Making Mothers "Work"
Cancian, Maria & Gordon, Linda
If you think of Wisconsin as a progressive pioneer in the development of social welfare policy, the first state to offer unemployment compensation, it pays to remember that it was also the home...
...One-third of poor working mothers have to work weekends, and one-half of poor parents have shifting work schedules: will child care be available to parents with these hours...
...If W-2 is flawed as a behavior-modification program for women on AFDC, it fails completely as a defense against destitution for their children...
...Nonetheless, W-2 will provide inadequate support and increased stress for many, probably most, poor mothers and their children...
...Because of these benefits and a strong state economy, many W-2 participants will likely fare better than those in states with fewer jobs and less money available for job creation and support services...
...NWRO activism led the Supreme Court to decide that AFDC too was an entitlement: that the government could not offer such a program without guaranteeing equal access to it, that a recipient had a right to an appeal and a hearing before being cut off...
...Welfare currently gives single mothers too little to provide adequately for their children...
...Second, many mothers who work full time can count on financial rewards and other support greater than those available to W-2 participants...
...This is not a partisan issue—Democrats were the leaders in this wave of dumping on welfare...
...W-2's promise is that, by rejecting entitleFALL • 1996 • 73 Workfare ment and returning to the case management approach, it allows caseworkers to tailor the program to individual needs...
...Third, there will be substantial child care problems...
...And although welfare reformers argue that working for benefits will increase recipients' self-esteem, ending entitlement will more likely reinforce the humiliations of getting help and the impression that recipients are undeserving...
...In these tiers they will earn at least minimum wage, will qualify for earned income tax credits, and will continue to be eligible for subsidized child care and health insurance...
...There is already a child care shortage even 74 • DISSENT Workfare for families with adequate incomes...
...involved a case management approach in which applicants had to prove their financial eligibility and moral respectability (undergoing a close personal scrutiny from which unemployment or old-age insurance recipients were entirely free...
...to families dependent on public transportation...
...But it's not at all clear how states will respond, especially since politicians, trying to win support by denouncing welfare, have expounded contradictory purposes...
...It makes sense for the state to provide jobs for those who can work but cannot find a job...
...The philosophy behind these requirements is that everyone should work for wages...
...The lowest tier, "W-2 Transition," is reserved for those few individuals—less than one in four recipients by state estimates—who case managers determine cannot move immediately to work...
...But in the 1960s AFDC recipients, stimulated by the civil rights movement and by a maternalist pride in their work as mothers, created the National Welfare Rights Organization (NWRO) and their pressure got the law changed...
...Fourth, there will always be some parents who can't work outside the home, because they or their children are disabled, for example (and parents of the disabled are particularly vociferous in opposition to this law...
...They will receive a grant of $518 a month...
...First, although most mothers work for wages, only about a third of Wisconsin mothers with children under eighteen and a quarter of mothers with children under two years work full time...
...AFDC was originally a neglected stepchild of Social Security: unlike the better Social Security programs, it was jointly funded by federal and state governments...
...But legislators aren't facing the fact that, even if one accepts the goal that everyone should "work," getting AFDC recipients into jobs is vastly more expensive than the cheap welfare system we have now...
...Child support payments will go directly to custodial parents and will not count against W-2 benefits...
...There is a nasty parallel here to the fact that the ending of an entitlement takes away poor women's most important escape route from abusive relationships...
...The basis of W-2 is eliminating that entitlement...
...FALL • 1996 • 75...
...One problem is that good case management is expensive, because it requires trained workers with manageable caseloads...
...The reality of W-2 may be quite different...
...The W-2 reward system is designed to reward appropriate behavior...
...Unlike the other three tiers, some of those at the bottom of the ladder will be allowed to engage in their assigned activity for less than full time...
...Tier three, Community Service Jobs, means a mandatory forty-hour week in exchange for $555 per month...
...And even at current levels can the market absorb so many additional workers...
...If you think of Wisconsin as a progressive pioneer in the development of social welfare policy, the first state to offer unemployment compensation, it pays to remember that it was also the home of Joseph McCarthy, who built his career by attacking the welfare state...
...But all agree that working mothers use money to compensate for some of what they don't do at home—a full day of work doesn't leave much time for cooking from scratch, for example...
...Case managers are being instructed by the law, and the conservative discourse about it, to blame poor mothers for their problems and to focus on changing individual behavior...
...The "Wisconsin Works" (or W-2) welfare statute is being touted as another example of pioneering social policy, but toward what end...
...these recipients can get food stamps but not the earned income tax credit and will have to make child and health care copayments...
...For those with incomes of $555 per month, low cost care will be essential—will it be of decent quality...
...Child care subsidies are not time limited, and funding has been increased...
...Welfare," of course, means Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC...
...Under W-2 the state will be creating minimum-wage and sub-minimum-wage jobs...
...Under W-2 even those with the lowest incomes must pay 7.5 percent of their child care costs...
...Under W-2, most parent recipients will have much less time and very little, if any, more money...
...The program creates a four-tier job "self-sufficiency ladder...
...equality" feminists lean toward the view that wage-earning work is often empowering for women...
...Appropriate behavior" now always means paid work...
...Poor families can no longer count on having AFDC or Medicaid as a last resort, and they no longer have a right to hearings to protect them from arbitrary or biased decisions...
...Even by state estimates, only a quarter of participants will be able to move into the top two tiers: subsidized and unsubsidized private sector jobs...
...Access to subsidized health insurance has expanded...
...These individuals will be the best off on W-2...
...These steps will make it possible for some families to leave AFDC and attain a minimal level of economic self-sufficiency...
...Creating community service jobs for thirty thousand participants will be an expensive challenge...
...There are differences among feminists and progressives about this proposition: "maternalists" lean toward the argument that mothering is work...
...The official "Philosophy and Goals" ofW-2 states, "There will be no entitlement...
...Just at Clinton introduced the "end welfare as we know it" promise in 1992, which stimulated Republicans to raise the ante, so in Wisconsin a Democratic legislature tried to steal Republican Governor Tommy Thompson's thunder in 1993 by mandating a proposal to get AFDC recipients into jobs...
...New federal welfare legislation eliminates any entitlement to benefits, requires states to impose time limits and work requirements, and generally leaves the states with discretion, allocating federal funding in block grants...
...Wisconsin's "reform" is in the vanguard now, but federal policy is encouraging other states to follow...
...and never paid stipends adequate to create life with dignity...
...Officials estimate that about half of current recipients will begin their W-2 experience here...
...welfare "reformed" will generally give them even less...
...Fifth, many mothers are on welfare precisely because they can't support themselves and their children on what they can earn...
...Research suggests that even those who have left AFDC voluntarily often stay in low paying jobs long term...
...Is there anything good about W-2...
...Two-thirds of AFDC beneficiaries are children, and they are almost completely forgotten in the welfare reform debate...
...Wisconsin currently has low levels of unemployment, but will they last...
...This will create downward pressure on wages and likely displace current workers...
...Two-parent families with low incomes will be eligible for all services, and noncustodial parents will have limited access to support services (though not subsidized employment...
...participants are required to work full time with almost no allowance for job training or education, and exceptions for new parents only until their youngest child is twelve weeks old...
...W-2 eliminates cash assistance...
...It is often forgotten that AFDC is part of the Social Security Act of 1935, which also brought us unemployment compensation and old age pensions...
...Not least, the removal of any safety net undermines workers' bargaining position, making it more difficult to quit, to unionize and to escape harassing bosses or co-workers...
...The theory of W-2 is that women will work their way up the ladder to economic self-sufficiency...
...Perhaps not...
...to children with special health needs...
...And even bad jobs may be hard to find...
...Thus we make sure that the poverty of the parents is imposed on the next generation, perpetuating exactly the hopelessness that welfare was intended to interrupt...
...W-2 merely reaffirms the problem, forcing them into jobs at non-living wages...
...They argue that they can combine getting people "off welfare" and helping them, fostering "work not welfare" and saving tax money, promoting "responsibility" while protecting children...
...W-2 redefines parenting, however, as only providing money...
...There is nothing to stop the Wisconsin legislature from appropriating insufficient funds (in fact, that is the usual story with welfare programs) and then simply cutting people off after the money runs out each year...
...allowed caseworkers discretion in reducing or eliminating benefits to anyone they judged to be unworthy...
...But such jobs should pay a living wage...
...The critical detail missed in the rhetoric about innovative experiments with welfare is that the subjects of these experiments are mostly kids...
...If most mothers work in the paid labor market, isn't it reasonable to require welfare recipients to do the same...
...Telling the truth about our options requires recognizing that the overall state of the economy, not individual character, is the major limit on helping the poor to be able to live and support their children on their earnings, and that helping them do so would cost more, not less, public funding for welfare...
Vol. 43 • September 1996 • No. 4
