10-18-2016, 02:26 PM
(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That stereotype is about 20 years out of date.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/.