Mothers' Work and Children's Lives: Low-Income Families after Welfare Reform

4 - Conclusions and Policy Implications

87 4 Conclusions and Policy Implications Mary Jo Bane, who resigned from the Clinton administration in response to welfare reform, said in an American Prospect article in 1997, “Sadly, there are almost no data to indicate what happens to these families and their children when they are no longer receiving welfare. It is possible to offer some guesses, however. Some of the families are no doubt fine, having found jobs, decent living situations, and adequate child care, so that their children are well cared for and safe. Others are likely to be in situations of great instability, both in their work and in their housing” (p. 52). We now have evidence that was absent in 1997, and Bane’s estimates were surprisingly prescient. It is clear from our findings that the type of job a mother holds and the intensity of her work matters. Simply working, per se, is not necessarily a risk to child behavior and wellbeing . In fact, working in a stable job benefits children. However, when a mother cannot rely on a regular schedule, when her hours fluctuate from week to week, and when she works full time in a job with limited wage growth and menial tasks, her children’s behavior deteriorates. If, however, she works longer hours in a challenging job with real opportunities for a raise, her children’s behavior is not affected. It is not hard to imagine that the adverse effects might be explained, at least in part, by the harried home lives of time-pressed, tired, and stressed mothers, such as Mary Ann, Tamar, Olivia, Lorraine, and the other women we profiled in earlier chapters. The types of jobs they held were often less than stimulating. Working in a factory, cleaning homes, manning the cash register, and doling out food in a soup kitchen are monotonous jobs, typical of the low-wage grind. It is telling, then, that longer work hours have negative consequences for children only when the work offers little potential for wage growth, as is typical of a deadend job. Also telling, the negative consequences of long work hours are offset when jobs demand more than just showing up, which in turn more often leads to more frequent raises. 88 Johnson, Kalil, and Dunifon Although children are not sleeping on grates and they have not been placed on a forced march to poverty without a safety net, as Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Peter Edelman warned prior to passage of PRWORA, children are not immune to the changes that reform wrought. Their lives have changed dramatically since welfare reform, sometimes for the better, sometimes not. Whereas previously their mothers were home after school, they are now at work, or asleep after working the night shift. Some, like Caroline and her children, are benefiting from the added income, the enhanced self-esteem that stimulating work and advancement brings, and the new order and role models that can positively affect children. Others, however, scramble to find steady child care with neighbors or grandmothers, or whoever else is available at the time to watch over them; unfortunately, this care is seldom stimulating for kids. Mothers like Olivia worry about their children eating poorly or not finishing their homework. Like Sarah, they worry about not being there for them, or missing the important moments in their school lives. They also worry about missing clues that something at school is amiss and being able to intervene early before the problem gets worse. Unlike the more prestigious positions in the white-collar world, their jobs offer little flexibility to slip out for a few hours in the afternoon to see a dance recital or a band concert or to schedule a teacher conference. Nor is there money to hire a nanny or an au pair to see to it that the children eat well, do their homework, and get fresh air and exercise . And like Tamar, who flopped in the chair exhausted after a day’s work and a long commute on a bus, mothers are often bone tired and “ready to snap,” as Lorraine says, after a day in a dead-end job. They are not alone, of course. Married mothers are often in the same boat. Today more than 6 in 10 women with school-age children are in the workforce. The difference for the women in our study and the more privileged women in the workforce is that all-important bottom line: money. Tight budgets make for tough choices, and the lack...