REAL AFDC? Here’s an
REAL AFDC? Here’s an interesting experiment: some poor Montana mothers are being paid to stay home and take care of their infants.
The pilot program pays the same child-care worker’s wages – $17 a day in this state – to a low-income mother caring for children under 2.
To show you how this turns history on its head – or makes history – remember that Aid to Families with Dependent Children began in 1935 as a program that would allow widowed mothers to stay at home with kids. By the 1990s, with so many mothers in the work force, the cry was to end AFDC.
Welfare reform was based on an idea so radical that we didn’t even publicly acknowledge it. The idea was that a (poor) mother’s place was in the work force.
The problem is that we never answered one huge question: Who will take care of the children? For many families, especially for those with infants, wages were so low and child care so expensive that the math didn’t work.