Welfare Rules Discourage Marriage States Experiment With Loosening Rules That Stifle Family Values And Maintain Poverty

Policy-makers debating welfare bemoan the increase in families headed by women, fearing a demise in men’s role as parents and, indeed, the decline of American civilization.

But few discuss government’s contribution to the situation: federal rules discouraging welfare mothers from marrying and poor families from staying together.

A mother on welfare loses nearly a third of her check if she marries the child’s father, regardless of the family income. She loses all her benefits if she marries anyone else. A two-parent family is ineligible for benefits if one works more than 100 hours a month, and the family is ineligible if neither parent has worked recently.

These rules were designed to ensure that those receiving help are truly destitute. But in the current economic and social realities, the rules appear topsy-turvy, and at least a dozen states are experimenting with loosening some of the restrictions.

“We must change the current cruel rules of government that dismantle families, emasculate men and deny their children full-time fathers,” said Sen. Barbara Mikulski, D-Md., a former social worker who has helped draft a Democratic welfare bill. “We need to stand up for the family - and that includes men.”

Under the current system, says Jack Kemp, U.S. housing secretary under President Reagan, “we are subsidizing behavior that historically leads to poverty, and we punish getting out of poverty.”

About 14 million people, 9 million of them children, receive Aid to Families with Dependent Children, the major federal welfare program.

Penalties against marriage were a focus of welfare bills proposed by both Democrats and Republicans last year. The current debate focuses more on allowing states to design their own welfare programs, putting recipients to work and curbing out-of-wedlock births by denying cash aid to teen mothers.

“Getting the laws right will not solve all the problems,” said William Mattox Jr., vice president of the conservative Family Research Council. “But the laws teach us what is right and wrong and send the message that we want fathers involved in their children’s lives.

“When you look at what is the common escape route out of poverty, it is not welfare or workfare. It’s marriage.”

But Donna Pavetti, a senior associate at the Urban Institute, who tracked 1,000 women on welfare for 10 years, said half of the women who left welfare did so through jobs and only 15 percent left through marriage.

Pavetti noted that marriage is no longer considered a given in many industrialized countries. While she agrees that welfare rules on marriage should be changed, she said most women on welfare chose to remain single because poor men are often unemployed or have unstable jobs.

Some states have already changed their rules. In determining whether a family earns too much for benefits, they may exclude the money a stepparent must spend to support other children. Parents may be allowed to work more and still keep welfare benefits.

The old rules were too punitive and kept people on the rolls, said welfare officials in Iowa, Illinois, Michigan, Missouri and Mississippi, five of the states that have made changes.

“We were penalizing unemployed families,” said Ann Wiebers, welfare reform coordinator for Iowa. “The policies were so stringent that lots of the families split up so the children can get benefits.”

Said Peggie Powers, chief of planning for the Illinois Department of Public Aid: “The economy changed, but the rules didn’t. Now, we’re recognizing that this was a disservice to taxpayers and clients.”

Robert Rector, the welfare expert at the conservative Heritage Foundation, said it was “simplistic” to think that allowing more two-parent families to stay on welfare is pro-family.

Young men would figure out that they can get more government support if they married a woman after she had his child, he said.

“You don’t want any system that says ‘Do something bad, and then do something good and we will reward you.’ The best thing to do is get the government out of the business of subsidizing illegitimacy,” his portrayal of the current welfare system. “If you do that, marriage will return.”

At the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, Roberta Spalter-Roth, research director, said that the issue in family stability wasn’t marriage as much as just having two adults in the home to provide more financial and emotional support.

“It’s often useful to have another adult in the household, regardless of whether that adult is the spouse,” she said. “With others living in the household, the AFDC recipient is more likely to go to work. But that person can be a grandmother or a sister. We don’t see this as a father issue.”

But the absence of fathers is exactly the issue, said Mattox. “We are not talking about ‘two androgynous co-parents,” he said. Children, he said, need to see married parents to understand how men and women relate in a committed relationship “and what expectations they should have when they grow up.”

And that is what concerns Bradley, who on a recent week night stood on the corner of her littered community watching 100 men spill out a nearby church. They had met to talk about the responsibility of men to care for their families and communities.

“It’s a beautiful thing,” she said. “Maybe they can help this young generation to care about themselves and their kids.”