The minimum wage. You have a population thats aging, a big part of the population and a lot of people who are taking care of people who are older are older themselves and financially vulnerable. Some would argue that raising the minimum wage at this point actually makes that harder because it makes it harder for people to get the care they need at a price they can afford. How does Something Like that get resolved in your opinion . We need to show that were all dependent on one another. You have people who are care givers for their parents, care givers for children, care givers for the sick and disabled. They all care about each other in a community. Its not caregiver against person being cared for. We need to figure out ways, and i think they spoke about this on on the panel earlier this morning, we talk about how we value care in our society. Somebody caring for elderly parents or working as a Home Health Aide earning Poverty Level wages, thats not good for the caregiver or the person receiving the care. Theres been studies on the minimum wage that shows it doesnt cost jobs, theres ways use medicaid and child care credits to improve wages. We need to not pit elderly against children, we dont need to pit elderly against those receiving care. We need to have a system overall that values care. What does that look like . Tell me what that looks like. Because if youre talking bt a household budget, what about child care and elder care have to come out of that budget, how does that happen . Its nice to say we cant pit people against each other, but whos picking up this etab . The book outlines public and private solutions. In terms of public solutions, part ol valuing people is recognizing that they need paid sick days and paid family leave. We talk about private solutions, corporations can offer those kinds of benefits to their employees. When we talk about wages, the government can be a provider. Child care is one of the Biggest Barriers to work for low income women but i dont know any women across the income scale who isnt concerned about how difficult it is to find affordable child care arrangements. The arch cost of child care is 40 of peoples incomes. I think a discussion about the government ose role in comprehensive child care and prex is a conversation were beginning to see happen. I want to say, at least for seniors, a substantial amount of he care giving is unpaid and uncompensated. Really there, what weve seen in a number of places is employers starting to take a step in terms of additional flexibility in the workplace. Thats something we want to continue to encourage. Many people who provide care dont think of themselves as a caregiver, they say, yeah, i do ther rands, do shopping, so its important to recognize that. States are providing respite care for those taking care of seniors. I dont think theres going to be, i may be wrong, but i dont think theres going to be a massive government solution, whether its at the federal level or state level. Its going to be a patchwork of family members, of employers and others having to step in, particularly on care giving. Importantly, weve been talking to a lot of health care providers, hospitals, doctors, you would be stunned at the number of people who go in for very significant care, medical care, and as they leave the hospital, or the doctors office, theres no thought about having a conversation with the person who is going to follow up. Things like that can make an enormous difference. Lets go back to the comment about people shouldnt confront each other and so forth. This is totally inappropriate in washington. Politics is organized warfare between groups, especially under conditions we have now where the money is short and its not going to loosen up for a long time so if we spend it here, we cannot spend it here. So far, the political system has decided, ok, were going to cut across the board. That means well be cutting childrens programs, were going to be Cutting Research on children and other things. Thats exactly what we do now. We cut head start but we protected the programs for the elderly. Thats the future because the congress set it up so that all programs for the elderly are on automatic pilot. We are confronting a really serious problem. We are going to have to fight. Theres going to have to be some Better Organization to get our to switch these resources, take for example child care. I completely agree with you on child care. We dont spend nearly enough on child care especially because we have so many single mothers. This raises the broader point, were not about to change. Our demographic changes toward reductions in marriage and increases in female families are not going to change. Were going to have many, many of our kids for the foreseeable future. We need to support the families even better than we do now. We do a lot now, we should do more, pesslirble especially on child care. Were going to have to save money somewhere in order to spend the money we ought to spend on kids and the future of the country or were going to pay a price. Can you talk more, ron, because youve been sounding the alarm for quite some time about Family Structure. Marriage is one of the cores of your work, is the whole question of marriage. By the measures one might argue, i know we were hearing about Family Structure it totally failed. What we heard earlier is marriage among the middle class is more stable than its ever been but among those financially vulnerable its more difficult than its ever been. So the we is, what now . Marriage is not the Silver Bullet against poverty but it is true that the percentage of family whors poor are less by a marriedheaded couple. If we had the marriage rate that we had in 1970 and we did this by matching people, match n age, race, and location, the poverty rate would fall 30 without any additional spending. Thats one of the reasons im attracted to it. Im also attracted to increasing marriage rates because its good for kids. Kids dont get a vote in this demographic change and continue to not get a vote. A lot of my colleague who was been in the Marriage Movement for a long time dont want to face up to facts. Were not going to change this in our lifetime. Were not going to change it in gods lifetime and we have years and years and years of this and the consequence, the inevitable consequence is the private sector and Public Sector has to do more to support femaleheaded families and day care is a great example but there are others. Like what . Whats the way that we should support femaleheaded families since thats the way its going . One thing i would like to see, id like to obama talk more about the advantages of families. I know he believes it, because he said it in his book. But he hardly ever talks about it. Marriage is the greatest antipoverty tool. People like obama and people on the city council, the mayors, governors, everybody, we should talk a lot more about it. I think dont you think he talks more about it than any other president because its consider sod unusual for black people, particularly black men, to be committed to their marriages, you dont think he talks about it . I dont think he talks about marriage in a way that people would say, this is a key to my life. Its key to my childrens life. Its the best way to do it. I highly recommend it. That kind of thing. Theres a thin line here. No, i was going to say, i think we spoke earlier this morning about how no one is against marriage but in some cases its not a possibility for a variety of reasons. It could be even because of domestic violence, things didnt work out between the partners and its better to be separated and just getting married, especially when theres a lot of lower income men who are themselves not financially stable is not going to resolve the problem. I think its important to encourage stable relationships, its important to encourage family planning, and in the shriver report itself, in our marriage, motherhood and men chapter, we speak about the importance of family planning. But i do think that to sort of put out there that if we were just to talk more about marriage people would i didnt say just. Thats one part of it. The cultural change here is that the status of marriage has declined greatly. We now accept it, you can cohabit, you dont have to cohabit its fine to have a baby, theres no pressure not to, even if you cant support the baby, well give you public dollars to do it. The whole culture around family and marriage and commitment to children within a married couple family has changed dramatically. I bemoan that but i accept it as the way its going to be so we need to find a way around it. I think if we had more of a public commitment and our policies, especially tax policy, were focused on twoparent, married couple families, we could improve somewhat. I take it by then you support samesex marriage . Yes, i have no problem with that. Im just just to clarify you do support samesex marriage. One thing ive been involved in is abused and neglected kids. There are many cases, for many years that samesex couples, men and women, have adopted kids and taken them out of the Child Protection system. Which is a great thing. I came to this thinking that is a lot better, i know for sure thats a lot better than a kid being in foster care and we have some research on it, its not great, but its very difficult to show any harm to children because theyre with married parents. Thats controversial but ive read the research, i think its not persuasive. You could not point to research and say, that screws up kids when they live with two moms or two dads. Councilmember, you wanted to jump in . I think in a lot of plcymakers arent just looking at family status. Sometimes, stream of consciousness doesnt come to my mind as im going to make this decision because people are married . Im going to make the decision because people live in a household together, they have an arrangement, whether its a committed partnership, two moms, two dad, if theres love in the home thats all im concerned about because thats going to be the fuel to get people and really children, our future, to where they need to go. On the other hand though, i think one of the main things we have to look at it is whether its marriage or not marriage is looking at the income. Right. So the color of money, the only color of money in america that mat sers green, as i was told by one of my history professors in civil rights. I think a lot about that. When you have a dual stream of income reduced to one stream of income, youll have to make some choices. So when you look at home production versus Market Production in the home, we have to look at how many hours is someone getting basically subsidized for in their homes to do laundry or folding or could they hire, make a higher wage to get extra help if they dont have a person, significant other in the home to help. Got to look at the whole economic structure in that home. So i think thats its just really prnt that were looking that, its not just a heteronormative viewpoint that places priority on one man and one dad. Theres so many reasons thats not going to happen. When it does happen, thats great. I hope that eventually were not even discussing if its a mom and dad in a home. Were just discussing if two people have enough to put a roof over their heads, keep themselves relatively happy, safe, and thats it. I hope were talking about other issues in 20 years. Why . On the older im set in the millenials and the younger set in the others, millenials dont give a rip. Youve got a boyfriend and youre a guy . I dont care. You got a wife and youre a lady . Cool. But the whole question of two parents. I feel you. But on this question of its better to have two parents in the home, whatever their gender is, do you agree with that . I absolutely do. In fact theres research, and im sorry i dont have it, id glad to give it to anybody, but in my undergraduate studies, womens studies and economics, which are perfect disciplines together to look at thing but Research Shows the best outcomes were households with two moms. And again, that is not something that i would say, ok, well then im going to make policy to say everybody should have two moms, no. Absolutely not. But it just goes to show that weve put such a tight capital on a heteronormative family and not every Research Study shows that will provide the best outcome. We need to get beyond one model that we have that has worked really well for so many families and most of us are in this room because of heteronormativity. Its going to be part of our society. But i just dont think it is this cornerstone that we need to build ourselves on. We need to build ourselves on many types of families and the key thing is, what do families need to thrive . Lets talk about, we started talking about the minimum wage. I would like to talk more about child care. But im wondering, is child care the issue or is care giving the issue . Thats my question, given what nancy is talking about in terms of where were headed as a country. So talk about, what does the world you want to live in look like when it comes to this issue . Its bothand. People are caring for older relatives or even for a sick spouse. We were talking about the needs of military families coming home and the caregivers for military families often dont have the support they need as well. Its across different generations. The world again that i want to live in is one that enables women and men, for that matter, to balance those the bread winning and care giving responsibilities. I think the policies in the shriver report which hopefully will help all of us sleep better through the night is public, its private, and its personal. Its everybody stepping up and getting the education that they need to earn higher wages. Its Companies Making sure a lot of these things dont cost money. The index we put out as part of the report, Better Benefits and pay cost money. But theres a host of other things employers can do to provide flexible and predictable schedule, to allow care givers to make personal phone calls during the work day to check on things. The vision we lay out is to boost the incomes of breadwinners and to value the role of care givers, including raising the minimum wage, making sure that people have pathways to medium and highskilled jobs, the information they need to make educational choices and what they need to succeed as a working parent. It means that they have flexible and predictable schedules and the right to request flexibility from their employer without being fired. It means we have comprehensive prex and child care proposal. The president outlined one plan. Theres bipartisan legislation. This is something that should be bipartisan. In the poll its bipartisan. Bipartisan majority of americans support it. Lets get the boots on the ground and turn it into law. This time has gone awfully fast. I knew this was going to go fast but not as fast as this. I would like to give each of you, im sorry, we were not offered the opportunity to hear from you in this program. We would like to have, wouldnt we . We would have liked to have heard from everybody. But next time. So in the time we have left, id love to hear from each of you about what youd like to see happen as david said, you can give us a charge, give us the takeaway, one thing youd like us to be thinking about. I think again one of the great challenges were going to have as a country and as families will be the increasing demands for care giving of young and old and id like us to see if we can begin a discussion that youve started here which is about concrete approaches we can take and to recognize that indeed much of our Public Policy supports the Economic Security of older people and thats very important in a family. If you look at 50 to 60yearolds, about half of them are providing significant economic support toer that kids and grandkids. The whole family economy has changed and we have to recognize that. Do you want to give us assignments . Tell us if theres one thing you want us to do when we leave here. A lot of us are good multitaskers. Id love personally to have you all engage with aarp and work with us on the next step of how we might engage in this conversation, some specific actions were working in every state and an awful lot of communities. I imagine a world a much higher percentage of our kids ive with married parents and that provides emotional and Financial Security for kids. Knowing thats not going to happen, i want us at the state and federal level to provide more support to femaleheaded families to do a better job rearing kids. Give us some homework. What do you want us to do to support that . Start a local organization that helps single parents, both males and females to help with child care and counseling and whatever other issues they have. Councilwoman . I would draw your attention to the idea of reill yhency and everybody has of resiliency. Everybody has a Pivotal Moment in their life. Use that moment to make your dent on the world. Get off your pity pot. As someone told me if you sit on your pity pot too long, youll get ring around the rear. We cant have that. I want clean buns in this room. The homework is number one invest in yourself. If youre in a place where you think, its my time to make my dend in the dent in the world, invest in yourself, ask for help, ask for what you need. Contact me, i would gladly hold your hand over skype or facetime with anybody in this room. I want to see you invest in yourself. If you dont think you want to be in the spotlight but you want to help other people, ask somebody, how can i invest in you . How can i care about you . So if you see someone running a campaign, definitely give money to that woman. But ask her, can i take you out for snacks and an art craft with your daughter . Thats what a friend of mine did, taught me about selfcare on that long journey. Invest in yourself and invest in others. I think what catherine said is beautiful. It contributes to what i want to call people to do, wild you still can, download the shriver report for free. It lists 10 things you can do. I want to emphasize one in particular, vote. And to make your elected official earn the vote. Not giving it away. Thats something we emphasize to these solutions, holding the people who are representing us accountable for progress. The final thing is,ic this was represented this morning by the power, is tell your story. If you feel comfortable sharing your story, it can have such an impact by putting faces and voices to the conversations weve been having today. O to theshriverreport. Com. And also we have our ame