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Authors: Jonathan Kozol
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already on a woman’s welfare budget when she first applies forshelter, and if they have children, he may be allowed to live with her. If he isn’t on her budget but can prove he is her husband or the father of her child, he may be included in her budget at the time of placement in a shelter. “However,” according to one social worker, “it is always
very
hard to get a husband on a woman’s budget. In any case, if he is working, she will forfeit benefits and, if his earnings are concealed and then discovered, she will find her case is closed.” Because the jobs available to men like Annie’s husband are unlikely to be permanent, rarely offer health insurance, and could not support a family in New York, the forfeiture of benefits (or, worse, removal from the welfare rolls entirely) poses unacceptable risks. Thus, loyal fatherhood becomes a fiscal liability. The father becomes extinct within his family. If he wants to see his children he must sign in as a stranger.
In some cases, husbands are obliged to pay to visit with their children. In the Hotel Carter, for example, a woman I have interviewed tells me that husbands have to pay $12.40 for the right to spend an evening with their families. Other relatives or friends, she says, have to pay even more. If grandparents, for example, want to spend an evening with their daughter and grandchildren they pay $16.70. This policy, no matter how distasteful, is consistent with an ethos honored citywide.
Other fiscal disincentives to family integrity are even more severe: New York will spend a great deal less to support an AFDC child in the home of her real mother than to subsidize that child in a foster home. A twelve-year-old child living at home in New York City is allocated a maximum of $262 a month for all food, clothes, and rent expenses (1986). If this child were taken from her mother for “abuse or neglect,” the child would then be allocated $631 monthly. If the placement were routine—not for abuse,neglect, or any other failure of the parent—the child would be assigned about $410. Either way, she would be financially much better off without her mother.
In this book we will meet a very poor woman who has considered giving up her children to the state so that they may be better fed. Unnatural as such behavior may appear, mothers faced with bare refrigerators and with hungry children often are compelled to contemplate this option.
A welfare mother who has no home and has yet to locate shelter runs another risk of being separated from her child. A lawyer in Los Angeles describes a scenario repeated daily in America: A homeless family applies for AFDC. The social worker comes to the decision that the children are endangered by their lack of shelter. The children are taken away and placed in foster care. The parents are no longer eligible for AFDC now because they don’t have children. So the family
as a family
receives nothing. The children have been institutionalized. The family, as such, exists no longer. Measures as severe as these are rarely taken in New York, but the values that permit this to be done in any state are present everywhere.
Crowded living spaces have their own disintegrating force. With two or three children sleeping in the same room as their mother, sexual activity is never more than six or seven feet from their own beds. So either sexual activity must cease (it does in many cases) or it must take place under conditions that appear degrading. An intolerable choice is forced on those for whom existence is almost intolerable already.
The latter point, however, is a small part of a larger issue. This is the question of what constitutes “a home” in terms that foster and preserve a family’s ties. A place in which a parent cannot cook a meal is, to begin with, something different from a home as most of us would understand that word. Sharing food has been traditionallyregarded as the essence of a home or hearth in most societies. Cooking a meal
very
hard to get a husband on a woman’s budget. In any case, if he is working, she will forfeit benefits and, if his earnings are concealed and then discovered, she will find her case is closed.” Because the jobs available to men like Annie’s husband are unlikely to be permanent, rarely offer health insurance, and could not support a family in New York, the forfeiture of benefits (or, worse, removal from the welfare rolls entirely) poses unacceptable risks. Thus, loyal fatherhood becomes a fiscal liability. The father becomes extinct within his family. If he wants to see his children he must sign in as a stranger.
In some cases, husbands are obliged to pay to visit with their children. In the Hotel Carter, for example, a woman I have interviewed tells me that husbands have to pay $12.40 for the right to spend an evening with their families. Other relatives or friends, she says, have to pay even more. If grandparents, for example, want to spend an evening with their daughter and grandchildren they pay $16.70. This policy, no matter how distasteful, is consistent with an ethos honored citywide.
Other fiscal disincentives to family integrity are even more severe: New York will spend a great deal less to support an AFDC child in the home of her real mother than to subsidize that child in a foster home. A twelve-year-old child living at home in New York City is allocated a maximum of $262 a month for all food, clothes, and rent expenses (1986). If this child were taken from her mother for “abuse or neglect,” the child would then be allocated $631 monthly. If the placement were routine—not for abuse,neglect, or any other failure of the parent—the child would be assigned about $410. Either way, she would be financially much better off without her mother.
In this book we will meet a very poor woman who has considered giving up her children to the state so that they may be better fed. Unnatural as such behavior may appear, mothers faced with bare refrigerators and with hungry children often are compelled to contemplate this option.
A welfare mother who has no home and has yet to locate shelter runs another risk of being separated from her child. A lawyer in Los Angeles describes a scenario repeated daily in America: A homeless family applies for AFDC. The social worker comes to the decision that the children are endangered by their lack of shelter. The children are taken away and placed in foster care. The parents are no longer eligible for AFDC now because they don’t have children. So the family
as a family
receives nothing. The children have been institutionalized. The family, as such, exists no longer. Measures as severe as these are rarely taken in New York, but the values that permit this to be done in any state are present everywhere.
Crowded living spaces have their own disintegrating force. With two or three children sleeping in the same room as their mother, sexual activity is never more than six or seven feet from their own beds. So either sexual activity must cease (it does in many cases) or it must take place under conditions that appear degrading. An intolerable choice is forced on those for whom existence is almost intolerable already.
The latter point, however, is a small part of a larger issue. This is the question of what constitutes “a home” in terms that foster and preserve a family’s ties. A place in which a parent cannot cook a meal is, to begin with, something different from a home as most of us would understand that word. Sharing food has been traditionallyregarded as the essence of a home or hearth in most societies. Cooking a meal
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