The thread of gender in this article is interesting to follow. You start off with what could be construed as traditional feminist ideals: equal pay for equal work, not being required to be “barefoot and pregnant, and the notion that access to quality daycare can increase opportunities for women to succeed outside the home. All in all, an argument against the traditional notion of a “woman’s place.”

Then you drop the line, “No mention either on how this may affect the nursing shortage in Idaho,” which seems contrary to your earlier sentiments. It sounds as though you view nursing as a role best filled by women. In the spirit of gender egalitarianism, couldn’t the nursing shortage here (and nationwide) be filled by men as well as women?

Sadly, probably not. Despite all our progress, certain occupations are still regarded as inherently male or female, and at the top of the “female” list is nursing and elementary teaching.

I’m not trying to berate you or anything, I just found that abrupt shift interesting.

Surely there are a few other social ills that Sysiphus could blame on lack of state-mandated daycare licensing!
(-;

I’ll confess right up front – my overriding political philosophy is “small government = good government.” So I’m not seeing that the state needs to get into the daycare licensing business.

But on the other hand… if they’re already licensing contractors, nursing homes, plumbers, and BARBERS, why not daycares?

But on the other hand… from the viewpoint of our elected “public servants,” a good haircut is probably just about as important as anything.

Just what Idaho needs! More proof that the electorate is completely out of touch with reality.

If readers of the Guardian don’t think their vote has consequences, think again.

Fools, the legislature is full of fricken’ fools.

Sis, what makes you think that it’s a gender thing? Take a look at where Idaho stands in what teachers are paid. It could be that the Idaho legistature thinks very little of the children who live in this state – look at how they have treated the CHIPS program.

Or perhaps it is how they feel about education in general – from the moment a child is born. I do not think that the Idaho legislature actually wants to force businesses to pay their employees more (men do make more money than women), so that point is not well taken by this reader.

EDITOR NOTE–You are correct about gender inequity. Sis was making the point–NOT endorsing it.

Naz, I didn’t make the gender distinction the legislators voting no did. I merely brought up the nursing shortage because its an issue with which the legislature is currently struggling. Whether the nurse is male or female is irrelevant, if they are single parents or both parents work, the legislators voting no provide some of them with a Hobson’s choice of going to an unlicensed daycare or taking the legislator’s admonishment to heart and staying home and presumably going on welfare. The decision certainly shrinks the pool of available nurses.

The point of my post is legislators out of touch with the times. The only witness against the bill was Rep. JoAn Wood, R-Rigby, saying the committee had heard the same information 25 years ago when she served on it. “I would plead with you I think it’s working well,” Wood said. “We just don’t see the problems there in the rural area where I am.” However Rep. John Rusche, D-Lewiston, a physician who serves on the committee, disagreed. He said he’s seen terrible cases, including a toddler who drowned in a horse trough, and other children who were severely injured.

And Dave I have to go to other sources to since our local daily does such a piss poor job of reporting. The quotes above are from a Wyoming newspaper via http://www.43rdstateblues.com/?q=node/3170#comment It would be unfair and probably a violation of copyright to not acknowledge their hard work.

JM….agree that minimum standards need to be set for day care, but I am not sure we live in a climate where both parents have to work. This may be true for near minimum wage workers and others in financial desparity, but I think the majority of parents choose to both work so they can have a bigger home, live in the north end instead of Nampa, more cars, maybe a boat, nicer status symbols etc.

Many of those people in financial distress are that way due to poor choices and spending more than they earn. I really enjoy picking my kids up from school and looking at the 15-person vans picking up kids for day care. My favorite is a local church day care van that advertises “Rasing children the Lord’s way” I am not sure it is God’s intent that we outsource the care and raising of our children.

On the other hand outsourcing is the new effecient model, why not apply it to families as well as business. Maybe we could call a phone rep in India and see how our kids are doing and get tech support at the same time.

Some VERY interesting comments here.

S. the Sham says, “I do not think that the Idaho legislature actually wants to force businesses to pay their employees more…”

That’s a GOOD thing. In a free market, employees get paid what the market will bear.

B.S. says, “I myself am disgusted by the way Idaho treats young families,” and laments the expense of daycare.

It should be realized that state daycare licensing would cost something… probably to all citizens out of the general fund, and probably to the daycare operators… who would obviously pass those costs on to the consumers of their services. It might go to $175.

People keep flocking to Idaho, including “young families.” And I’m in agreement that it’s not our fat paydays. Idaho ranks comparatively low in pay for pretty much any line of work.

I tend to agree with JJ about the ideal family situation. “Mrs. Bikeboy” and I have made some sacrifices and tough decisions along the way, but she’s a stay-at-home mom, and we love her for it.

(And I join with JJ in scorning families where both parents work so they can afford sweet European vacations, or a big pretentious house on the hill, or a house full of leather furniture, or motorhome payments, etc. But we all have choices to make.)

However, I also realize there are other families with different circumstances. Like single-parent situations where if Mom doesn’t work, NOBODY works.

Let’s see… the state licenses pharmacists, outfitters and guides, real estate agents, commodity dealers, pesticide applyers, seed buyers, truck drivers, shorthand reporters (!), bartenders, marriage counselors, nurses and doctors, wastewater professionals (?), etc., etc., etc. … so apparently it’s not a “Big Government” thing.

JJ:
Wow, sounds like you’ve never had a minimim- (or even low-) wage job. Glad you’re doing well, but take a look at the ads in The Daily Paper.
Look at the house for rent, apartment for rent etc. ads, look at the prices. Then look at the help-wanted ads, look at the pay they’re offering.
Unless one has training, experience, a degree or whatever’s required for one of the few higher-paying jobs, many of those jobs would barely cover the rent. So if one has any bad habits — such as eating, wearing clothes, etc., things can be pretty tight.
Then note that many of the jobs are part-time, offer no health insurance or other benefits, and do the calculations again.
Next, consider if those wages must house, feed and clothe more than one person … And if they happen to have to cover three or four — say a couple with two children — …
And since it’s nearly impossible to work in the Boise area without a car unless one of the lowest-rent places just happens to be close to one of the jobs … yeah, there are buses, on a few routes for a few hours, but many businesses aren’t very accomodating about saying, “Oh, you don’t have a car? OK, we’ll make sure you always get off before the buses quit running, and you’ll never have to work on Sunday, and you’ll never have to go out for any purpose.”
You’re dropping all the workers into the “bigger home, more cars, boat etc.” category, but that just ain’t necessarily the case.

As for the outsourcing, I’m not really in favor of outsourcing our parenting, but sometimes it’s necessary — not only because both parents may have to work, but sometimes because there aren’t two — one may be dead, or in Iraq in the military, or in jail, or severely disabled or whatever.
However, I might be in favor of outsourcing our Legislature. Surely someone in India or somewhere could do a better job.

I think that this non-action by the majority of the legislators voting is further indication of the fact that they are totally and completely lacking in any knowledge of what most working people face. The lack of standards of child care lead to abuses, to latch-key childhoods, to greatly poverty and less education. If this keeps up, these kids will all grow up to be (Republican) legislators. Shame on the nay-sayers on this vital subject, shame!

Cyclops, you are correct, I am constantly frustrated by Idaho politics.
My wife is a councilor for the Meridian School district, and despite a three year masters degree required for the position she is on the same pay scale as are teachers. I am a public employee working for the fine City of Eagle. If my wife or myself decided to stay at home we would not be able to own a home and would definately have to get rid of one of our cars. We would also probably have to take at least one of our kids out of music lessson. Let’s see, which one should we choose? You see it only takes making a middle income wage, not a minimum wage, to put both parents to work in order to provide some basic advantages to your family.

Sis – Thank you for getting this discussion started! There are many related issues, which becomes even more clear when reading all the responses.

Kevin Richert did eventually do an opinion piece about the topic on his Statesman blog. It was likely inspired, albeit perhaps indirectly, by your effort to get the paper to cover the issue. I called Kevin when his piece was posted and suggested that it might be helpful to the general public if the Statesman would take the time to do a piece about the ages, and urban vs. rural, etc. background on our 105 legislators.

I’m not sure of the average age of our legislators, but I do know that many of them are WELL past their child-rearing years. Not only has it been a long time since they had young children, but I think part of the daycare issue is the difference between generations and how things work now, versus how it worked “then”. People who were raising their children in the 1950’s and 60’s have a different perspective than do those of us who had our children in the 1980’s, 90’s and 2000’s. (I admit, I had three in the 80’s, two in the 90’s and one in the 00’s myself!)

Anyway, thanks again for getting the conversation started on here. If nothing else, this issue should remind all of us with young children that we can never be too careful when leaving our children with other people – even when only for short periods of time.

Check out Red State Rebels dot com to see who is a welfare king! A million dollar one at that. Unbelieveable.

Unbelievable, our fine legislators had a chance to redeam themselves on this issue and again resisted indicating that minimum standards for daycares would head us down the road toward Soviet style Communism. Amazing, simply amazing.
Maybe this will wake our citizenry up to just how out of touch with modern society these backward thinking politicians are.

This disgusted me when I first read about it.

However, I became outraged when four of these legislators tried to justify their reasons in today’s post register op-ed section.

I wrote an article that clearly lays out their hypocrisy.

Please comment, and especially use the Share feature to email two of those legislators and ask them to answer the charges of hypocrisy.

http://idahofallz.com/2007/03/08/legislators-reveal-their-hypocrisy-in-family-values/