Social Problem: Single Parent Families - Essay Example

The problems that face poor single mothers in the United States today are a cause for mounting concern. The number of single mothers is growing and current public policy is ineffectual in providing meaningful answers to their problems. To better understand the extent of the problem it is important to examine the historical antecedents and public policies that have led to the current impasse. Then with a grasp of the problem offer some suggestion to provide relief. "Unmarried birth rates and the share of families headed by a single parent have been rising for a long time now, and their growth is an important sociodemographic phenomenon." (Bernstein, 1995) . Many single mothers are living at or below the poverty line. The problem crosses racial lines and is endemic across much of the country. As the cycle is self perpetuating it is ill advised for policy makers to simply turn a blind eye because it will not solve the problem. It is important to review the historical changes that have taken place in the last few decades. While this paper will not contend that divorce as a more readily available option today is the reason for the greater number of poor single mothers it will demonstrate that it is important to understand how the institution of 2 marriage has formed the basis of much of public policy regarding single mothers today. Divorce is a historically new phenomenon. For much of America's history the option for divorce simply did not exist. As Miller describes the roots of the institution of marriage: American divorce laws have early ties to English common law, which, itself, was very much influenced by the Church. Marriage was viewed as a sacrament, a holy union between a man and a woman, to be ended only by death. Divorce was, accordingly, seen as an unacceptable violation of the sacrament. The State was expected to conform to the Church's teachings and to protect marriage by restricting access to divorce. As a result, legal divorce in the modern sense did not exist in England until the mid-1800s. The only way to obtain a divorce was through a special act of Parliament, which was passed in the late seventeenth century and permitted divorce only on the grounds of adultery.(Miller, 1992, p. 106) Divorce as an option therefore has only been available for a short time. Marriage at this time was an indissoluble contract and there was none of the freedom of judgment in relationships that people in western countries take for granted today. Things started to change in the post-war period. Some have claimed that more relaxed divorce laws are entirely the reason for the change but Burns and Scott argue that the changes were happening even before the newer more permissive laws came into effect: Although absolute rates differ from one country to another, the pattern across time is quite similar--low rates until mid century, a postwar jump, a plateau through the 1950s and 1960s, a rise in the later 1960s followed by a further rise in the 1970s, and a leveling out in the 1980s. The figures 3 thus support the view that although divorce was on the rise before the laws were changed, the legal changes brought a further rise, followed by stabilization at a very high rate (Burns & Scott, 1994, p. 1) So clearly the divorce laws were a reflection of societies changing mores over time. This phenomenon occurred not only in the United States but across the the western developed world and they were only accelerated by the passing of more relaxed Divorce Laws as Burns and Scott emphasize “The new laws were not of course identical across countries, but in the majority of cases they represented a significant move toward consent or no-fault divorce" (Burns, and Scott 1) Divorce laws Burns and Scott argue were not the sole cause of the poverty seen among a large number of single mothers today but they did play a definite role in the widespread prevalence of single mothers in society: The result was a general deregulation of sexual and family behavior. The further result was that the number of mother-headed families tripled between 1960 and 1980; by 1983 40% of all poor people in the United States were children, and 13.8 million children were living in poor families. However, adult Americans remained and remain reluctant to tax themselves in order to provide for these children, and continued to believe that the market, by rewarding effort and efficiency, will "eventually" solve all problems. (Burns & Scott, 1994, p. 196) At this point the focus of the problem becomes clear: it is not a problem of the single status but rather a problem of the poverty that has come to be associated with it and why social policy may have contributed to this situation. Catherine Wimberly in her article Deadbeat Dads, Welfare Moms, and Uncle Sam: How the Child Support Recovery Act Punishes Single-Mother Families describes in detail how current public policy is 4 predicated on the the inherent belief that divorce is the root cause of the problem of poverty among single mothers. She argues this at the end of an excellent article where she first lays the ground work for the implementation of the Child Support Recovery Act ( CSRAS), The Child Support Recovery Act became a law in 1992 during the Bush administration. This act imposed criminal sanctions on the parents not in custody of children that did not offer due financial family support. It was designed to deal with the grey area of individuals that abandoned their family and moved out of state. The requirements of previous acts did not deal well with out of state tracking. The extra element of charging the offense of not providing support was intended as a way in which to more strongly assert the cost of not keeping up with family responsibilities. The criminalizing of absconding parents was an attempt to reduce the cost of maintaining the the social support to single mothers. This act was part of an ongoing drive by public policy makers to try to stem the cost of maintaining the public support to poor single parents that had started 20 years before. The Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) introduced in 1975 was an extension of the part of the Social Security Act that provided money to single mothers. The intention of the AFDC was to attempt to cut back on the costs of state support for single mothers by placing more of a burden on the parent who no longer had custody of the child. The 5 responsibility for this was placed on the custodial parent, often the mother, who had had to complete the process for child support payments in order to receive aid from the government. Despite this measure the cost of the financial aid to single mothers from the Federal government increased from “$ 5 billion dollars in 1975 to $ 12.7 billion dollars by 1992.” (Wimberly, 2000, p. 729) This was the reason for the introduction of the CSRAS in 1992. The government thought that the problem was just a matter of enforcing the absent parent to uphold his financial support and the the expense would subsequently come down. The oscillation of public policy changes is interesting as it moved from often ruling favorably for absent fathers to a much more punitive model. In the 19th century judges did not ask much of absent fathers as they believed that the father was standing to lose as much as the family he left behind. The 19th century notion held that the loss of the family would effect the father as well as he lost the right to benefit from the labor of his children as they grew and for this reason they tended to rule favorably for the father as to the amount of settlement he would have to give his family. as Wimberly outlines, Because nineteenth-century courts were keen on protecting the financial interests of noncustodial fathers and enjoyed great discretion in setting paternal support standards, judges often gave downward adjustments on 6 the ground that noncustodial fathers did not have a legal duty to support children whose income and labor they no longer enjoyed. (Wimberly, 2000, p. 729) The AFDC in 1975 was designed to remove this lingering favoritism to the the father by offering stronger incentives for single mothers to get their child support payments. It did not work as the cost of public support continued to balloon but the policy makers rather than review their decision decided that imposing criminal sanctions on the absent parent would be the answer. The problem was that this policy was not pursued with any force by law officials and thus even though the solution was enacted the execution was lacking. Typically the lack of follow through just came down to considering the problem lower on the scale of priorities. This was easy to do since it had become a new crime and involved the more marginalized members of society more often than not. The punitive philosophy continued in future acts. In 1998 the government added further changes to policy with the Deadbeat Parents Punishment Act ( DPPA) which increased the penalty on the absent parent with up to two years of imprisonment if they were in arrears with payment for over 2 years or owed more than $10, 000 dollars. This immediately appears not to make sense to even the uninformed observer, since by imprisoning parents then all means of paying any restoration is removed for the duration of the imprisonment. But it was less a matter of clear thinking than punishing those policy makers believed 7 were at the root cause of the problem. As Wimberly aptly puts it “As for the existing and unrepentant child-support evaders, Congress would punish them for divorcing their wives as well for failing to pay child support, because both acts led to their families' impoverishment.” (Wimberly, 2000, p. 729) Curiously another change was instituted solely it appears to reduce the expense to the public purse but at the expense of further impoverished single mothers across the nation. “The Personal Responsibility and Work Reconciliation Act ( PRWORA) or welfare reform act has now placed more stringent requirements on receiving aid, almost pushing single mothers toward marriage “ ( Wimberly,2000,p.279) It becomes clear from Wimberly's argument that Congress had a particular outlook on the problem of poverty among single mothers and they legislated at every turn to that end. Whether they acknowledged it or not Congress believed that divorce was at the root of the problem and in this they were forcing incentives and disincentives to marry and remain in a family unit. This was wrong headed for a number of reasons that Wimblerly argues most cogently . It appeared that all these policies discussed where forcing single mothers to reunite with partners in the perceived interest of the family, but there is a paternalistic obliviousness to some of the conditions that led to the breakups in the family in the first place. The risk of re-entering abusive relationships was never addressed in these policies. In essence the problem is that in the minds of the policy makers the poverty of single mother's has 8 been aligned to to the idea that it has been divorce which is responsible for single families today and it is divorce that has led to the burden on the welfare system. This unburdening of the problem seems to reverse the decades of social progress that accompanied the changes that allowed more liberal divorce laws, namely greater freedoms for women, and the ability to leave bad marriages without the stigma of divorce. A better solution or at least a more alleviative approach to the problem is not to tie the continued support of the welfare system to reunification with marriage with what may or may not be unsuitable partners but to follow Scandinavia's example and link state support of single mothers to training programs that will allow them to support themselves in the future. This at first involved a heavy input from the public purse but it has radically reformed Scandinavian society as Burns and Scott illustrate: A dramatic increase in the percentage of women entering the labor force has occurred in Scandinavia... in Norway, whereas in 1965 14% of women with small children were in the workforce, by 1986 that figure stood at 69%. The great bulk of this new work involves civil service jobs that carry out the functions once performed by private families. In Norway, 66% of social workers, 93% of nurses and 98% of home helpers are women. Of the growth in the labor force that took place in Denmark between 1960 and 1982 owing to the entrance of women, 25% was in day-care institutions and old-age homes, 12% hospitals, and 27% in schools. (Burns & Scott, 1994, p. 197) This change has introduced a whole sector of the population that could easily have become disenfranchised like they have in the U.S model but 10 through massive initial state intervention are now a viable part of the economy. This was achieved by acknowledging that the divorce and single parents were a logical outcome of social change in modern society and then aiding individuals through that historical transition period. The changes required in policy are extensive. The current policy is driven toward reunification of the family but in new paradigm concessions must be made that divorce and single parenthood is a permanent feature of modern society and policy that tries to reverse the social changes that have occurred in the last 50 years only stigmatize the society at large. Presently the system of public payments seeks to only maintain a barely functioning state of poverty. This problem can only be reversed if the incentives of public support are tied to job retraining so that single parents can effectively exist without the the feeling of defeat that is built into the present system. At first such a policy will cost the country a large capital investment but this not an unreasonable request. The current system is unsustainable. So far it has succeed in only adding to the numbers of economically marginalized single mothers and further and criminalizing fathers who themselves are hard pressed to find work that can support their abandoned families. Imprisonment of these individuals does not change the desperation of such lives and only places a heavier toll on the public purse with no real expectation of return. 12 References Bernstein, J. (1995, January/February). Welfare-Bashing Redux: The Return of Charles Murray. The Humanist, 55, 22+. Retrieved April 6, 2006, from Questia database: http://unquestionable/PM.qst?a=o&d=5002217406 Burns, A., & Scott, C. (1994). Mother-Headed Families and Why They Have Increased. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Retrieved April 6, 2006, from Questia database: http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=9879263 Miller, N. (1992). Single Parents by Choice: A Growing Trend in Family Life. New York: Insight Books. Retrieved April 6, 2006, from Questia database: http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=100262464 Thomas, A., & Sawhill, I. (2005). For Love and Money? the Impact of Family Structure on Family Income. The Future of Children, 15(2), 57+. Retrieved April 6, 2006, from Questia database: http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=5012238363 13 Wimberly, C. (2000). Deadbeat Dads, Welfare Moms, and Uncle Sam: How the Child Support Recovery Act Punishes Single-Mother Families. Stanford Law Review, 53(3), 729. Retrieved April 6, 2006, from Questia database: http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=5001201900 Read More