For women and men who leave the work force

[Ohiogal]

to stay home and take care of children (because childcare is so expensive) or who must take care of an aging parent or relative ...

I wish there was a way you could still accrue Social Security.

I have been both in my life .... caregiver to children and caregiver to my mom .... for a while, I was both ....and, when you are trying to make it on one income only, it's a full time job and then some!

[mopinko]

1. jan schakowsky has proposed this repeatedly.

it's the least we could be doing.

i dont so much mind the idea of taking your benefits while you do it, as some have proposed, because for a lot of working women, they will never get their own benefits anyway.
another way ss stands on the backs of working women.

[dlk]

2. One More Excellent Reason to Vote Democratic

[Hortensis]

3. Perhaps. But if we're paid to raise our children, that opens the door

to government setting requirements. Remember, half this nation will always be conservative with conservative notions. Social cons are actually very big on big government telling us how we can live.

[Ohiogal]

4. What I'm proposing isn't

“paying people to raise their kids.”

I’m proposing a system that doesn’t punish people who must leave the work force for family obligations. There’s got to be a way to do it, I just don’t know how.

I thought I read somewhere that in Canada a woman or man is given a percentage of her or his former pay each month if they must take a hiatus from paid work for family obligations.

I include men in this, but it’s disproportionately women who end up leaving the paid work force for this thankless work - delaying career development and, in turn, delaying retirement income. Some may never return to paid work because employers aren’t interested in hiring someone who’s been out of the work force for ten years and re-training yourself can be expensive and if you’re in your 50s it’s doubly hard to find a decent job.

It ticks me off that unpaid caregiving is valued so little by our society.

[Hortensis]

6. I know you weren't. But this isn't a new idea, and inevitably

some examine it from that direction, going straight to the right to privacy from government interference. On both sides out of caution and opportunism. To that last, imagine what the religious right would try to use it for.

[Joe941]

5. The rich should be taxed for social security at a much higher rate...

To make money for programs to solve this societal problem.

[Coventina]

7. Unpaid labor is devalued labor.

This has been a huge barrier to the advancement of women in the modern world.

[Ohiogal]

8. Coventina,

I think you just summed up nicely what makes me so angry about this! Thank you!