Blog #10

Survival strategies after welfare reform are extensive are very from situation to situation.

In several cases women had to learn how to either adapt the working situation to their child care situations or adapt their working situations to their child care. Sometimes the mother would have to do both at different point during the need. While the child was young they typically found themselves having to adapt their working situations, but as the children grew older they learned ways to do the opposite.

These women also spent much time and energy concerned about the child care worth in child development and the actual quality of care. Though many of them found that at times they were not in complete control, they always felt the pull to try to adjust this. There were two significant solutions, kin care and subsidized care.
Kin care has proven unreliable and typically ending in with a negative toll on the mother and/or child, though they did prove successful in some situations for “initial, respite, and wraparound care for the families”. This was typically the best situation for “patch-work care” or care between finding other options of care. Many of the mothers in the study although did have to pay (whether in work exchange or for cash) for their kin care. The largest problem with kin care is the unreliability because the kin is an individual who has their own responsibilities as a typical member of the poor working class. Outside, unlicensed care has created much fear.

Chaudry explains that “Children with such experiences of poverty and family disorder benefit tremendously from a solid, stable developmental base of child care” (Chaudry, 183). Working mothers who try to find care outside of subsidized care often have to alter the care type and location, leaving the child at a disadvantage. It is explained that at the outset, working mothers often took care that was available to them through personal relationships with individual caregivers and that over time they developed stronger preference for agency-derived institutional care arrangements, which offered greater learning opportunities and stability. “In circumstances of great family and child need, quality preschool programs can serve as both a balm and a developing force for children coping with sever stresses of their family’s poverty.”

For example the subsidized care of Head Start helped out Sara exponentially while attempting to find care for her child Cristina. She found it to be the only means of stability that she could offer Cristina while living in homeless shelters. She felt the Cristina had a family there that she could feel comfortable with as well as advance intellectually. Chaudry explains that agency care may be more flexible, more stable and educational. It gives the mother peace of mind because she know where he child is and that educated agency workers tend to be more helpful and know how to “work the system”

In the course materials, the NPR radio discusses the result of welfare reform since it has been over 10 years since it began. They discussed that although women are now working, they are still not able to advance in their lives. They are now working twice as hard and under more difficult situations, away from their children.

Chaudry gives several suggestions to help improve the working mother’s situation. First he suggests that government increase funding for children’s programs and unite the system. This would most likely mean the extending of Head Start programs for example. Another solution that Chaudry explains is including preschool in public educational systems. He would also like to see new policy created that acknowledges single mothers in today’s working world. By this I believe that he means it is time to shed the “if they’re on welfare, they must be lazy” ideal. His last suggestion is to begin to work for changes in society in which cycle of poverty can be broken. It is proven that the poor parents have poor children who then go on to become poor parents. If this cycle can be more easily broken, we would no longer see so many families below the poverty line. Finally, he wants to make the system simpler- build up systems, coordinate across programs and educate children, because education is key to breaking the cycle.