I Don't Understand This Picture...

Baby Mine 

... that is being used all over the place to accompany the story urging the government to pay stay-at-home parental caregivers. *

I'm not being racist, but... that's not the baby's mother. What am I missing here, friends?  Yes, she could be an adoptive mom staying at home with her baby.  Yes, she could be a stepparent, or used a donor egg with her husband's sperm, but...

Why isn't she holding a black baby?  Or why isn't it a white mother cradling her child?

I don't understand the photo, I admit it.  And, how many mothers who stay at home sit holding their child like that?  It's almost like... she is ready to drop the swaddled child, or am I reading too much into this?  

I want to be in on diversity, and I know this photo would have been a good example, maybe, to illustrate that paid childcare givers -- in the home (she seems to be sitting on a bed, and by what we can see of the thighs, it looks to be a woman to me) -- deserve to be paid more.  But this photo really draws attention away from the story accompanying it...

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*  The Case for Paying Parents Who Care for Their Own Kids

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Elizabeth Bruenig

@ebruenig

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4h

this is work, it's good work, it's work that *has to happen for the rest of society to run.* it's real, hard work. if you do it for someone else's kid, you're compensated; if you do it for your own, you're not. let's fix that up so little kids and caregivers are safe & secure.

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I disagree. Why don't we pay people MORE so that a one-income family is enough? No taxes on income from workers. Tax the hell out of stock gains, say. Companies will still grow. Stockholders will still get that extra "boost" from their investments, along with their working wages.

All you're doing when you pay a parent to stay home to care for the family's children is ensuring ... the rich get richer. Those who planned, sacrificed, saved and scrimped to afford this luxury today -- along with those from inherited wealth who can afford it through no extra work of their own -- will benefit most from the choices they have already made. A lot of the people -- even if you pay them, I suspect -- still will not be able to afford a full-time parent in the home.

And that's a shame because parents in the home are parents at home in the community. Children fare better, and families fare better, when one spouse works inside the home to support the family on the wages that allow another to work and provide fully on one salary. That's a better way than subsidizing the choices of those lucky enough to still have them.