When I was a young parent to my first child, I made $3,000/year over the WIC help that I tried to get and severely needed. My apartment building was about to raise rent to another $100/year just like last year and the year before last plus they installed water meters on groups of complexes so water would no longer be included and the bill would be added on top. The meter would be shared by at least 4 apartments which would include the family with 5 kids that lived above me.

I found a house I could rent for about $100/mo cheaper and blah but barely. I moved to this shithole of a meth nest. I really couldn’t afford it but you get super creative when you are having problems making ends meet.

Now I’m in a much better place for sure. I say all of this because I’d rather the money be put into services providing for children.

For example: Money put into schools earmarked to offer more after school programs as well as breakfast and dinner along with lunch. This way kids could always get 3 meals during the school year and parents could have some flexibility on child care and perhaps more align with working hours. During the summer break, if applicable, schools offer 3 meals per day and you could pick up the meals in one trip as “to-go” for say 2 or 3 days at a time per child. Some funding should be earmarked specifically to provide basic school supplies to teachers for their students – paper, pencils/pens, notebooks, binders, etc. as well as textbooks. Excluding textbooks, many teachers use their own money to make up for it and ask parents to volunteer extra supplies (we always provided as much as we could, eventually tripling them per child). When I grew up in a poorly funded schools our text books were very out of date and generally in poor condition. Sometimes we’d have to ‘partner up’ to share text books and you can imagine how difficult that was for studying and homework…so I didn’t do a lot of either. Of course, I’d also like to see textbooks have to be given in ebook format that has zero content in the hardcopy locked behind accounts and a paywall as well.

The US Government could do a much better job to support impoverished children and in general providing funding for education. It is also important that the money for education from federal taxes are mandatory for specific things because schools have shown that they’ll redirect funds meant for something to something else if they can. It’d be terrible if a school used money for student meals for a new parking lot for example. As a real world example, my high school got a ~$1mil grant from Microsoft to use for new technology. They built a brand new lobby that nobody wanted with that money. I assume, officially, they used the MS money for all the technology related budgets but then budgeted little or nothing from the school’s funds to same things and then used that surplus for the lobby.

I’m all for providing assistance for children. Since I think taxing anyone under ~500k should stop, I’m fine with credits. I think I’ll child healthcare should be free, etc.

But… my unpopular opinion is I think after 2 kids, you owe money. Yeah fuck you too ;)

I love how in America you get help when you run a company to the ground(bailouts) or a Child Tax Credit if you had a kid but you can’t afford it, but if you’re responsible and don’t have a kid because you know you can’t afford it, you get no safety net. America really seems to reward blindly plowing forward and screwing up more than careful consideration before the fact.