Welfare frightens me. I almost cannot fathom living on welfare-- not just because of the material goods and security I know I take for granted, but because I cannot imagine living without hope of something better.
This year the California State Legislature cut welfare funds again. It also announced plans to limit the number of children welfare recipients will receive compensation for: one. A mother can receive the maximum amount of aid for one child, and no more after that -- with exceptions made for children born before their mothers begin receiving welfare and for women who become pregnant despite sterilization, intrauterine devices or Norplant implants (all available through Medicaid). In a state whose cities overflow with homeless and poor people, the proposed measure is at once necessary, frighteningly unethical -- and humane.
The necessity of population control in general should be evident to anyone who lives near or in a city, knows the taste of smog and cherishes what undeveloped land still remains in the United States and the world. The problem is everywhere; China imposes a government-enforced limit of one child for each of its citizens, and with the abortions of disproportionate numbers of female fetuses, the measure is curtailing population growth. Due to the relatively low number of females in the newest generation, it will apparently continue to do so.
But we are neither a Communist country nor a dictatorship, and we are potentially messing with the reproductive rights of thousands, if not millions, of women. And California's plan is a particularly dangerous precedent to set because the state's proposal discriminates on the basis of socio-economic class, and by implication, race. The question arises: isn't having children a basic human right?
It is. But perhaps under certain conditions, and only temporarily, it shouldn't be.
It should not be all right to have more children so taxpayers will give you more money. It is not all right to abandon children, to take one's anger out on them and abuse them, to spend money on drugs or alcohol while your children go unclothed or unfed, to let them get swept up eventually into the brotherhood of gang warfare because at least that gives them a cause, something to live -- and die -- for. It is not okay to teach them that society owes them something, that stealing, even killing, is okay because they were born poor and disadvantaged. It doesn't take much for a kid to realize that no one values his or her life; why, then, should that child value anyone else's?
None of these are uncommon in poor families who can't escape welfare dependency. Cities are pocked with gangs and crime -- and most criminals were children who were ignored, malnourished, abused, uneducated. They lacked hope or encouragement. They were denied a chance.
So it is a question of choosing whose "rights" we are preserving: a mother's (to multiple offspring) or her children's (to life above poverty level). Or, by focusing on one at a time, both.
Statistics show that the chances of a single mother, especially a teenager, getting off welfare are extremely thin. Many recipients are now third-generation. If there is any hope that a woman on welfare can become self-sufficient, having multiple children is not going to help her. And the children who are born into such a situation are often unlikely to escape it.
Once a woman, or a family, is off welfare, she can have as many children as she wants (provided that the state has not imposed permanent sterilization on her; the problem with the current system is that none of the recommended forms of birth control are both safe and temporary). And once she is off welfare, she has more hope and more self-worth -- which makes life more rewarding and valuable, for parents and children. The point should never be to deny her the right to have children. The idea is to make her self-sufficient so that when she has children, they will know a better life.
Welfare should not be, as it is for too many people, a family tradition. We need to focus on bringing welfare recipients up to a level of self-reliance, and having children makes that task virtually impossible. Rather than embrace quantity of life, we need to focus on the quality of it and direct welfare funds to giving a more finite number of recipients something of value, like education and job training. At least give them -- and their children -- a chance to know something better.
