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Welfare Reform
It’s easy to get angry about a welfare system that seems to encourage people to have children they cannot afford to raise.
What is a lot harder is figuring out how to change that without doing even more harm.
If welfare mothers are to be denied their checks if they don’t get jobs, society either has to be prepared to take the children away from “the mothers and put them in better homes or provide employment for the mothers.
At the heart of the rising demands that something be done about welfare is deep concern about the growing number of illegitimate births.
Most mothers on welfare are poorly educated and lack basic social and work related skills. There aren’t a lot of jobs waiting for such people, but the welfare reform bill passed by the general assembly would require the mothers to get jobs or do community service work.
Certainly community service is highly desirable, but there .are only a certain number of such jobs to be done, and the community reasonably wants them done by qualified people. ■->
Mothers of young children will require child care and transportation assistance to get jobs. Many will require tutoring and job training. None of this is cheap, but the public expects to save money by requiring welfare recipients to work.
There is also an assumption that if it is more difficult to get welfare, fewer peopie will have children they can't support. There is not much evidence to support this assumption.
Most children are better off in a family with both a mother and father. Perhaps the single piece of the reform bill that may help is the requirement that mothers name the fathers of their children. If fathers are required to support their children, they may marry the mothers increasing the likelihood that the children will be raised in an intact home. At least they may take more responsibility for avoiding pregnancy.
There is a lot of uncertainty about what effect the welfare reform bill passed by the General Assembly will have. There is even more uncertainty about proposals now in Congress.
It has taken three generations to get into the current welfare morass. It may well take three or more generations to get out of it. Politicians and taxpayers need to be certain that programs are developed that have some chance of success and that once developed they are carried through and adequately funded.
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