American Dream:
Three Women, Ten Kids, and Nation's Drive to End Welfare

This book helped me find answers to a question I've wondered about since my years as a welfare case worker in Detroit way back in the 1960s. Yes, I have often wondered: What happened to all those Moms who used to get ADC checks and all the women who might have gotten them if Bill Clinton had not decided to "end welfare as we know it."

FOR POOR WOMEN, WHAT OPTIONS?

Did we create hordes of new poor and homeless people? Was "ending welfare" an act of cruelty towards the destitute, or was it a gentle shove for poor women into a working life?

The answer is complicated, but, surprisingly (at least to me), it appears to fall more into the positive side than as an act of abandonment of mothers in need. It turns out that women on welfare actually had more options than just collecting a welfare check. Many actually had jobs off and on that they did not report, and they also had boyfriends who contributed (they didn't report this either).

WELFARE IN DETROIT 50 YEARS AGO

My employment as a case worker came while I was still in college; it was the 1960s and I was young and naive. I patrolled a "zone" on the west side of Detroit where virtually every house had someone getting a government check. The houses were densely packed in this poor neighborhood, so I walked from one house to another to visit the mothers (and one father) on my caseload of recipients of Aid to Dependent Children (ADC). I was somewhat shocked that virtually ALL the children were born out of wedlock (that was shocking to a young woman who had recently attended Catholic schools).

While the author traces the mothers of the three women whose lives he chronicles back to the James Eastland cotton plantation in Mississippi, in my own caseload, the women were much closer to the cotton fields. Many of them told me they had only gone to the third grade in school because they had to drop out to pick cotton. A substantial number of them were illiterate and signed their names with an X. These women were less employable than Angie, Jewell and Opal in the book.

I wrote about my experiences as a casworker in the 1960s, and revisiting my old ADC zone many years later as an older retired person in my webpage Detroit: Remembering My Days as an ADC Worker (click HERE to open the page). What I discovered was a lot of empty fields and abandoned buildings where once a neighborhood teeming with people had been.

FROM SOCIAL WORKER TO "FINANCIAL AND EMPLOYMENT PLANNER"

I found fascinating the transformation in the caseworkers who were no longer college-educated "social workers" on the government payroll (in my case, I worked for the Michigan Department of Social Services) but instead worked for a private company and were called Financial and Employment Planners (or FEPs). They were not considered to be in the business of helping poor women manage their lives as mothers of fatherless children, but rather as managing a process of getting women living off government checks into the workforce. The FEPs were responsible for making work plans and assignments and had the power to withhold checks if clients did not comply.

This transformation represents a kind of giving up on the concept of social work and just concentrating on the problem of people needing an income. It also made me think of what always comes to my mind when I see those many commercials on TV from companies advertising their services in "wealth management." I always think the real people needing help are poor people who need "poverty management." I guess that's what these caseworkers in Milwaukee were doing.

The author describes a great deal of corruption and ignorance on the part of the companies holding these contracts, overspending on themselves and doing little follow-up with recipients. Critics of government programs like to claim "waste and fraud" is rampant, but in this case, the money was not flowing to welfare mothers but was spent on golf outings and outrageous salaries for company employees.

THE AUTHOR AS PART OF THE STORY

I was impressed with the level of involvement the author had with the women whose lives he describes. These were three women who had moved from Chicago to Milwaukee because Wisconsin had better welfare benefits. He obviously became a factor in their lives as he spent time in their world, talking with them and ferrying them for visits to prisons holding various boyfriends. He liberally quotes the people he writes about (including the typical black way of speaking) and describes chaotic situations in their home. Clearly, he got to know them, and won their trust.

This approach has the advantage of "making it real" through seeing the hardships and pain of poverty first-hand. But it can limit understanding the role of welfare to these specific cases. There must be many different kinds of stories about what brought women to welfare. And, did the author go too far for a story to become so involved in their lives? Still, the narrative he tells is powerful, and there is much to learn from the experiences of Angie, Jewell, Opal and their offspring.

DID WORKING IMPROVE THEIR LIVES?

But were these former welfare recipients better off when they were working as opposed to staying home with their kids? the answer is unclear. Certainly, their children had a hard time, with Mom less available and money still scarce. Most former welfare recipients were employed at such low pay that they were not better off financially, and many found themselves chronically behind on their rent and running out of food before payday.

But was there a benefit from "the dignity of work" itself? I found this question an interesting inversion of the basic premise behind ADC when I was a caseworker. The basic idea then was that children need their mothers in the home, taking care of them. Back in the 1950s and into the 1960s, the idea of a family was a man going to a job each day and a woman staying home and raising their children and, by the way, the man and the woman were married (to each other). That idea began changing in the 1960s, and by the 1980s it had morphed into the idea that a family was a man and woman (maybe married) raising children and both working to pay the bills. Bill Clinton thought children would be proud of a mother who worked (as his mother did)... and that work brought with it a pride in accomplishment.

WHAT IS THE LEGACY OF WELFARE REFORM?

I share the author's surprise that it turned out that women on welfare (at least in the years of the 1990s when the "Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996" -- the "end welfare" law -- was passed) could fairly quickly get jobs. In fact, many were already working, but just not reporting their income. It also became apparent that the women did not value the government check quite as much as the public thought they did. When you asked them to attend classes or do just about anything that might be an inconvenience, many just walked away and gave up their check. The law left it to the states to decide on time limits and work requirements to continue getting a welfare check, and there was a lot of talk about providing job training, but mostly it came down to "get a job."

We have not actually abandoned the poor to having to manage on minimum wages. The "earned income credit" at tax time has been a tremendous help (and cheap, with no big bureaucracy needed to administer it). It is an outright cash grant "refund" available only to poor people who have income from employment. We still have food stamps for low income people, some states have expanded Medicaid to cover health care costs for the poor, and there are various programs to help with child care and other needs. There is no doubt that single Moms living on minimum wages have a hard time managing, and (in my humble opinion) should receive more help. Increasing the minimum wage (as some cities and states have done) also helps.

The author also points out that programs that help both men and women (not just women) can do a lot; the children he got to know suffered without their fathers, and the fathers themselves got little help to find real employment. Most of the men in the lives of these three women ended up dealing drugs and some went to prison. Helping women is a fine idea, but helping families (married or not) is an even better idea.

Jason DeParle has given us a wonderful book based on the experiences of real people whose lives were touched by the former welfare system and by its ending. "American Dream" takes you into the lives of women born into poverty trying to find a way to survive. It answered some of my questions about what has happened to women in situations like Angie, Jewell and Opal find themselves, and what the future might hold for their children.

Buy American Dream: Three Women, Ten Kids, and a Nation's Drive to End Welfare at amazon.com.