"Suck it up, Stephanie," the letter finished.
And that was one of the more polite offerings which came with the writer's name, address and employer details.
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The Labor party and crossbenchers are banding together to thwart the government's plan to increase childcare funding that means cuts to other welfare payments.
The author offered a familiar and hostile rant on the theme that people who cannot afford to have childcare without government assistance should not have children.
It came in response to a piece I wrote about the high cost of childcare.
The view is familiar to One Nation leader Pauline Hanson who on Wednesday said she would not be supporting the government's omnibus welfare legislation because it is part of a "welfare handout mentality".
"They get themselves pregnant and [the government will] have the same problems they did with the Baby Bonus, with people just doing it for the money," Senator Hanson told The Australian.
"This is not commonsense Âpolicy. I've gone through a bloody tough life myself as a single Âmother and held down a part-time job. I had no assistance, no help from anyone. But we have such a welfare handout mentality."
What we do know is the single parent's payment was introduced by the Whitlam government in 1973 which means it existed when Senator Hanson was raising her four children.
![Senator Pauline Hanson has suggested women are getting pregnant just to receive paid parental leave.](/web/20170223144657im_/http://www.theage.com.au/content/dam/images/g/u/e/f/p/o/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gujbh6.png/1487847629928.jpg)
I take my hat off to her. Single parenting is one of the toughest gigs there is and to do it without the government assistance on offer would only make it harder.
But the attitude that "I did it tough so everyone else should have to" just does not make sense.
It also does not make political sense.
If Senator Hanson is committed to the dismantling of the welfare mentality then the government's omnibus welfare changes are for her.
The legislation slices and dices the Youth Allowance and the dole not to mention family tax payments and paid parental leave.
It represents a significant winding back of government payments.Â
Which suggests the opposition from parties such as One Nation is less about reducing people's access to welfare payments and more about hostility towards working parents and, specifically, working mothers.
The days of the two-parent-one-income family are over.
Not many families can get by with only one parent in the workforce and that assumes that both parents are working out of financial necessity rather than because they want to.
There's a very simple reason why no government is going to scrap paid parental leave or childcare assistance payments.
And that is the untapped taxable resource that is women's labour.
Australia's female workforce participation rate is low compared to countries such as Canada.
It's one of the main reasons the Productivity Commission advised the government to do more to make childcare affordable and accessible.
Paid parental leave was good, it found, but a greater number of women would work - and work more hours - after having children if the cost and accessibility of childcare was addressed.
Getting more women to work could reap the government as much as $25 billion, according to research released by the Grattan Institute in 2013.
Reaching those women involves the Commonwealth deciding either that it could run the childcare system more efficiently than the existing private system or continuing to provide families with assistance to cover the high cost of care for their children.
Scrapping childcare assistance and paid parental leave would force many parents - whether they are single parents or the second income earner in a two-parent family - back into the home.
There those parents would most assuredly be working - and working very hard - but not in the way the government wants them to.
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