I'm not sure that I'm comfortable with the word “choice” here, because I think for single mothers or women who are living in poverty, it isn't necessarily a choice. I think they feel like they're in a situation and the circumstances are dictating it, rather than it being a real choice about whether to participate in gainful employment or not. I think we have to be careful about using “choice”.
I'd also caution you to not think about the VON and these other organizations in the third sector as having the capacity to do this alone. When I say that the federal government and other levels of government provided a lot of support to these organizations, it's really what allows these organizations to do what they do.
We can't just assume that the third sector is going to take on these roles and responsibilities. We can't assume that families have the capacity to do it. Not everybody has strong family connections, or even family to rely on. We always need to think about outliers, and we need to think about how some issues are not really about choice, that they're about circumstance.