A "gender" budget!!??

What's next, an LGBTQ budget?!?!  A Black Lives Matter budget??!!  Probably.  Whatever happened to budgets about the finances of the country?? 

And don't get me started on child care.  The working women of my generation figured that out more than 40 years ago.  When I had my first baby 42 years ago, I knew I had to hire a "wife" if I wanted to keep working.  So I did.  I hired a very expensive live-in nanny and after six months, went back to work.  But back then, we didn't get a year off.  We got six months and "a" job back, not our own.  And we didn't get our salary, we got unemployment.  It was disconcerting indeed to return to the office to find someone else sitting in yours doing yours.

I also had to deal with two step-children and their care in the face of  their very bitter and hostile mother.  Oh, how much fun was that!  Not. 

But I regret nothing.

As part of the generation that went to the barricades for working mothers, I am appalled when I see well-educated mothers sitting on their asses at home.  These women took up expensive seats in post-secondary institutions, got good degrees and then decided to stay home.  That is not what we fought for.  We fought so new mothers could go back to work and not lose their jobs.  Actually, I take it personally and usually give these women an earful.  "I'm so glad I have the choice to stay home," they say.  Really?  Hey ladies, support yourselves and do something society values in the workforce.  Society still penalizes women for having the biological function of having children, but women have to accept it and keep working.  Them's the facts. 

Even if we lost ground by staying home for a while, we overcame and moved on.  My kids had a myriad of child-care situations -- nannies, daycare, after-school programs, neighbours -- and they prospered.  I didn't wait for "the government" to figure out my choices.  And as I say, that was 42 years ago!
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Just have to say a word about Kurt Browning.  If I have to see and listen to him one more time about the "Chip reverse mortgage" program, I am going to scream!  As much as I used to love the guy, I'm about to say I no longer do.  At least they have dropped that sad ad he did with the great Don Jackson.