Social Security for Mothers!
Have you thought much about your retirement lately? Me neither! But, I recieved my social security letter telling me what my benefits will be when I retire and well, it’s a bit thought provoking. My friend Mara wrote me an e-mail about hers telling me “don’t resuscitate me!” and it was sooooooooo funny I had to do a comic. Here’s an organization and some ideas that we can do to try and remedy the disparity Why Social Security Matters to Mothers and the organization Mothers Ought To Have Equal Rights has a pdf called No More Zeros! you have to search on their site a bit, but there’s lots about SS. As if you didn’t have enough to do already!
Love,
Heather
mamaof5 said,
August 13, 2007 @ 8:05 am
It is shocking how much our society doesn’t care about moms. There is alot of lip service and nothing else.
We are right in the middle of dealing with DH’s mom. She is almost 80. Worked outseide the home a hand full of years and qualifies for NO ss on her own. She is getting a little from her Ex-hubby’s (she gets a precentage of his). That means she lives off a whopping $400.00 a month. The family has been supporting her for years now, but it has gotten too much. Between 3 families (some times just two) we have to come up with $500.00 or more a month (depending on what she needs). My family can no longer do it. With 5 kids ourselves to care for… it sucks.
It sucks for us, it sucks for her. She raised 4 kids, and fostered over 30 babies in the 50’s (when you adpoted back then you didn’t get babies straight from the hospital.. they were fostered for 3 months first).
So all this raising of kids really means nothing, you are worthless.
I have worked for years (since I was 15) and I have just resently stopped to be home full time with my kids… but what am I giving up? My security in my old age… to be home with my kids. How f’ed up is that?
Why can’t they also help SAHM instead of giving us just the lip???
UGH!
Heather in Tucson
nak
Suzanne said,
August 13, 2007 @ 8:59 am
I am really dismayed to hear about this– and I want to thank for that excellent link. It is extremely informative and covers the issue pretty thoroughly.
Yeeesh… my mind is still reeling.
wiffersnapper said,
August 15, 2007 @ 12:58 pm
I’ve often thought that the answer to a lot of problems would be for the government to PAY mothers to stay home! I mean, really, the only reason I work is for the money. So… if they would pay me something equal to my current salary, then I’d stay home. I’ll bet a lot of others would, too. It would take care of a lot of problems- the lack of quality daycare being one of them. (Luckily, we have a good place. But it took WORK to find it!) We wouldn’t need half as much daycare if more mothers could afford to stay home.
kriekle said,
August 19, 2007 @ 6:51 am
Okay, so the government pays moms to stay home. Who pays for the government? We do! If our government had a program like that, we’d be paying significantly higher income taxes. The government already pays us to have children. You know that lovely child tax credit? That gets paid for by all the people who don’t have kids. The earned income credit on the tax return is another government program to equalize things and transfer money from those who have lots of it (whether they have children or not) to those who don’t have as much but do have income. The government also gives a child care credit on taxes. The government (meaning we, the people) already give parents a lot. Yes, I agree things could be done differently and better, but we you start talking about the government should pay this or that, you need to think through to what all that entails. The other thing to think about in regards to social security is that it was never meant to be the only thing you lived on during retirement. It was started after the great depression to ensure that people would have something, but it was only meant to be supplemental. Society has decided that they want ss to be their primary source of income for retirement, but they don’t want to pay more in ss taxes during the working years to help cover it. Retirement planning should be done on an individual level or we should decide that we no longer intend to be a democracy and instead become a socialist nation. After all, that’s what many people seem to think our government should be acting like.