News to cheer?

I subscribe to Women's E-news and usually find the daily news feed to be inspiring and necessary coverage--most times, actually. This morning I get my "Cheers and Jeers" [Cheers and Jeers usually explores worldwide issues and gives a quick synopsis classifying the snippet in either a "cheer" or a "jeer".]

I clipped a bit about Obama that I want to discuss--let me preface with, I like him. I am NOT singling him out on this one but the coverage of where he stands reminded me that I have something to say on work/family balance. [Obama coverage to follow]

"While Obama also agreed on a similar health care plan, he focused his speech on the proposed Freedom of Choice Act and using the term "pro-choice" to include family planning issues such as improving pay equity, paid paternal leave and work-life balance, and extending school hours so parents may work and not worry about their children. "

I love all of this--I do. Pay equity, necessary. Paid paternal leave--long overdue. Work-life balance--common sense. Extending school hours--okay, I guess. Parents have to work--especially single parents, I get this. But do we have another lens for viewing this issue?

What about supporting the parent another way? What about some type of government backed [$$$] family care program? Do we have to extend school hours--do we have to be working more? Can't we extend flexibility of work space? Telecommuting is LONG overdue! Raising the minimum wage--LONG overdue. Recognizing that perhaps a parent is the better caretaker, at least preferred over a daycare or classroom teacher, of their OWN child--LONG overdue. So extending school hours??? I'm not so sure about this--doesn't this support the fanatical pace we have set for ourselves as a country? Doesn't this support and condone the disconnect between parents and their children?

What about family? What about time TOGETHER? Seems to me that we do not need yet another policy that supports our time apart--that widens that time apart.

And what about parents, especially mothers, that choose to stay home? Where is their support? Where is their program, their policy?

I'm all over the place, I know but here is where I am very clear--extending the school day so that parents do not have to worry about their children promotes the distance between parents and their children and makes it seem normal and, worse, necessary. What the fuck is this?

Isn't that like saying we should buy bigger jeans when the hydrogenated oils and high fructose corn syrups covertly hidden in our foods catch up with us instead of holding the food industry responsible??? Or that we can just slide a bucket under a leak in our ceiling? It's a band-aid solution--a pseudo solution.

Aren't we looking past something in our society that is not working right to a solution that supports the original problem??? Extending the school day only looks like pro-family policy but the repercussions are coming.

Parents and their children are disconnected--children are floundering, they need us and, for fuck's sake, we need to step up.