Help for Poor Black Families Starts With Young Fathers

A wave of media attention earlier this year has helped raise the level of consciousness but failed to illuminate the solution to one of America’s most serious social concerns: the disintegration of the nation’s poor black families under the crushing burden of poverty and the reliance on welfare that often follows.

Children from such families too often grow up without fathers as role models and without the two earners necessary to lift their families out of poverty. Large segments of the poor black population will remain isolated from society if their family unity continues to be torn asunder.

There must be a dual focus to deal with the disintegration of such families--one on the welfare mother and her children, the other on the father. Both require scrapping the current welfare system and moving from an emphasis on income support to job opportunity. The present system cannot be redeemed by half-steps and temporary palliatives.

Studies refute many of the myths about the welfare system that lead Americans to believe that it is the cause, rather than the result, of the problems of the poor.

The typical welfare mother receives Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) only for brief, not prolonged, periods, works at least intermittently rather than never, and rarely passes welfare status on to her children.

Yet the system has failed to give welfare mothers the skills to become self-sufficient and at the same time has failed the taxpayers who support it.

The welfare system is a crazy quilt of varying state benefits and requirements. Some programs, such as AFDC and Medicaid or Medi-Cal, are jointly funded by the federal and state governments, while others, such as food stamps, are totally funded by the federal government. AFDC benefits may vary from a maximum of $555 per month for a family of three in California to $118 per month in Alabama. Half of the states penalize these families by denying welfare benefits if the father lives in the home.

The Reagan Administration has discouraged welfare mothers from seeking employment by adopting a punitive approach when they work. The Administration pushed for what amounts to a 100% “tax” on all earnings, with welfare benefits reduced dollar-for-dollar with earned income. The Administration has targeted the Work Incentive (WIN) program--the chief federal program providing employment services for the welfare population--for extinction in its new budget for fiscal year 1987, although Congress has opposed that fiscal plan. The Administration that talks of high marginal income-tax rates as discouraging work is the same Administration that has imposed a clear disincentive on those who try to work their way out of welfare.

A number of steps must be taken promptly to resolve the problems of welfare mothers and their children:

First, we should federalize our welfare system, while transferring to the states a series of non-welfare federal programs for economic development, social services and transportation. We can begin by establishing uniform, national standards for AFDC that would include welfare benefits to poor intact families with fathers in the home, to encourage family stability, and provide a nationwide minimum AFDC benefit that, when combined with food stamps, would be equal to 90% of the poverty-level income for a family of four (currently about $11,000).

Second, welfare benefits should be tied directly to work and job training. No able-bodied welfare mother should receive benefits without being enrolled in a job training and work placement program.

This would require the development of meaningful employment opportunities for welfare mothers, including state and federally assisted job training and transportation as well as day care for their young children--lest we further compound the problem of fatherless children.

States such as California and Massachusetts have demonstrated over the last few years that welfare mothers with limited skills and education can be successfully placed in private sector jobs. It is time these work training programs are instituted nationwide.

Third, the punitive one-for-one reduction in benefits for income earned should be repealed so welfare mothers can keep more of their earnings before losing benefits--until their earnings disqualify them for further assistance.

But these steps address only part of the problem. They can help the welfare mother lift herself and her children to independence, but they do not address the problems of the person initiating the disintegration of the poor black family--the young, poor male. The heart of the problem is the absent fathers, unskilled and often callous toward the children that they bring into the world.

Here, too, the policies of the Reagan Administration have done nothing to help. Employment and training funds have been systematically slashed and the Job Corps is targeted for elimination.

A federal, state, private sector partnership is required to provide opportunity for these young men and truly solve the problem.

Several youth employment demonstration programs instituted in the Carter Administration showed promise and could be expanded, such as a guaranteed job program for young people in high dropout areas who stay in school and graduate.

The Job Corps, although expensive, should be strengthened. It is even worth trying a lower youth minimum wage on an experimental basis to see if it can spur more minority employment opportunities.

The government also could help fund community intervention programs, which are working to provide positive alternatives to young, black males who might otherwise drift into a life of crime and profligate paternity.

But, ultimately, government funds can do only so much--a change in society’s attitude is needed. More black organizations must make the problem of teen-age pregnancy their major priority. Groups such as the Children’s Defense Fund in Washington are launching major teen-age pregnancy programs and others must follow.

Our communities, black and white, must create an environment in which it is socially unacceptable for teen-age girls to have out-of-wedlock children and for young men to father children for whom they accept no responsibility.

To demonstrate our society’s determination, states should consider laws to permit the attachment of wages for those unmarried men who father children they refuse to support, at the mother’s initiative, in the same way states have toughened laws that require divorced fathers to provide child support.

These measures implemented together can help arrest the deterioration of the poor black family.