This article was written in 1997 or 1998. I was reacting to new legislature in Florida that would cut off Medicaid benefits to women after a life time cap of 5 years:
The devaluation of the nurturing role in this society, had a purpose, the subjugation of women.
I now find myself in a society that actually believes that nurturing is valueless.
The subjugation of women has become passe’, yet the devaluation of the roles of women has taken on a life of its own, separate from its initial purpose. Is it a coincidence that the great mothers of our time are passing away at precisely the time that this society decides to turn its back on the concept of nurturing? Jacqueline Kennedy, Erma Bombeck, Mother Teresa and my own mother, Patsy Delores Quinn?
I live in the only “first world” country in the world, with a third world infant mortality rate. When you separate these statistics by race, it becomes embarrassing to admit that I am an American.
What is nurturing? What is it worth to the human race? How does it support American principles and values?
What is nurturing? My mother did it all of her life, and I doubt if she could articulate it.
As a child I experienced it, at those hot summer – but cool lunches, when she would buy deli food, potato chips and grape soda. My sisters, brothers and I would sit at the dining room table and laugh for an hour before running back outside to play.
As an adult, it was having my mother’s beaming smile every time I walked into her door,
and her genuine interest in my successes and failures. When I relocated to another town at age 32, I missed her terribly, her probing and loving questions about how my life was progressing.
As my mother got older, she reduced her work hours, not to “retire”, but to give her grand-children, that same comfort and support that she had given us.
Having the comfort of her near, even when she wasn’t physically close, took stressors away.
How important is familial support to alleviating stressors? Well, according to sociologists, it is the single most important variable in healthy families; it is the difference between families that are whole and families which break down.
What is nurturing? I asked a male friend, a usually perceptive and insightful man what he thought it was.
He said “a mother taking care of her children.” I asked him about the activities of nurturing, he couldn’t say. That we don’t identify nurturing with adult needs was a surprise to me, and yet it shouldn’t be. After all, I am a counselor, something which is clear and simple to me, may or may not have credibility to your normal everyday adult male. Ironic, as I write this, I notice the feature movie is a Tom Selleck sci-fi, in which home care is taken over by robots. It’s a movie thriller; the robots go crazy and Tom Selleck rescues everyone. The movie never addresses the question of the essential feature missing when robots begin caring for our homes: nurturing. Who and how is nurturing accomplished?
SOCIAL WELFARE REFORM
What are we saying to mothers, when we say that cash benefits will not be available to them?
Everyday I work in indigent care. The faces change, the stories change, but two things are always the same; a disenfranchisement from the American social structure, with a corresponding lack of personal self esteem.
Did this legislature, which so boldly took away cash benefits from women, increase the state’s subsidized advanced educational fund? This is the same legislature which will not increase minimum wage to a livable wage.
This is the legislature which allows multi-billion dollar corporations such as MacDonald’s and Walmart to employ only part-time minimum wage staff. Staff whom, if educated, given the choice, would definitely take higher paying jobs with benefits such as health insurance for their families.
Do we actually want to decrease medical benefits to the indigent while continuing to assure that physicians can keep taking a $250,000 annual paycheck home?
Where is the great national plan to reduce Medicaid and Medicare fraud? Fraud which, by the way is primarily perpetrated by health care personnel, not “welfare mamas”.
What happened to the national health care plan?
I am reminded by a close friend that all of the working poor needs are opportunities.
Somehow we must become more committed to creating a country which takes action to assure equity.
We cannot continue to allow profit to drive the health care system, we cannot continue to decrease support to the most vulnerable population in this country: children and their mothers.
To this end, it is my most humble opinion that while we limit cash benefits and Medicaid to mothers and infants, we should create an intensive case management program which manages aggressively educational benefits which will assure a vocation and a future. That we should make this case management program accessible to all, cash benefit recipients, as well as the working poor. We should use the money saved to assure health care for all.
That this country must be more committed to human beings and less committed to corporate profit, is obvious.
I do not see it as coincidental that the great mothers of our time have passed away before this country began completely devaluing and dishonoring the essential component of mothering: nurturing.
When we cut cash benefits off from women, we are saying that it does not matter who raises the children, that problems with attaining a living wage to support a family are unimportant and that women with children must essentially manage without support and without the most simple coaching to help them bridge the gap between now and when they lose benefits.
My friend tells me that I cannot hold myself out as separate from this country and what it does.
My friend is right, which is why I must write, I, like my mother before me, would never be a party to taking away the last reprieve for mothers: cash benefits and food stamps.
I do not stand by while this country commits matricide.
In the state of Florida we give “cash” benefits to only two groups of people: the disabled, and mothers with children. When we create something called “Social Welfare Reform” and say that cash benefits will only be given to an individual for a lifetime maximum of five years, we are clearly stating to mothers of children that their safety net, their access to health care (Medicaid), their last reprieve is no longer available.
We beg three questions when we allow our legislature to make these decisions. What preparations are being made to create alternatives for women with children and what legislative mandates are being put into place to force employers into providing jobs that provide a living for families?
How does a five year cap on cash benefits to mothers address the issue of medical equipment companies and physicians profiting from the public health system? And for those physicians who do not intentionally commit fraud, yet are paid hundreds of dollars an hour by taxpayers, who on the average make $15.00 an hour, what and when will America decide that public health is a value that cannot be de-compensated by inflated paychecks to an elitist group called physicians?
To the concept of nurturing: I would offer the following: if, as a society, we decide that nurturing is not to be valued, either monetarily or as a principle, then how will we raise the children of the future?
How will we keep families from disintegrating? How will we keep everyday stressors from causing morbidity and mortality (illness and death)?
I personally, am afraid. I am very afraid. When this country makes a decision to eradicate support for mothers of infants, legislates an inflated income for an educated elite and ignores the question of who will take care of the babies, I am very afraid. Who will stand up and speak for the mothers?
Who will nurture the babies?
The indigent, who are already disenfranchised, who do not even know the meaning of the words positive self esteem?
Will they speak? The great mothers are gone, who will speak?
I am a private taxpaying citizen, who works in substance abuse treatment, indigent care only.
Johanna Esmus York
