I could not agree more with your first point. I actually mentioned this yesterday in another thread on why its disingenuous when parents say "it takes a village to raise a kid". In the last couple of weeks a 17 year old kid was walking his neighbors kid back to her home from the park after the kid was eating dirt and what did he get for his act of kindness but a several calls to the police station saying he was kidnapping the kid and molesting her.

On your second point I think you are missing what Ideefixed was referring too. In several stories lately on broadsheet but even more in its letter pages the idea has been floated by several people that governmental daycare is the cure all for almost all mother in the work place issues and will bring about peace and the end of resentment and might even end childhood illness and injury. You can see it even in this thread where some have said this could have been prevented if only the parents were not forced to go back to work so soon.

This would benefit the economy overall in a couple of ways: If government programs are in place to provide assistance, private companies suffer less of a work loss, making them more competitive with other countries' labor forces.

You can not compare the US to Europe. Europe has a declining population and needs to give incentives to couples to actually have children, in the US we have a growing population ergo we do not have to give benefits to parents to have kids.

Also, if we had state programs in place to assist at least for the first couple of years, workers might have children younger, which makes for a healthier workforce and healthier children, less bankruptcies, lower medical bills. I'm just speculating here, obviously, but I can't see how state assistance for child care would have any adverse effects.

Children born to couples in there early 30's do better in just about every metric we have. The few metrics they do worse than when the parents are younger are so slight to be nearly meaningless. In other words we should be encouraging parents to have kids later not earlier.

Suggesting that we need more help from the government to raise our families does not equal sucking money away from those who don't have children.

I'm not very happy with the fact that my tax dollars are distributed disproportionately to weapons manufacturers.

No, your tax dollars do not disproportionately go to weapons manufacturers. Everyone that pays federal taxes gives roughly the same percentage of their income to weapons manufacturers. On the other hand Childless people do in fact pay more than parents in taxes ergo we are paying you to have kids already and every additional dollar that goes to pay for your kids is more money being redistributed from me to you. I am open to the argument that this is a societal plus but don't pretend that I am not paying for your kids.

You asked "Whatever happened to "it takes a village?"" Parents killed that idea not to long ago in this country and its only getting worse because of parents. It was parents that turned a whole gender into an enemy. Men that work with minors are pretty much seen as perverts in this country and all but drummed out of primary and preschool education. Men are scared to deal with children not there own because of the very real threat they will be arrested or put up for public scrutiny as a child molester. Never mind the entitlement that parents feel over there children opting out of societal goods like immunization. Parents want society to respect your beliefs and not teach controversial subjects or to teach in a PC manor so as not to offend. Taking away rights of adults in the name of the children. This is to name just a few. Parents want the village to pay for children but stay the hell away on everything else.

The Jim--I do live in Manhattan, and I still have to work, as do most women who live even in Manhattan.

Did not imply that every white women that lives in Manhattan or the other places I mention took the stay at home track. I was pointing out that the writers of broadsheet are insular to their surroundings which seems to be white educated women that have the choice aka the style section of the NYT.

of critics and her peers with 5 Golden Globe nominations and 3 wins, 2 Emmy nominations and 1 win, 2 Academy Award nominations and a win, and a shit load of Chicago, LA, New York film critic nominations.

Wow, it only took 4 years for Broadsheet to figure this basic reality out, congrats. After dozens if not hundreds of working versus stay at home mom articles on broadsheet you have 1 article that touches on what most women outside of Brooklyn, Manhattan, and San Fransisco go though. I wish I could believe that this was growth for this section and its writers but it reads more like a continuation of broadsheets vendetta/jealousy? against/of the NYT style section.

What the fuck is the difference between the lot of you and Bush and his supporters exactly? I have seen calls for him to be tortured, I have seen repeated calls for the FBI to spy on anti choice groups, I have seen blanket statements that anti choice members are all murders at heart and terrorists. Why where you bitching when bush did this to Muslims again?

How about we let the FBI investigate based on crazy things like getting search warrants.