Public Assistance Has Failed Single Mothers

Today, Welfare continues to fail single mothers. This government program was created under the Social Security act of 1935 to assist low income individuals. However, since 1974, the rhetoric for single mothers under Welfare has been socially constructed as individuals who take advantage of the system. In other words, because of continued ideologies created in 1974 such as the Welfare Queens, there has not been a solution to this problem. Research shows how public assistance programs like Welfare are failing such individuals like single mothers, who make up the majority of the recipient population (Monnat, 2010). This is because Welfare as we know it, is failing single mothers because they are stigmatized against, lack resources, restricted in breaking the cycle of poverty, and the Welfare to work transition has left out low income single mothers.

If one looks at the image above, we can see the stereotype of the Welfare Queen. People within our society still think that single mothers make thousands of dollars on Welfare. However, this idea of banking off the system is not true. The true reality is that Welfare has and is failing single mothers within society. Although stigmatization of single mothers under Welfare is one aspect, breaking the cycle of poverty is even harder.

Because the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (PRWORA) pushes recipients to work first, they are forced to settle for low paying jobs. Yet, mothers who try to achieve a higher status by going to school are limited by this Welfare reform policy that has not been changed since 1996. Five states including California make going to College while on Welfare more manageable. Yet, each state is in charge of their Welfare program and makes going to school for single mothers more challenging due to the strict work requirements.

In my opinion as a sociologist, I believe that we should tackle the problems amongst single mothers within our society by redistributing the millions of dollars we use for our military and policing to the Welfare program. To add, I believe we should not encourage work first motto but education first. Research shows that education not only gives one status, but the opportunity to break the cycle of poverty through a higher paying job. That would not only help out single mothers within our society, but create a long term solution instead of using a bandaid to try and fix the problem. Furthermore, we have to stop re conditioning the ideologies of the Welfare Queen. This idea keeps stigmatizing and hurting single mothers both physically and mentally. If we do nothing and keep using a functionalist perspective within our society, the social problems will continue to grow and only worsen. We should model others countries like Finland who take care of not only its people, but mothers and children.

Links:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDiwKiYQBNs&ab_channel=PBS
https://www.google.com/search?q=Welfare+queen&sxsrf=ALeKk012T_LBWRe0SbdhvKnQLJcWP3TyvQ:1606520389191&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiXsPzo8qPtAhXSzVkKHWMBC_AQ_AUoAXoECAkQAw&biw=1280&bih=578#imgrc=0udhSJ36FVU6AM
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1536504219830675https://www.cnbc.com/2020/02/21/why-finland-is-the-best-place-to-give-birth-childbirth-costs-compared.html