A Welcome Debate on a Thorny Issue

We’ve all heard the jarring, numbing statistics: Four in 10 American children live in homes without fathers. And four in 10 of these mother-only families struggle in poverty.

One-third of American children are born to unwed mothers. Among blacks, it’s a staggering two-thirds. In California, the percentage of unwed moms has tripled in the last quarter century.

California also has the nation’s highest rate of teen-age pregnancy, according to the state Health and Welfare Agency. Seven in 10 teen moms are unmarried, a figure that has doubled since 1970. Half of these unmarried teens go on welfare.

Nearly nine in 10 black teen moms are unwed, but the most dramatic increase has been among whites. Two-thirds of white teen moms now are unmarried.

A couple of other numbers from the state agency: Only 6% of teens get married, but “over half are sexually experienced.” And “two-thirds of the babies born to teen girls are fathered by adult men.”

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Such dry statistics have not been a regular part of mainstream political rhetoric in Sacramento, but that may be changing. Gov. Pete Wilson last week announced that he will hold a two-day summit “to address the crisis of absent fathers that is unraveling the very fabric of our society.”

And to discourage the teen-age “promiscuity and irresponsibility” that produce babies, the governor proposes to deny welfare for unmarried teen moms who insist on living alone. If they can’t stand their parents, he says, they should live with a guardian or in foster care.

Further, the governor wants each mother to identify the father so he’ll have to help pay the bills and also, hopefully, provide “nurturing and guidance that young children--especially young boys--need to keep them from becoming young thugs.”

And to prod them into a job, the governor proposes to reduce welfare for able-bodied mothers after six months and to eliminate it entirely after two years. They’d still get health care, food stamps and money for the kids.

“For the teen-ager laboring under the delusion that unwed welfare motherhood is her ticket to a place of her own and some cash, we must apply some sobering cold water,” Wilson declared in his State of the State address. “We must also reform welfare so that every child grows up in a home where they can learn by example the rewards of work.”

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Wilson’s in-house adviser on all this is Eloise Anderson, director of the state Department of Social Services, whom he recruited from a similar job in Wisconsin. She is 52, black, and a divorced and remarried mother of three.

Anderson says welfare has reduced the live-alone teen mom “to her basic animalness. She’s prey for older guys. Her hormones are just leaping off the ceiling. What’s she do in her own apartment? It doesn’t take a lot of scientific knowledge to understand why this woman keeps having babies.”

The daughter of a domestic, Anderson thinks able-bodied welfare recipients should take jobs that now go to illegal immigrants. “I resent big time,” she says, “when people tell me they’ll stay on welfare because they’re too good for certain jobs. Well, I’m too good to take money out of my check to keep them at home. The best way out (of poverty) is to work, even at a minimum wage. And I’m death on that.”

Anderson also contends that married parents are too quick to divorce. “We ought to get out of the notion that the kids will survive it. It’s a hit,” she says. “Girls need their fathers. They need affection and that’s different than sex. They need to understand that. What they see on TV is affection and sex together.

“Fathers also are the great gatekeepers. Men know men in ways women don’t. There’s more than one dad who’s stopped a guy coming across the door.”

As for why black mothers are less apt to be married than whites, Anderson believes this is rooted in slavery. “It’s not as big a stigma in black culture,” she says. “Slavery was about mother-headed households. Men were sold and moved off.”

Sen. Teresa Hughes (D-Inglewood), a black who chairs a special Senate Committee on Teenage Pregnancy, says Anderson’s theory about women and slavery is “pretty insightful.” But she thinks forcing teen moms to live with their parents is “appalling.”

“It’s the dysfunctional family that sometimes causes a teen to get pregnant because she’s seeking the love she doesn’t get at home,” Hughes says. “Some girls should be encouraged to leave home even if they’ve never thought of it. They should be given an opportunity to live on their own, to become real women and mothers.”

At least it’s something they’re now debating in Sacramento.