Childbearing and Childrearing

Questions:
1.) According to Hafner-Eaton and Pierce, what are the reasons why some prefer to give birth at home with the assistance of a midwife? What is your opinion about the best setting for giving birth?

This article provides a valid argument for why home-birth is a safe alternative to hospital birth along with providing points for each side. There are many reasons though, why some women prefer to use a mid-wife in the birth of the child as opposed to a physician in a hospital. Hafner-Eaton and Pierce both suggest that "the allowance of the home as medically acceptable and legal birth setting, and reimbursement of this lower cost option through private and public health insurers," (813) is becoming a more common option among new parents. One other common reason for the chance to midwifery is the "increase in obstetrical attempts to manage or augment childbirth in a "medicalized manner"(814), or in other words take away from a very special and private matter. The article also suggests that in no way is it clear that change to physician and hospital primary care birth is safer then midwifery. There is no evidence to support that physical science aids in natural birth. Many studies also find that countries in Europe, who use midwives in nearly 75% of births, have a 60% lower infant mortality rate then in the United States. Hospitals and physicians are more like to use episiotomy, lithotomy position (laying horizontal with legs in the air), artificial rupture of membranes, continuous external fetal heart monitering, pernieal shaving, cesarean section delivery, induction or augmentation of labor if contractions are not regular enough for convenience, and forceps or vacuum devices to remove the fetus. Many of these processes are known for slowing the labor process and making it more painful -thus requiring the use of drugs. Also, a cesarean section is done in about 24% of the cases in hospitals. Many other risks are also associated with these "rushed" practices, including fetal distress, prolapsed cord, and intrauterine infection. Studies suggest that home deliver is just as safe as hospital birth, usually less intense, and with fewer cesarean sections. Midwives as a group home to more wholly treat the psychological and physical needs of the mother. They view birth as natural and normal, and are simply there to teach women to give birth, not deliver babies. They believe that giving birth in a familiar setting like the home certainly decreases chance of discomfort and risk.
I think this article provides a very convincing argument for the use of mid-wifery in birth. It seems like a safe and accepted alternative for parents who can't afford hefty hospital bills, wish to give birth in a more natural way, and want more control over a very important event. Personally, I think my faith still lies in professional care. I would feel more safe knowing that if something went wrong, I would already be in a hospital and thus could be cared for immediately. There is comfort in that. I also think I would prefer to use pain killing drugs while giving birth. All in all, I do believe that home-birth is safe. If it seems that it will be an easy birth with few complications, I see no reason not to try it. Women gave birth for years without hospitals and doctors, so it must be a fine practice. Now we have a better concept of sanitary conditions and antibiotics, so home birth seems even safer.

2.) How did the legal ties between parents and children change over time? How did the adoption laws changed? Historically, what was the purpose of formal adoptions?

Recently, there has been a trend towards giving emancipation to an adult child when they reach a certain age. This means they have no duty to obey their parents or care for them in old age. Frequently, many of these duties are absorbed by the state, like social security, old age homes, medicare, and even education for children. A long time ago, children were under their parents supervision pretty much until they died. Only young children are to be cared for by their parents. They must feed them, dress them, and take care of their well being. Of course if there is abuse in the family, the state steps in as loco-parentis and takes them out of their home and puts them in a better place. Friedman explains that: "The state can take a child away from the family; but it does so for the most part reluctantly, and only in extreme cases" (273). The government can't really tell a parent how to raise their kids, and family life (even in its changing scope) is protected. In the twentieth century, adoption became more of a medium for parents who didn't want their kids, to give them up. People were no longer dying at birth, or too poor to keep them, or stigmatized for getting pregnant while not married. But even today, things have changed again. Adoption is now in high demand due to decline in population. Parents are jumping through hoops and paying a lot of money to adopt, where as in the past many women were paying people to take their babies. Also, adopting children of other races is no longer illegal or considered immoral.
Adoption laws have also changed a lot over time. At one time, no child could be legally adopted in England, and it wasn't until 1926 when the Adoption of Children Act was put in place by Parliament. Ancient French law had two forms of adoption: Simple and Full. Simple adoption really meant the adoption of any person for the reason of carrying on a name or inheritance. Full adoption is more similar to the way we view adoption today. Young children were adopted to childless parents. In fact, up until 1976, only parents without children could adopt kids. In many cases, people under 50 or people with children could not adopt legally, because they were supposed to have their own children. Clearly this is not the case now. Similar trends were seen in the US. The first real adoption law wasn't seen until 1851 in Mass. Originally illegal or informal adoptions could be seen in the form of apprentice ship-where a young child lived in another families home to learn a trade. Also many children were adopted for inheritance purposes. Massachusetts was the first state to enact formal procedures for adoption. By the end of the 19th century, adoption was universally recognized in the US. In the past, adoption was very much a contract, like selling corn or wheat. Finally in 1917 in Missouri, adoption took on the light that what was important was the well being of the child. The parents had to be good people and were responsible for the well being and welfare of the child. Still though in the past, parents could back out after a few years. Some laws said adopted children could inherit from parents, some couldn't. Today, adopted children are just like blood related children, unless there is a will that states otherwise. Today, adoption laws give rights to the birth mother and demand her consent. Also in the past, boarding schools were created in the US to assimilate black or native children to become more white and forget their roots.
There were many reasons for adoption in the past. One of the main reasons was that it was a way to make sure a family with no blood children would not die out. Some adopted to make sure their family name was carried on or for passing on inheritances. Many adoptions were down to legitimize illegitimate children (fathers took these kids in) and give them the same rights as full blood children. It was very convenient for families with farms or large pieces of land. They could make sure their land was kept after death. Many times children were adopted because parents were too poor to take care of them, young teens got pregnant and were socially stigmatized and thus were forced to give up their babies. Also, death was very common for mothers, especially without. Of course many children were brought out to the countryside to live on farms, by the state, and of course were treated like servants and slaves. They were just a form of cheap labor.
Friedman has offered an interesting social analysis of adoption and how it's changed. I was surprised to learn the different things I did about how underground and wrong adoption was in the past. It's interesting to know how now people are literally doing all they can to adopt. This seems like a good thing to me, because there are so many kids who need homes and so many parents who want kids and can't have them. Adoption is a great alternative to this -getting kids on the right track.

3.) According to Sharon Hays, what are the conservative and liberal views of welfare? What are the main differences between the requirements introduced by the welfare reform of 1996 and the earlier welfare policies? What are the two contradictory visions represented in the welfare reform? What does the welfare reform tell us about the values of our society?

Conservatives believe those who receive welfare are "lazy, promiscuous, and pathologically dependent" (12). They believe that the system encourages bad values because it is overtly generous and that the incentives promote not working. Essentially, welfare worsens the poverty situation and increases the amount of people who are poor. Liberals on the other hand agree that the old system needed reform, but that welfare needs to provide better monetary support for the poor. The conservatives focus more on values, not on the economic hardships faced by those in perpetual debt.
The main controversy involved in welfare reform is whether self sufficiency or promotion of the traditional family form is more important. Welfare policy has always been connected to appropriate commitment to work. In the 19^th century, there was a difference made between those who deserved aid and those who didn’t, based on their ability to work. But not until today, did these values link to an underlying vision to keep children safe and provided for, via helping mothers keep families together. Laws in 1935, showed that if a father wasn’t there, the state would provide for the mother and child. By the 1960s, many women were staying home to care for their kids while welfare paid the bills. The drastic increase of women on welfare after this time perpetuated the implementation of the Personal Responsibility Act in the 1990s. There was a war on poverty as well as the creation of the National Welfare Rights Organization. Because of the rise of the poor and women on the welfare roll, in 1996, legislation was passed to create the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families. This changed welfare to a system in which women were forced to have a job, be looking for a job, or be trained for a job, while also implementing a time limit (2 or 5 years) that a person could be on welfare. They are expected to be fully self-sufficient after this time.
It seems that the new reforms send two different messages: one of self sufficiency and the liberal ideal of working to live, and the other that it is important to stay married or get married and have strong traditional family values. How can one do both? How can a single mom work to get out of poverty while also staying home to raise her kids? These are the contradictory visions seen in welfare reform. Hays gives two different names to these tracks: The Work Plan and the Family Plan. The Work Plan makes women work as a form of ‘rehabilitation’ for mothers, by turning them into self sufficient people and not merely just people who stay home and take care of their kids. In this plan there is subsidies for childcare and transportation, and incentive for women to be independent and free to make own choices. The Family Plan is just the opposite. This plan has work requirements as a punishment for divorce and or single mother hood. Women are to learn by working that they should have stayed married and controlled their ‘fertility’.
Hays touches on the fact that these opposing view points link to a larger ‘dichotomy’ of views that we share. She lists these as namely: “dependence vs. independence, paid work and care giving, competitive self-interest and obligations to others, the value of the work ethic and financial success versus the value of personal connection, familial bonding, and community ties” (20). In attempting to follow both sides of this issue, welfare helps and hurts us at the same time. There is no way to achieve both sides of the spectrum. Instead, it seems we need to find a way for these goals to mesh into one fluid value. Certainly we need to see what parts of welfare work now and keep them, while changing and adjusting those that are failures. We also need to not leave people out that need help, for this doesn’t solve anything. We need to make sure that if women are forced to work that their children are taken care of in proper institutions like preschools, not shoddy day-care centers that are unsafe. I also think welfare needs to promote education as a way out of poverty. There should be a way for basic meal, shelter, transportation, and child-care costs to be covered while a parent attends a college degree program during the day, or even night. Perhaps this even means earning a GRD if the person did not complete high school. Higher education is one of the best and only ways to get jobs that pay. At the same time, children are being provided for and are being put on the right track out of poverty by staying in school and being supervised. If our nation doesn’t star t to agree on at least one thing, that the nation’s poor need help, then we aren’t going to get anywhere fast.

4.) According to Block, Korteweg and Woodward, how do countries such as Norway understand poverty? And what is the prevailing theory of why poor people are poor in the United States? How does this theory operate as a self-fulfilling prophecy? According to the authors, what can we do to make American Dream more accessible to the poor?

This article offered some very important insight to the state of poverty today. It clearly attacked the way we view poverty in our country, and noted that people in the US are two times more likely to be born into poverty than other countries who view poverty not as the fault of the poor person, but of the society. Countries such as Norway for example believe poverty is caused by economic and structural factors, rather then bad and immoral behavior on the part of those in poverty. In fact, children in single mother households are about 4 times as likely to be in poverty in the US then in Norway. In these countries, they try to help those that are poor, not punish them for making bad choices they may or may not have put them there.
As previously touched on, the prevailing theory as to why people are poor in the US has to do with bad behavior. We believe that because of bad choices and mistakes people have made, they are themselves responsible for being poor and thus responsible for working to get out of poverty. We also hold that helping the poor (with government aid etc) actually hurts them and makes them more dependent on such aid. As we begin to realize the grave and desolate poverty that most people are in, we take away from public assistance. As the authors put it: “The consequence of reduced help is the assertions of welfare critics turn into self-fulfilling prophecies. They insist that immorality is the root caue of poverty. But when assistance becomes inadequate, the poor can no longer survive by obeying the rules; they are forced to break them. These infractions, in turn, become the necessary proof that “the poor” are truly intractable and that their desperate situations are rightly ignored” (14). People are perpetually pushed back into poverty as their aid is taken away and thus it seems that people’s assertions are correct. Welfare does promote indolence.
The authors explain how the war on “bed behavior” has really been a failure. Programs put in place to lower teen pregnancy, high school drop out rates, and drug addiction have done nothing to lessen these issues. In fact, these social problems have just become worse in the recent decades. Many of these programs are counterintuitive –in trying to end the things we believe cause poverty, those who need help are very much denied it. For example, when those convicted of drug crimes are refused aid and thus forced back into dealing drugs to live. Instead we put our blame on single mothers, who are given inadequate child care and thus cannot work the hours they need to survive. Or the opposite happens, and women are forced to work double shifts, and thus their children are left with inadequate supervision. This leads them to do the activities which once again perpetuate poverty. They are in a bind either way. The authors suggest that we have to persuade fellow citizens that a war on bad behavior isn’t the way to go and that in violates our society’s fundamental beliefs. Every child has equal chance of failure and success. We need new initiatives such as universal health care, higher education for qualified individuals, head start programs to make sure kids get enough education to go to college, and universal availability of high quality child care and preschool programs. We also need to ten-fold the amount of available affordable housing for the poor. Minimum wage needs to increase with inflation and tax programs could be put in place to provide the necessary money for people to pay for basic food and shelter. They also suggest a stable income floor so children stay out of poverty and eliminating the time limits for welfare. Many times, this forces single mothers to return to abusive boyfriends for support, once they find their 5 year limit is up and they still aren’t self-sufficient. Additionally, and a point I agree with the most, is that it is extremely important that we recognize education as work in the sense of welfare. It’s very difficult to get anywhere without a college education, or to get the kind of jobs required to move out of perpetual poverty. Thus women and men should have the ability to go to school and care for their children, while aid gives them enough money to survive. I think it’s important though that if time-limits are taken away, that some sort program is put in place to make sure that those receiving it are doing all they can (and also that they are given appropriate means to do so) to better their lives. This should include caring for children, working, going to school or any of the above.

5.) According to Clawson and Gerstel, how can we improve the child care system in the U.S.?

This article offers a profile of US childcare today before school age in comparison to European systems like France and Denmark. It seems that Clawson and Gerstel suggest that we reform our child care programs to more closely resemble these European models. He believes many lessons could be learned from taking ideas form those systems and adapting them to our own values and beliefs. First off, he believes all programs should be publicaly funded and available to all, regardless of income, race, if parents work, etc. This should either have no cost or the cost should be very low and very affordable just to keep programs running. The staff would be just as qualified and paid about just as much as regular public school teachers and the day would last as long as a regular school days with the option of extended care before and after school for working parents, at a low cost. The programs would be very high quality, but very expensive for the state. In the long run though, it seems that providing quality care for children will pay off more then cutting corners in the budget will. If the program is very good, then mostly all parents will take advantage of it and will support it highly. Of course we have to consider if we would want a more academic approach like France has –very much a pre-school, where kids learn and prepare for kindergarten or a system more like Denmark that fosters peer and social learning as opposed to academic learning. They don’t focus as much on student/adult ratio, and instead believe that kids need to work out their problems amongst themselves and their peers. Japan believes in very few adults to many kids, so as to create a program of selflessness where the kids get less attention. I very much think changes are necessary but believe the French model would be the most accepted in the US. It seems we put a lot of emphasis on education and preparation for learning in public school. While I think a good amount of playing is necessary, it would be easy to make activities fun and enjoyable while still teaching. Having universal service is the most important. All kids should have equal access to early start opportunities, and parents shouldn’t have to stay home because they can’t afford child care, or worse leave their kids unsupervised. Of course, France has all universal schooling, through university level. So it would be difficult to say how universal publicaly funded pre-school would fit into our scheme of public and private choice education in America. All of these things would have to be considered before any initiative could be enacted. I also assume many of these things are easier said then done. It might be very difficult for such an expensive plan to be accepted in the midst of war and international conflict.