, but what does that say about me if I already survived that awful first year of sleeplessness, daycare fear, poverty and guilt (for not being a stay-at-home mom with a wealthy husband) if all I want if for everyone else to have to go through the same thing--unless they are wealthy.

We really are crabs in a bucket.
We don't want what is best of children.  We just don't want any one else to have it easier than we did.  We aren't concerned with what is best for the happiness and success of children.  We don't want everyone to have a better life--we need someone to do bad so we can feel good about our own lives.