Welfare Women

    Since the Welfare reform that took place in 1996, many poor women are forced into working outside the home for nominal pay. The enactment of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) made it a requirement for poor women to work outside the home in order to receive financial support from the government. While many middle-class women might be ambivalent towards this requirement because they choose to work outside the home, the reality of finding rewarding employment for these women is scant to nil. Women within inner cities, or rural areas do not have access to nearby employment, and this forces them to spend even more time away from their children while they commute (sometimes hours) back and forth between work and home.

    For one Michigan mother in 2000, her inability to care for her son and satisfy her work requirements in order to receive welfare benefits, resulted in tragedy. Forced to move her children into her brother's house, her son (six) found his uncle's gun and shot a six year old girl at his school resulting in her death. Where was his mother when he found the gun, and took the gun to school? Well, she was commuting to and then working in a job that was mandated for her by the state*. While this is certainly an extreme example of the consequences that can occur by forcing a mother to work outside the home, it highlights the danger this mandate poses on the children of poor mothers.

    Instead of requiring women to take on any low-paying job they can find, the government should provide vocational training, and reasonable, quality child care, for poor women who work outside the home. These poor women are not super machines who can work all day, clean their home, and care for their children, all by themselves. Nor has their decision to have children while poor somehow morally condemned them to that fate. We need to work on designing a welfare program that truly lifts women out of poverty (not just on the books), only then can we beat the cycle of poverty poor women and mothers face.

*For the full article visit http://www.wsws.org/articles/2000/arp2000/welf-a28.shtml