Social Policy in the United States

Welfare Debate: Who Pays for Procreation? By Dorothy Roberts In “Welfare Debate: Who Pays for Procreation?” Dorothy Roberts discusses the history and problems of the welfare system in America. She begins by discussing the welfare reform of 1996, which occurred under former president Bill Clinton. She says that this reform was the end of the view of welfare as charity and the beginning of the view of it as “means of modifying poor people’s behavior.” (202) She asserts that welfare reform has become the primary means of limiting fertility of Black females. In fighting to save parts of the former welfare system, Roberts tells us that people have ignored the system’s many flaws. She cites historian Linda Gordon who said that it was women reformers who established the foundation of welfare system as well as the debates regarding single motherhood that surround the system still today. However, though it was feminist who designed the system, it still failed as these feminists were conforming to the existing patriarchal family norm that established the adherence to the “family wage.” They therefore fought for a system that would allow the husband to be the breadwinner and the wife to fulfill the unpaid domestic labor at the home and thus prevented female independence. Roberts explains that another problem in the forming of our welfare system was the elitist attitude of the privileged white activists who led the welfare campaigns. They viewed welfare as a means of controlling poor urban immigrants, who activists saw as a threat to social order and the altogether neglected support for Black females. The New Deal thus “solidified welfare’s stratification along racial as well as gender lines.” (205) It wouldn’t be until the civil rights movement that Black women would obtain greater access to welfare benefits. However, Roberts insists that the new federal welfare laws threaten all the changes made during the civil rights movement and mark a turn back to the system created in the New Deal. Once again, the system is becoming a tool of social control, using federal government assistance as a means of forcing mothers to conform to familial ideals. Next, Roberts addresses the policy of “family caps,” which are aimed at limiting Black mothers’ fertility. One such policy limits or denies women further welfare support with any additional child she may have. Whereas legislators in the past made their motivations to limit Black women’s birthrate clear, Roberts explains that today family caps are not based on a view of recipients’ genetic inferiority, but they are are used as means of ridding America of the burden tat the poor impose. Roberts then spends some time debunking the various myths surrounding welfare that have been exploited by enforcing new welfare reforms. The first of these is the myth that welfare induces childbirth. Roberts says that “welfare reform measures are designed to discourage reproduction,”(218) based on the belief that welfare encourages poor women to have more children. However, Roberts asserts that there is no evidence providing a reliable correlation between welfare support and increased birthrate. Furthermore, Roberts tells us that regardless of welfare support, welfare mothers suffer a financial loss with each additional child. Child exclusion laws, therefore, only worsen the poverty for these families. The next myth Roberts refutes is one that says that welfare causes dependency on the system and fuels a cycle of poverty. This myth includes that notion that Americans would not have support poor children if the parents of those children would work. This notion stems from the idea that people rely on welfare because they lack incentive to work. However, Roberts points out that most welfare recipients work while they are on welfare. Finally, Roberts addresses the myth that marriage can end children’s poverty. Roberts maintains that America’s inadequate welfare system is a result of a “racist unwillingness to include Blacks as full citizens.” (243) She asserts that we cannot hope to end poverty by using welfare manipulation reforms. Rather moving closer to poverty’s end would require drastic economic and social changes. I liked how Roberts opened up the problem of welfare and its recipients beyond the programs themselves. It seems that all the discussion and debates surrounding welfare comforts policymakers, as they seem to provide an easy explanation and answer to poverty. But Roberts does a good job showing how this problem is a result of fundamental ideologies structuring the policies of our country and policymakers attempting to fix the problem of poverty are prisoners to such ideologies.