Working Poor Women's Unpaid Labor: Part I

Working poor women's conditions revolve mainly around trying to work through a very complex system of red tape that comes with seeking government assistance and varieties of welfare, which is theoretically a system in place to help and make life easier for them in times of need. It would seem that, based on statistics from the National Center for Children in Poverty, the youngest of children and often the ones living in poverty. This could be attributed to a young mother's unfamiliarity with how to handle money, child care and maintaining a job. The NCCP backs up this theory: "researchers believe that parents of young children do not earn as much as parents of older children because they tend to be younger and have less work experience."

Because these young children have generally younger mothers with less job experience, they are poor. The main deficiencies found in these fiscally lacking families are food shortages, food insecurity (which means that the family is unsure of how they will get food and when their next meal will come), lack of housing that does not break the proverbial bank (it should be noted that 41% of families who rent their homes spend more than a third of their income on rent, according to the NCCP), and these children also lack health insurance, which either prevents their mothers from seeking care or ends up costing exorbitant amounts when they do.

The NCCP offers two major ways that society and effectively government policy can prevent children from living in such poverty. The first is to “make work pay.” This would mean that new policies should be created to allow workers to gain earned income tax credits, thereby lightening the burden of tax deductions on already meager checks. It is also recommended that regular increases in minimum wage be enacted to support growth and promise in the lives of these families whose breadwinners do not have much opportunity to grow their money. With these should also come health insurance, paid sick leave, vacation and the possibility of benefits that those making more money receive.

The second way that child poverty can be ridded, according to the NCCP, is by supporting parents and their young children. Educational opportunities, such as subsidized early child care with structured learning, need to be made more widely available