More funding should have gone into strengthening the economic and educational position of single women to improve THEIR prospects and thus reduce the likelihood they would choose to have children.
Instead since the 1980s this country has TOTALLY FRAKKED UP social services to make it impossible to avoid homelessness as a single person unless A) you are disabled or B) you have children. Women at least have option B. In other threads on DU people have even said that some social workers hint to women that they *should* try to have children in order to avoid homelessness. This might be an urban myth (like all homeless people are mentally ill or drug addicts), but having engaged with this system myself, I can vouch that it COULD be true - especially in less formal areas of the country where social service workers can have more interaction with the community and can actually have a conversation with clients. (Where I live they just process paperwork).
People who are speaking from a stable living situation can easily opine whether it is a a "bad decision" for someone someone else to burden themselves with a child or not. But if you are at the bottom of the heap and you have consistently had trouble finding employment, and you have good reason to fear homelessness or have actually been homeless for stretches of time, it might seem reasonable to work with the fact that this society has mercy on children. Mothers with children are also stronger advocates for themselves because "defending your child" is seen as proper cause of assertiveness in our society, whereas just about every other form of assertiveness in women carries high risk of being punished in some way for being a "bitch".
Progressive Democrats could have changed the world by investing heavily in women. When they have prospects for themselves, they put off child-bearing. They often put off marriage. Sadly they chose to buy into the same "torture the poor until they spontaneously produce work for themselves" line of BS that the GOP HAD BEEN FEEDING THEM!!! And what did we get for it? An expanding underclass, and a sinking middle class. Way to go.
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