If there's one good thing that has come out of the waste of time that was the brouhaha created by Hilary Rosen's comments about Ann Romney not having worked "a day in her life", it comes in the form of a new piece of legislation called the WORK Act. A group of House Democrats plans to introduce the legislation, which stand for Women's Option to Raise Kids, to allow mothers with children under the age of four to stay home with them and continue to receive welfare benefits.
That's because, under the current law, raising children is not on the list of required "work activities" recipients must perform in order to get benefits. Weird, right? Since I thought we all pretty much agreed that "all moms are working moms," like Mitt Romney said last week.
Read more in ¿Qué más?: Dear Romney: So staying at home with the kids is only okay if you're rich?
Although the proposed WORK Act wouldn't allow moms to stay home with their children for as long as wealthy women like Ann Romney can, they would at least be able to raise them without being forced back into the workforce until they turn 4 years old. I'm glad to see that, for once, politicians seem to be taking a step in the right direction in terms of giving importance to the kind of issues that worry moms most.
The thing is that if everyone was so quick to judge Rosen for her remarks and no one had any issues coming to the defense of stay-at-home moms and how hard they work, then there should be no problems with this legislation becoming law, right? Hmm… Yeah, can't wait to see what Republicans think of that! Hopefully they'll put their money where their mouth is because staying home to raise children is hard work for everybody–not just the wealthy.
I guess we'll just have to wait and see what happens…
What do you think of the WORK Act? Would you support it?
Image via maria paz vargas/flickr
