Single Mother and Welfare Reform Policies that Ignore the Realities of Single Parenthood

Welfare Reform Buried Single Mothers in Poverty and Education Needs to Save Them

Single mother and welfare reform policies took decades to realize the obvious needs of childcare and transportation that single parents need to rely on for employability.  It has taken even longer for single mother and welfare reform policies to recognize and apply the value of education to single mother and welfare reform policies.  New policies must put education first to make single mother and welfare reform policies work.

Single mother and welfare reform policies have shifted single mothers off the welfare rolls, but into a continuous cycle of poverty.  The Administration on Children and Families (ACF) reported in 2004 that 56% of single mother welfare recipients go through the revolving doors of poverty instead of slamming the door shut behind them.  16% get trapped inside the revolving doors permanently.    The lucky 28% percent that leave poverty permanently are the most educated.

The Limitations of Single Mother and Welfare Reform Policies

In 1996, the Aid to Dependent Families with Children (ADFC) program was replaced with Temporary Assistance to Needy Families Program (TANF).  TANF is 2.5% of the Department of Health and Human Services Budget - $17 billion dollars.   The goal is to force single mother welfare recipients into the workforce.  

Work for the sake of work is meaningless unless it supports a family and promotes long-term self-sufficiency.  With a 70% failure rate at keeping welfare recipients off the welfare rolls, welfare reform is failing.  Welfare reform can graphically demonstrate TANF reduction.  Graphs don’t demonstrate the poverty cycle of return caseloads, and the cycling of recipients from TANF programs to other ACF single mother programs through the Department of Labor, single mother subsidies for child care and housing, SSI, and caseloads provided for by a Social Services Block Grant.  

Single mother and welfare benefits are limited to five years of a lifetime.  State TANF single mother and welfare reform policies require a single mother to look for part-time work once her child is four weeks old.   TANF recipients are also composed of single teen mothers, struggling through the disadvantages of being a teen mother.  Filing for SSI or Disability can take three years.   Getting a bachelor’s degree full-time takes four years, or six years if a single mother has to work part-time and go to school. 

What Happened to Education and Single Mother Welfare Reform?

Five years is enough time for a TANF recipient to receive a bachelor’s degree if they can go to school full-time.  Some single mothers are lucky enough to find scholarships for the single working mother attending school, but the majority of mothers can not find financial aid for single mothers and can not go to work and school full-time with young children at home.  Nor is it good for the children unless there is exceptional non-institutional childcare.

ACF stated TANF is for “creative programs to help families’ transition from welfare to self-sufficiency.  States have tremendous flexibility in determining how to use their TANF dollars.”   TANF has the power to promote education-to-work instead of welfare-to-work’s shallow training and dead-end jobs.   Single mother and welfare reform policies must redefine budgetary decisions by balancing the cost of thrusting an uneducated young single mother into the working world at a dead-end minimum wage job to the value of her getting an education and raising her child.  The latter benefits the budget and the health of the nation. The chain of welfare recipients will fade away, the budget will be reduced, and the economy will thrive.

Single mother and welfare reform policies contribute to the endless cycle of poverty. The numbers have merely shifted.  Until welfare reform policy makers open their eyes and look to the future of the nation instead of the immediacy of cutting funds, single mothers on welfare and their children will continue to live in the endless cycle of poverty.  Every degree increases income potential by $10,000, saves the single mother and contributes to generational welfare reduction.  Providing an education, and not a time limit, is the answer to welfare reform.