on second thought
Of course there's "material," even in this priviledged tale of woe. A saner workplace, allowing both parents to participate more in raising their children and sharing the inevitable drudgery, would be a much better solution than cheaper takeout meals. It's just that there are so many much more urgent needs for families these days -- starting with the absolute no-brainer of paid family and medical leave. The FMLA act, signed by Bill Clinton in 1993, gives up to 12 weeks off work for employees with new babies or serious illnesses of an immediate family member. But as it is, the benefits are out of reach for possibly the majority of working parents, who can't afford to miss the paycheck. Only California so far allows any compensation for such time off. To read more about the pressing agenda for families -- and why it's not getting done -- sign on to www.sjmercurynews.com this Sunday, and look for my article in the Perspective section on the emerging "motherhood movement."
1 Comments:
I read your article in the San Jose Mercury News this weekend - titled "Working Mothers of the world unite !" - very interesting. We are a two working-parents family with two young ones and your article really hit home. About a year ago I was motivated by some of the very sentiments expressed by you and this led me to start a company called SchoolParentNet (www.schoolparentnet.com).
We are building an online parents network around the school system since the school is a very powerful local hub. Simply put - as parents register into our system (for free) they get connected with other parents from the child's classroom, grade, school and district. Our network grows through an invitation process - every parent that signs up can invite in other parents and so on. We provide many online tools to enable these parents to communicate and interact. Our goal is to foster strong supportive local parent communities and to get parents more involved with the school (proactively rather than in crisis mode).
Moms are the key driver behind our network. Just as you stated children's education is a major subject of concern and in a time-constrained environment the internet does help to remove some of the friction in getting connected and involved - at least "virtually". Its a little too early for us to tell if we could become a platform for social transformation as discussed in your article but it does seem that we have some of the basic starting ingredients that gives us a shot.
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