Pia Hansen: Families deserve a consistent, realistic federal policy

If you go online and look up “United States family policy,” you’ll get millions of hits, but little concrete information.

The United States does not have an official, uniform family policy. Some policies affect families, but we don’t have a “department of family welfare” or a “general office of family affairs.”

Most countries we compare ourselves to have such government entities.

Creating a government department of this-and-that doesn’t guarantee anything will actually be done, but in this case it would ensure that family and children’s issues are brought to the negotiation table comprehensively and on a regular basis.

I got to wondering about the nation’s family policy after reading that Washington state lawmakers are trying to figure out how to fund the paid Family Medical Leave program they approved in the spring.

The program would grant $250 a week for up to five weeks to parents who stay home with their newborn or newly adopted children.

The federal Family and Medical Leave Act already in place provides for medical leave, but it is unpaid, which prevents many families from taking advantage of it.

I’m the only breadwinner at my house; going without a paycheck for any length of time would be a challenge, to put it mildly. For families living in poverty, it would be a disaster.

A federal medical leave act that doesn’t provide funding for paid leave is a slap in the face to working families, especially single parents. I guess it’s a good thing that you can’t get fired for wanting to take care of your dying parent or your newborn baby, but who are we kidding? Few people can handle going without paychecks these days.

Joan Blades – one of the founders of the Web site www.momsrising.com – writes that the United States is one of four, out of 173 countries, that doesn’t have paid leave for new mothers.

On top of that, accessing health care for your child is not going to get any easier. Our president says he will veto a $35 billion expansion of a national children’s health care plan, but he has no qualms asking for an extra $190 billion for the war in Iraq.

Note to the White House: If we can’t raise our children in a healthy manner, soon you will not have anyone to send off to war, not to mention that it’s a shame that a nation that likes to call itself the greatest in the world refuses to spend money on its kids.

Kudos to Gov. Chris Gregoire for facing off against a federal government that has forgotten about its smallest citizens as she goes to bat for the Washington State Children’s Health Insurance Program.

It cannot be repeated often enough that raising children isn’t a women’s issue, it’s a family issue. Our system is not stacked against moms; it’s stacked against families, and it’s our children who pay the price.

Work policies have changed little since a time where the American “ideal” family – mom at home with three kids and dad at work full time – reigned. Today, divorced families are common; grandparents raise their grandchildren; uncles and aunts raise their nieces and nephews; we have single parents, adoptive parents, foster parents and same-sex parents.

Some religious and political groups would love to force the “ideal” American family back together through legislation – to them, that’s family policy – but that train left the station back in the ‘60s, and we’ll never again agree on a definition of family.

A child, on the other hand, is not so difficult to define, regardless of what political affiliation you have. And a child is never responsible for the circumstances into which he or she is born.

Yes, providing paid medical leave, a decent period of paid maternity leave and basic health care is going to cost us some money, but it will never be as expensive as it is to patch up the long-range damage we are doing by not funding these programs.