"I love day care..."

I dunno, I just found this news story to be slightly nauseating. If I understand this California program correctly, it involves giving welfare recipients assistance in job training and job hunting - as well as subsidizing care for their children.

But with the severe budget crisis in California, the state government is now considering paying parents to...stay home and take care of their own children. California will actually save money doing this! (Man we screwed up in this country somewhere along the line...)

When I think of how hard my husband and I worked to avoid putting our kids in daycare - a dirty word in our household - it makes me impatient with those who "love daycare" because "kids learn so much." (Sounds to me they just want to get rid of their little brats.) Sheesh, why the hell did you have them if you don't intend to raise them?

Look, I know things are tight in this economy and people have to make hard choices. We've lived close to the poverty level for sixteen years, so don't give me any guff about how much people are suffering financially. We've been-there-done-that. We still are, for that matter. But because we never considered daycare an option for our family, we've moved heaven and earth to keep one of us home at all times (usually by working alternate hours).

Choices, people. It's all about choices. If something is rock-solid unacceptable, you'll find alternative ways. To us, daycare was rock-solid unacceptable. The alternatives we found were extreme frugality and working different hours.

Those "choices" (ahem) also include not having babies out of wedlock. Gee, what a lot of pain to society could be avoided with that choice...