friday, november 6, 1931
page4
daily nebraskan
n "i. a n
27me's politically-motivated moves ignore issues
When Sen. Don Dworak of Colum
bus announced Wednesday his in
tention not to run for governor, he
called Gov. Charles Thone "indecis
ive, weak and politically motivated.
Dworak may have spoken too
soon, however.
Although it is good that Husker
fans all over the state will be able to
view the game, we wonder if the
governor doesn't have better things
to do with his time than become a
programmer for the ABC Network.
With the Legislature muddling
a
tax
1 nercentaoe point state income Icadersnip u 10 maintain a positive
.. " rnvpr the funds lost public relations image, then perham
by the percentage drop in the federal it's time for a new governor who will
income tax rate. ume fuU responsibility tor the
state.
If Charles Thone's idea of forceful Kim Hachiya
According to the Associated Press, through attempts to trim S25 million
Thone, on Wednesday, performed a from the state budget - a move
minor miracle by helping to get tele- which will strangle already financial-
vision coverage of Saturday's Okla- ly-strapped state institutions such as
homa State-Nebraska gridiron match
up beamed to western Nebraska.
Apparently, the station in Scotts
bluff gets its ABC Television "feed"
from Denver, which was slated to
show the New Mexico-Utah game.
A flood of 300 calls to the local ABC
affiliate, to Denver, to the National
Collegiate Athletic Association
offices in Shawnee Mission, Kan.,
and to ABC Television in New York
did the trick, and special arrange
ments were made to allow the game
to be seen in western Nebraska.
Apparently one of those calls was
from Charles Thone, Regent Robert
Simmons of Scottsbluff told the
Associated Press.
Thone has built his political life
on public appearances and actions
which keep his public image glow
ing but don't really touch on any
major crises facing Nebraska.
the university, Thone once again ex
hibits one of his typical politically
motivated moves.
Crowning county queens, speaking
before local lodges and getting TV
coverage to out-state Nebraska may
be good public relations, but it really
doesn't do any thing except mask
the fact that Thone's do-nothing ad
ministration has allowed the state to
become mired in the budget-crunch
issue.
Accusations continue to fly that
Thone and his advisers "doctored"
reports issued to last summer's State
Board of tquiliation which at that
time did not raise tax rates, forcing
the special session.
Thone would much rather see the
Legislature take the political heat
when state services run dry, than
assume the responsibility of main-
1980 tax rate by allowing
taining the
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Vision of bliss blurred by unsupervised children
It's a vision 1 have often these days. I'm a mommy and
he's a daddy and we just had a little boy. How blessed.
How blessed. What a lovely family.
But wait. Now baby's home, and mommy and daddy
go back to work and baby is all alone. How sad. How
sorrowful. What a wicked mommy.
Yes, of course, mommy is to blame. After all, she had
the baby and now she's going off and leaving the dear
child either alone or with a stranger. Bad, bad mommy.
1 guess I'm doomed to be the bad mommy of my
vision. You see, I plan to join that force of working
mothers - more than 17 million strong in early 1980
sometime in the next decade.
Hopefully apparent by my presence on this university
campus, I want a job - not just any job, but a career-job,
where I go to work when it's morning and return when it's
evening and do something important in-between. And 1
want a family, with the house and the yard and the happy
kids and the husband - who goes to work when it's morn
ing and returns when it's evening and does something
important in-between.
The problem: I'm scared to death that I can't have
them both. Other women should be too.
The unsupervised children of America's working
mothers - both the single ones and those with husbands
- are quickly becoming our newest social problem.
In March of last year, 30.7 million children under 18 -53
percent of that age group - had working mothers.
Specifically, 9.8 million children were under 6 years old;
the remaining were aged 6 to 17.
The significance: 30.7 million children have no parent
al supervision for a large portion of the day.
What's so awful about that? Nothing, except that un
supervised children are now involved in delinquent acts,
perform at lower levels in schools, are more prone to in
home accidents and grow up feeling rejected by their
parents. At least that is the opinion of a Penn State pro
fessor in a recent article in hJmation Digest.
But at the same time, that professor says children with
working parents - the "latchkey" children who are old
enough to fend for themselves after school hours are
probably more independent, learn "survival" skills at
earlier ages and are more responsible. But, he asks, is that
responsibility premature? A ewswcek article (Feb. l(.
1981) on "latchkey kids" elaborates:
Unwed mothers trouble for blacks
It is, says Eleanor Holmes Norton, "the single most
important problem confronting the black community
today."
Norton gained prominence as an executive aide to the
mayor of New York before becoming chair of the U.S.
Equal Employment Opportunity Commission under Presi
dent Jimmy Carter. But the problem she is speaking of is
not the urban crisis, or joblessness, or even racism. It is, in
the words of the old rock song, "babies making babies."
mom raspberry
More than half of all black children born in America
today are born out of wedlock, most of them to teen-age
mothers. It is, says Holmes, not merely a problem for the
young mothers and their families. It is "disastrous" for
the entire black community. "Ordinarily, young people
are expected to provide the group with a fresh start. But
what kind of fresh start can there be for us when half the
next generation will consist of children who were raised
by children? These youngsters, who should be our hope
for the future, are virtually guaranteed to grow up with
problems of the most severe kind. The implications are
disastrous for all of us.
"These children are the ones most likely to have
reading and learning difficulties. They are the one most
likely to become truants and delinquents. They are the
ones most likely to be untrained and jobless, to be
engaged in violent crime. And yet we are scarcely paying
attention to the problem.
"It's so much easier to talk about our social problems
in terms of young adults who are unskilled and out of
work, or into drugs or crime, and so on. But we have not
taken note of the fact that the problems begin much
earlier - with children born to mothers who are them
selves children."
Norton is aware that the increase in out-of-wedlock
births has occurred among whites as well as blacks. But
the statistics are far more serious among blacks. Between
1970 and 1979, for instance, out-of-wedlock births among
whites increased from 5.7 percent to 9.4 percent For
blacks, the increase was from 38 percent to 55 percent
according to the Census Bureau, and appears to be still
climbing.
"The situation would not be nearly as devastating if
the extended family had survived the ghetto" says
Norton. "It didn't. The sheltered situation that used to
exist in Black America, even for children of unmarried
parents, doesn't exist in the big cities.
uMtt K!u havf,been dealing with symptoms,
rather than the basic problems. F '
Continued on Page 5
A 10-year-old girl from Columbia, S.D., returns to her
family's trailer every afternoon, lets herself in and makes
the beds, dusts the furniture and washes the dishes. By the
time her working parents arrive home each day, Vanessa
Whittleton is hard at her homework. Both proud and wist
ful of her responsibility, Newsweek quoted Vanessa as
saying: "Sometimes I'd like to go outside and play but
there's nothing 1 can do but stand at the door and watch."
Vanessa and the millions before her and after her scare
me. I don't want my children to be sad, bored and lonely
when I'm away at work. 1 don't want them to get into
trouble, hurt themselves or be in a position to let others
hurt them. And in the end, I guess I don't want them to
hate their mommy for working.
What this country needs - and what 1 and other
mothers will need in a few years are more child care
options. While day care centers are still the most popular
option for pre-school children, the solution for the
latchkey kids are in-school programs held after school
hours. It's kind of a teacher-babysitting idea, where kids
stay after 3 p.m. to do non-school activities.
Not a bad idea, but not likely to catch on. Schools,
remember, are primarily government run, and the govern
ment, rightly so, can't take on all the duties of the family.
More options, more innovations on the part of those
professionally pledged to child care are needed. Without
these options, other women and I are going to have to
choose betw een having children and having jobs.
That's a choice I never want to make.
r
nebraskan
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