In Loudoun County, Virginia, Hillary sat down with working moms and
dads facing every challenge there is as they try to raise their kids,
support their families, and navigate the overlap between home and work
demands.
Balancing work and family isn't a Democratic or a Republican issue, but
it should be a voting issue. Join Hillary for a roundtable discussion
on paid leave, health care, child care, and work-life balance with
Virginia families.
In Loudoun County, Virginia, Clinton Emphasizes Her Commitment to Young Parents and Families
Today,
Hillary Clinton began a two-day tour of Virginia and Kentucky where she
will meet with women and young families to discuss issues important to
them. In Loudoun County, Virginia, Clinton held a conversation with
young parents about the challenges of balancing work and family. The
average age in Loudoun County is just under 35 years old, and 73 percent
of households with children in the county have two working parents.
During the discussion, Clinton emphasized the importance of investing in
early learning programs and making quality child care affordable for
working families, as well as ensuring that families have good schools
and affordable college as their kids grow up.
As First Lady of Arkansas and a young mother herself, Clinton
helped introduce
the
Home Instruction for Parents of Preschool Youngsters (HIPPY) program,
which provided resources for parents to better educate their children at
home before they begin kindergarten. A new Hillary for America video today
highlights Clinton's lifelong record of fighting for children and
families by emphasizing her involvement in bringing HIPPY to Arkansas.
HIPPY now operates in 22 states, including Virginia, and the District of
Columbia.
A transcript of Clinton's introductory remarks in Loudoun County are below:
"Well,
thank you all for coming and having this conversation with me. It's
clear that there are so many challenges facing young families today that
we have to come to grips with. And we have to work together to try to
find the best menu of options. Because there is just no
‘one-size-fits-all’. People have different needs – childcare needs,
sometimes even more, as Shanda and I were just talking about, even more
challenging with special needs kids and how we start early and provide
that sort of support.
"For some it's family leave and
particularly the absence of paid family leave because that makes it more
difficult to deal with everything from newborns to aging relatives.
Others, it's just a continuing stress of a workplace that doesn't
provide enough compensation with rising incomes. There still is a
challenge with equal pay for women, which is real - it's not made up.
"There
are lots of concerns in the workplace that I'm hearing about
increasingly – about the work day never ends, the schedules are often
unpredictable. And even when you think you're gaining some control over
that work day it's subject to so many variables that are out of your
control and often end up throwing big monkey wrenches into what should
be your family time and your efforts to try and organize and stick with
that.
"So I hear about this all over the country, and I really
want to talk about it and hear from you more than me talking. Because
there are some obvious, maybe even typical, responses, but I'm trying to
get a much broader view about what will work. These are issues that
I've worked on for a really long time going back to my own life as a
mother, a daughter, and some of the challenges there, but also in the
work that I've done for the Children's Defense Fund and other ways of
trying to figure out how we have a more cohesive and frankly welcoming
set of expectations and supports for families in today's world.
"Because,
it's just harder I think. It's just my take. I think costs are greater.
Everything from commuting time to feeling like if you take that
vacation day, you're going to be viewed as slacking off. I mean they are
just--they are cultural as well as economic and structural challenges,
so I'm just very interested in hearing what all of you might have to
say."
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