Too Rich for Handouts, Too Poor for Everything Else

I'm just starting the paperwork process of taking my maternity leave and it is quite frustrating. First of all, I have disability insurance through the National Teachers Association and have been paying $37 a month (out of my already measly paycheck) for years now, mostly in preparation for maternity leave someday. That was the selling point for me......that they covered maternity leave. I wanted to make sure that they still covered maternity leave so last week I called them and was reassured by a distracted sounding representative that they do, in fact, cover maternity leave. Yay, things were going my way. I was thinking that I would have that extra income from the disability insurance and that might ease our financial minds during my 8 week hiatus. WRONG. I heard from a coworker that NTA doesn't cover and she suggested I check on it. So I did, I called them and come to find out, they don't in fact cover normal maternity leave unless there are complications (like squeezing a baby out of my 5 foot frame isn't complicated).
Anyways, the title of the post is because I'm frustrated because the middle class gets screwed. I don't get free college because we make too much, yet Jeremy and I will have the cloud of student loans over our heads for decades. Jeremy and I take pride in knowing that we pay for our own health insurance but we have to pay a $400 hospital fee before they even let us in the door. If we were uneducated and poor, it would be free and if we were rich, $400 would be less than I would spend on a handbag. And, if we were poor, we would get free cell phones (that all my students have) with 200 free monthly minutes.
Also, the whole daycare situation (yes I am aware this is a fragmented sentence but I dare someone to correct my grammar. Do it, I dare you). The lowest class qualifies for free daycare and of course we make too much money for that, so we will be paying $136 a week for strangers to care for our son when if I were rich, I would stay at home with my son, finish my master's degree during that time, find an appropriate job with my new degree and return to work when it was most appropriate for our family, not when the sick days ran out.
Sometimes I get tired of fighting the good fight, as they say. Until I see huge results from our hard work, Jeremy and I will keep working, keep saving, keep consulting Norm for our financial future :), keep on pushing with my Master's Degree, and keep fighting the good fight.