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If you read the full thread, you’ll note that @JDVance1 defines “normal people” as those who tell pollsters they prefer that one parent (presumably the father) work, and the other parent (mom) do the childcare at home. IOW, “normal” women don’t want to work outside the home. https://twitter.com/jdvance1/status/1387763955557445640
This isn’t even about Vance’s pretense of giving a crap about the working class — his hedge fund, Thiel and Mercers patronage belies that. It’s about the usual: advancing conservative (white) Christians back to the front of the social policy line where they always used to be.
I mean what “normal” woman wants to work and put her kids in affordable daycare amirite? Why should the government provide subsidies for such a non “normal person” choice? The right is so transparent. Doesn’t matter how rich or poor they start life. They remain predictable.
What the right would prefer is to push tax credits to ONLY married couples with children, since tax policy is also an expression of governmental social preference. That way, men could better afford to keep the missus at home cooking and cleaning, “where she belongs.”
And this is a convenient way to also punish, by exclusion, non-affluent women and single parents, who HAVE TO WORK AND NEED AFFORDABLE CHILDCARE, and nonwhite children whom the right presumes are almost never in two-parent families. This is just dogma, masquerading as populism.
And... scene. https://twitter.com/jdvance1/status/1387772066611531776
And one last thing: this nostalgia for the “good old days” when mom stayed home and raised the kids is pure mythology, based on a past where the idyllic white suburban upper class mom wasn’t even raising her kids. Low/unpaid Black women who couldn’t be home with THEIR kids, were.
And as recently as the early 20th century, low income kids weren’t viewed as precious beings who needed to he home with mom. They were literally child labor. And conservative industrialists and plantationers fought like hell to keep it that way. https://theconversation.com/abolishing-child-labor-took-the-specter-of-white-slavery-and-the-job-markets-near-collapse-during-the-great-depression-144454
So it’s no wonder, with all of that tortured history, that we as a society have never really valued childcare. It’s low-wage work, mainly done by women, including lots of women of color (and immigrants.) https://www.inquirer.com/news/american-child-care-racism-sexism-pandemic-20210327.html
