Most Americans say children are better off with a parent at home

[Odin]

(10-18-2016, 04:12 PM)Warren Dew Wrote:

(10-18-2016, 02:26 PM)The Wonkette Wrote:

(10-17-2016, 12:23 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: The single mother collecting welfare (yes, this is a stereotype, but there are people who fit this pattern, and I know some people who fit the stereotype) who vegetates in front of an idiot screen while getting fat on junk food with little more to offer her children is far worse than what daycare has to offer. She might as well get a job in retail, domestic service, sweatshop manufacturing, or farm labor, and have her kids get some organized play and a little learning in day care. At least she will have a little more money to spend on hair-dressing and clothes... better this than exposing her kids to reality television in which a man calls his wife a slut and throws a chair at her boyfriend.

That stereotype is about 20 years out of date.  The number of single mothers on welfare is vanishingly small these days.  Cash benefits are time limited to 5 years nationally, and for 1-2 years in many states.  Welfare reform, coupled with work supports such as expansion of the Earned Income Tax Credit, was very successful in moving single mothers to work; they now work at the same rate as single childless women.  Moreover, even if one is destitute because one can't find or keep a job, it can be extremely hard to actually access any cash benefits.  Just read Kathryn Edin's book "$2 a Day: Living Almost Nothing in America"  at http://www.twodollarsaday.com/.

Limiting the analysis to cash benefits leads to a misleading conclusion.  The Clinton era welfare reforms did limit cash benefits, but they have just been replaced by increases in other forms of benefits such as section 8 housing and food stamps.

More than 8 million children with single mothers get food stamps:

http://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census...aphic1.jpg

That's the opposite of "vanishingly small".

The vast majority of people on food stamps have a job, so if you are trying to imply that these people are lazy and unwilling to look for work you are wrong.