Welfare Reform & Children

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The Welfare Reform Act signed into law by President Clinton in 1996 requires reauthorization by Congress this year. The Bush Administration is recommending some changes to the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program. These include increasing the percentage of women receiving assistance who are required to work from fifty to seventy percent, and increasing the amount of time they are required to work from thirty to forty hours a week. The House of Representatives passed a welfare bill that meets the president's recommendations but keeps the current level of funding at $16.5 billion a year. Opponents of these changes are concerned that increasing the requirements, or increasing them without more funding for child care, job training, and substance abuse programs, will have a negative effect on mothers and their children.

Studies in the six years since welfare reform that analyze the impact of maternal employment on women, children, and families have had mixed results. Research has shown that the structure of the state program, availability of child care and wage supplements, the mother's earning capacity and the child's age are all important variables. Research has also shown that the thirty hour a week work requirement already in effect has significantly reduced the chances that single mothers receiving TANF will marry.

Shawnquana Owens, a TANF recipient, thinks her work requirement has a good effect on her daughter, Quanjayna, "I tell her if you want things out of life you have to work. Don't nothin' come for free, you know. And she understands that already." A system that has a positive effect on Quanjayna, who is still young, may not be as helpful for older children, who face what Professor Greg Duncan describes adultification.

Duncan explains, "Adultification is the phenomenon of a teenager having to take on family responsibilities that are really more appropriate for adults. So this would mean taking a young sibling to daycare every day and then being late for school, or being in charge of siblings after-school and therefore not being able to do homework, and also taking on part time jobs to help with the family finances."