TOM WILLS PRODUCTIONS: No. 171: Choose Well

"31 Weeks" by Tom Wills, September 2012

The pregnant one on the right is my unwed daughter Kara. Let's right away get to that, because it's the point of this.
She'll have her son Anthony Thomas, grandchild No. 1, after the presidential election but before Christmas.
Napping with her is Keith. I call him "Baby Daddy" not out of spite, but because he is.
They are trying to get a moment of peace in this picture, because they're not getting many.
They, and other young adults like them, have much to lose in this year's election and the next four to eight years. I don't frankly believe that they will gain a thing.

"Pook" 1989, back when I was the Baby Daddy.

Think what you like, and I'll tell you what I think:

I was born in 1961 and I believe that people should get married before they make babies.

But seeing the birth lists in the newspaper every day, I know that's not realistic in 2012. So let's move that debate out of the way right off.
I'm past the point of being surprised, shocked, disappointed or angry. People get together, things happen and if things work out, they fall in love. Sometimes things don't work out, even if they do get married. That chapter here is unwritten.
They are engaged, living together, and a wedding would be nice but it's not happening right now. A baby is.

I love her, I'll love Anthony, and I'm warming up to Baby Daddy.

Click on all pictures to enlarge. Watch the picture "gestate" below.

I think people should work hard and support themselves.

There are times, however, when they cannot.
Kara is a nurse at a nursing home, where the work is hard and unpleasant. She makes decent money, but has tens of thousands of dollars in student loans hanging over her head. Some of that is her fault, being unsure at first of a career choice. Some of it is my fault, pushing her through career pipelines and worrying about the final cost later.
The reality is, her job doesn't cover the cost of her education debt -- and neither does mine -- so parents and others are stepping up until she can handle it. It's a long and dark pipeline.
We are not alone in this, in 2012 America.

Keith didn't go to college, a career center or beauty school. He works part-time, and sometimes full-time depending on scheduling, cleaning classrooms and doing other chores in a city school district. I mopped floors in a hospital for three years and I know that, too, is hard, messy, thankless work.
They have rent to pay, because another reality is, they're not going back to their mommies and daddies.

The timing of this is terrible.

I recently extricated Kara from my employer's insurance and onto her own employer's coverage. She's 24 and not happy about the switch because it's going to take more money out of her paycheck -- $50 a month, just for her. But truthfully she has to pay her share, now that it's available to her -- just like you and I are paying our shares. That's how things work in 2012. Everyone is paying more, while not necessarily making more money.

The kicker is, little Anthony will debut just three weeks before her one-year anniversary at the nursing home. That means Kara gets no family medical leave. In fact, she'll be terminated from her job on the assurance of rehiring and resumption of benefits within 60 days. So, for four or five weeks, potentially there's no insurance, no income. That's where things get really slippery and possibly awful, during what's supposed to be a joyful time.

Kara, 1991. "All the pictures on the wall serve only to remind me of it all."

Most employers with group health plans are required by the government to offer employees the opportunity to continue temporarily their group health care coverage. She can to look into that for herself, but someone will have to pay for it. She can file for unemployment too.
As for Anthony? He'll likely get a medical card. A medical card in Ohio is welfare.

I don't like welfare, I didn't come from it, and my wife is really pissed off.

But in 30-plus years of busting my own loyal ass at jobs, I have learned that sometimes people, through no fault of their own, need government assistance in the short term. Neighbors lose their jobs, natural disasters happen. and people have babies that need medical care.
With this medical card, I am not advocating a free lifetime ride over successive wasteful and lazy generations. Technically the baby is covered for 30 days on Kara's new insurance, but she'll still have to get aid, for at least a month and some days. Frankly, if it's available she should take it until she can swing the $170 a month for family coverage -- which she can't afford now.
Priority No. 1 is the kid's health and well-being. One more issue is off the table.

I'm big on child support, both emotionally and financially. I'm still doing it.

Emotionally, Keith has been right there and he gets strong marks from me for that. Financially, we'll see.
He is waiting on a permanent school district gig but really should also be looking elsewhere for work, and we've had that conversation. Allegedly there's a shale boom and an economic resurgence in northeastern Ohio. Uh-huh.
For now, what good does it do to lawyer up for child support if he can't offer up much financially? The ice is pretty thin, but if it firms up I'm not gonna let him skate, and neither will she.

Did I talk to Kara beforehand about this post? Yes, she read it and said OK, asking, "What prompted this?"

MY frustration, finances and fear.
Plus, I'm tired of televised election blather every seven minutes, 24 hours a day -- all of them looking out for us.

This is a perspective on what I call "the full catastrophe" -- the tale of three families (hers, his and soon theirs), with a lot of baggage and much at stake. It's a mess of hard reality, with both working parents-to-be riding on the backs of their own parents and grandparents -- and soon, a little bit of government aid until things hopefully get better.
I simply don't want it to get worse for us, and others like us.

So, what do we know now?

These two young adults (and many more like them) do not want to be dependent upon government.
They don't want to think of themselves as victims.
They do not believe the government has a responsibility to care for them forever.
They DO believe -- as do I -- that they should have health care, food and housing.
They want to work for it and make a decent wage.

Any candidate (at any level of office) or voter who thinks otherwise is completely out of touch with reality in America 2012. So choose well.