AMERICA’S SHATTERED CHILD PLAGUE
AFDC Welfare Malpractice Results
by
Reimert Thorolf Ravenholt, MD MPH
President, Population Health Imperatives
Seattle, Washington 98105, ravenrt@oz.net
www.ravenholt.com
Presented at Peninsula College, Port Angeles,
Washington, September 1993
Updated 1998
1
MOMENTOUS CHANGES IN AMERICAN WELFARE POLICIES, programs, and practices
during this century -- and the dismal results thereof -- have been welldocumented by Charles Murray (1986,1993). The paradoxical effects of
many well-meaning but demonstrably naive "anti-poverty programs" in
generating more profound poverty and a rapidly burgeoning, inescapably
dependent underclass is now glaringly apparent.
The foremost example of an initially well-conceived antipoverty program
eventuating in production of disastrous effects during ensuing decades
was the program for Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC),
begun during the New Deal to provide help for widows with small
children. Through welfare malpractice, political misdirection, and
compelling federal mandates, the AFDC program became so mangled and
bloated that it became the surrogate husband for millions of unwed and
abysmally improvident young mothers practicing the most irresponsible
motherhood this country has known and generating this country's most
intractable social problems.
As the catastrophic effects of AFDC malpractice emerged in American
ghettos during the 1950s and 1960s, leading social scientists, Ray
Moseley (1960) and Patrick Moynihan (1965, 1968) drew attention to the
close linkage between ghetto poverty , shattered families, and
disastrous social problems; and President Lyndon Johnson and other
leaders during the 1960s fashioned politically popular corrective
programs. Unfortunately, the prevailing concept then guiding social
action was that poverty generated the disintegration of families, rather
than the countervailing truth: it is inadequate parenting that
ordinarily
determines
multigenerational
poverty
in
America.
Unfortunately, antipoverty programs were mainly designed to augment the
financial resources of ghetto residents by increased AFDC cash payments.
The effects were much like pouring kerosene on a smoldering fire -resulting in explosive increase in welfarism, out-of-wedlock births, and
children suffering from catastrophic parental neglect and abuse,
especially among urban black populations.
But that the same pernicious effects of AFDC malpractice were likewise
degrading social conditions among white populations in rural areas was
succinctly stated by an experienced colleague, Dr Willard Boynton
(1995):
From 1944 to 1956 I was a country doctor in Bethell, Maine,
doing a complete general practice, including home and
hospital deliveries, appendectomies and plenty of fractures
and other trauma from logging camps and mills, physician for
Gould Academy and Bethell Inn, well baby clinics, etc. As the
only doctor within 25 miles doing a comprehensive practice, I
got to know the people well and they trusted and depended
upon me.
One day a lady I had delivered not long before came in
with her pregnant teen-aged daughter. She was ashamed of her
daughter and asked me to talk to the girl. After doing a prenatal check-up, in my most convincing country doctor manner I
pointed out the problems with teen-age pregnancy, especially
when unmarried: its social unacceptability, that it could
lead to physical and economic hardships, and family
disruptions. Her reply shook me:
2
"Don't give me that crap Doc! I'm tired of being bossed by
my mother. I like men but I don't want them around all the
time. AFDC will give me a hundred-something a month and I can
have my own place where I won't have to listen to my mother,
and I can have a man when I want to without having to put up
with him all the time. And if I get another kid -- like
Geraldine over in Rumford -- I can get two hundred a month
and be in the gravy!"
At that time many of my patients working hard in the mill all
week, had paychecks of 40 dollars or less.”
While welfare agencies increased budgets and workers to operate the
ever-growing AFDC Empire -- costing American taxpayers upward of $50
billion annually -- communities struggled to cope with the swelling
plague of child learning disabilities, school dropouts, unemployment,
drug addiction and crime. The total cost to federal, state and local
agencies in additional costs generated by these shattered youths -- by
their often irremediable educational difficulties, drug addiction
incarcerations, and murderous criminality -- cannot be exactly
estimated, but no doubt totals hundreds of billions annually.
The
sequence of specific modifications of AFDC welfare practices during
the 1960s which converted an appropriate New Deal program for helping
widows with small children, into a New Society welfare monstrosity
destroying the quality of life in America's larger cities and
threatening the very survival of this nation, was documented by Murray
(1984)(Figure 1). Thus, during recent decades in the United States,
many millions of black and white households have been established by
unmarried women, supported by welfare payments; and when scant years
later their offspring (also unmarried) add their progeny to the
welfare households, continuation of AFDC benefits for another
generation was assured. Startling increases in births to unwed mothers
consequently occurred (Figure 2). Considerable time elapsed before
this foremost social problem began to receive the social and political
attention it deserved. But during recent years, George Gilder 1984),
Leon Dash (1989), William Raspberry(1993), and Tony Snow (1995) have
published courageous accounts of the rapidly worsening nature of
family life in America, with a large majority of black children born
out of wedlock (68% in 1995)responsive to government welfare programs
which lured girls into adolescent motherhood "with offers of free
housing, medicine, legal assistance, and a combination of welfare
payments and food stamps worth several hundred dollars a month".
(Gilder,1984).
During
the
next
decade
of
egregious
welfare
malpractice, the AFDC welfare incomes unwed mothers received increased
until it exceeded worker incomes (Table 1).
A most glaring example of AFDC malpractice, is the case of Eulalia
Rivera: a migrant from Puerto Rico to Dorchester, Massachusetts in 1968,
who immediately went onto welfare and into a public housing project.
There she had 17 children, who by 1994 had produced 74 grandchildren,
and 15 greatgrandchildren (Sennott,1994, Diamont, 1994). By 1994, 14 of
her 17 children, and most of her grandchildren and great grandchildren
were on public welfare -– costing taxpayers roughly one million dollars
annually. Devout Roman Catholics, the Rivera family was opposed to birth
control.
Lack of constant loving parental care resulting in abusive child neglect
and severe psychical and physical trauma frequently shatters a child's
3
self esteem and capacity for loving human relationships to such an
extent that no subsequent social band-aid program can overcome the harm
done. As with Humpty Dumpty, "All the King's horses and all the King's
men, couldn't put Humpty Dumpty together again!" Naive efforts at
equalizing child learning advantages in schools by busing children to
achieve racial balance has created intolerable turmoil and diminished
over-all scholastic performance while distracting attention from the
root cause of the unsatisfactory school performance: the lack of
adequate parenting in the homes.
Surely, conscientious parents of every color know the crucial importance
of daily loving parenting in arming their children for school learning
and life's struggles; otherwise, why would they devote their utmost
energies and resources thereto? Not only has busing failed as an
antidote to family life deprivation, but the juxtaposition of severely
disadvantaged children with parentally-advantaged children produces
intense anguish as the disadvantaged children are made directly aware of
the huge advantages possessed by the well-parented children. When their
anguish becomes unendurable such children drop out and often resort to
addictive drugs. Busing has dispersed but not solved the shattered child
tragedy.
How, then, can this troubled society find its way out of the mess it has
created? For awhile optimism prevailed that the problem would be largely
solved by provision of family planning services to the poor. And,
indeed, except for the considerable success of such programs the
shattered child plague would have reached intolerable levels much
earlier. But inexorably, during three decades, much of the most
irresponsible reproduction in the United States resulted from planned
reproduction -– planned to qualify for welfare benefits.
Two fundamental precepts must guide reproduction in every sound society:
first, every child should be a wanted and well-cared for child; second,
no one should reproduce beyond their means (with spousal help) to care
for their offspring. These moral principles must be thoroughly taught in
homes and schools; replacing the mistaken belief that it is acceptable
for unmarried women to burden the taxpayers with misbegotten offspring.
With modern contraceptives backstopped by legally available abortions
fully available to young women, there is no acceptable excuse for gross
irresponsible exercise of reproductive powers. Young women must be
taught self-reliance in the control of their fertility: and the moral
precept that abortion of an unwanted pregnancy is better than
continuation of one destined to result in an unwanted and poorly-cared
for child. Religious leaders often point to abortion as an ultimate sin;
while ignoring the fact that a large majority of abortions occurring in
this world are done not by doctors, but by nature's God -- improving
reproductive quality by termination of developmental abnormalities.
Sexual freedom must be guided by adequate reproductive responsibility.
Because the bearing of children (inescapably) and the nurturing of
children (ordinarily) devolves upon the woman, she must decide if, with
whom, and when she will reproduce. Exercise of responsible control of
fertility provides women a most powerful lever for improving their role
in society; and no intelligent woman would relegate control of her
fertility to an impatient, forgetful or contrary male. And because only
she, not he, has ultimate control of her uterine function, he should
only be held legally responsible for support of her offspring when he
4
has contracted to do so. Since time immemorial marriage has signified
the husband's acceptance of a fully supportive role of mother and
offspring. The traditional role of marriage in family formation must be
resurrected, and irresponsible childbearing outside of marriage
condemned as the social parasitism it truly is.
Single women deliberately reproducing beyond their means practice a form
of aggression against relatives and society: demanding the earnings of
others to pay for their illegitimate private enterprises. By making AFDC
payments readily available to single mothers, irresponsible welfare
systems created a monstrous social problem and a burgeoning underclass
rapidly degenerated the quality of life in America. At mid-century the
proportion of black births out of wedlock (18.5%) exceeded that among
whites (1.8%) so greatly (ten-fold) that illegitimate childbearing was
often viewed as mainly a racial problem. But during recent decades the
proportion of births to unmarried white women has zoomed so rapidly
(Figure 3) that it is now clear that family degradation and resultant
shattered child plague threatens the entire population. Births to
unmarried women varies greatly by State: with Utah having the lowest
ratio for races combined (14%) and Mississippi the highest (42%).
Wisconsin in 1991 had the highest proportion of births to unmarried
black women (83%). The trends were dire in all states, but, with welfare
reform, have sharply improved during several years(Figure 4).
While campaigning and upon election, President Clinton stated his desire
for welfare program reform. But it soon became evident that “while
wanting to make a better welfare omelet, he wanted to do so without
breaking any political eggs.” It could not be done; and so it was
fortunate that the Republican Congress demanded meaningful welfare
reform, with emphasis upon self-reliance whenever possible. And it is to
President Clinton's credit that he signed the 1996 welfare (Workfare)
reform bill into law.
The welfare reform movement of recent years, resulting in fundamental
changes in welfare practices in many States, most notably Wisconsin,
leading to enactment of the landmark federal welfare law of 1996, has
had amazingly rapid impact upon the numbers of families receiving
support payments (Figure 4). The numbers of unwed mothers receiving
welfare payments crested in about 1991 (Figure 5), and as realization
grows among young women that they will not readily receive large cash
grants if they bear children out of wedlock, and will be required to
work, births to unmarried women will surely fall additionally. But to
enable mothers to work, major improvements must be made in child care
services nation-wide – analogous to the public childcare services
available in France and Scandinavian countries during many years. Also,
substantial improvements must be made in availability of quality foster
care and live-in child care centers -- where neglected and abused
children can be fully cared for until their families are able and
willing to provide quality care. Thus, this society can adequately
protect its most vulnerable children, black and white, enabling them to
escape the welfare trap.
Surely, there is now ample evidence that we have been on a losing track:
generating a burgeoning subculture of uneducable, dependent, angry and
destructive, shattered youth. Although the entire nation suffers from
the shattered child plague, relatives and neighbors suffer most:
propinquity makes them the usual victims of violence, and relational
5
markers place upon them an onus many do not deserve. AFDC malpractice
created a social crisis in America more serious than epidemic
tuberculosis a century ago -- the solution of which required isolation
of hundreds of thousands of tubercular mothers and others from their
families during many years. (Drolet,1932),
(Grigg,1958), (Ravenholt,1987).
Greatly increased emphasis upon all able-bodied persons working for
income rather than simply receiving AFDC grant assistance, is forcing
long-overdue recognition of the great unmet need for more adequate daycare facilities and services for young children in the United States -such as have been ordinarily available in European countries during many
decades: where small children of working mothers are well cared for
during entire working days. I recall the excellent care our pre-school
child received during eight hours daily at the Ecole Maternal in
Vaucresson, France, 1961-63, replete with noon lunch and nap, and
excellent training. Really adequate day care is such a tremendous boon
for much-stressed working young mothers that it is puzzling it was so
largely omitted from feminist action priorities during decades.
Although the shattered child plague afflicts every race in America to
some extent, it is most glaringly evident among impoverished, largely
black, households and communities where unwed, teenage, AFDC-supported
reproduction has flourished during multiple generations -- with little
adoptive relief -- and where it is now aggravated by drug addiction and
AIDS. In 1991, when 12% of the U.S. population was black, 6,419 (53%) of
12,014 babies born to pubescents under age 15 were black; and of the
357,483 babies born to mothers 15-19, 139,325 (39%) were black.(13)
Federal-State welfare programs currently provide foster care or care in
child care centers for roughly three hundred thousand children; but a
strong case can be made that several times that number of children
should be cared for by well-selected, mature foster parents or in child
care centers. Certainly, the current practice of unwed women holding
their much-abused offspring hostage for AFDC support must be ended.
An International View of Births to Unwed Mothers
While many societies with loose family structure have existed during
this millenium, it is apparent that leading developed countries during
recent centuries have been comprised mainly of families wherein the
mother and the father devoted themselves cooperatively to the rearing of
their young. Births to unmarried women in these countries were
ordinarily considered undesirable, unacceptable, and illegitimate. But
during recent decades, responding to sexual and feminist revolutions,
many developed societies have increasingly condoned childbearing by
unwed mothers, and governmental welfare systems have assumed a much
larger surrogate role in support of such households. Consequently,
births to unwed mothers have zoomed in the United States, Sweden and
Denmark; and, more recently, in Norway and the United Kingdom; all
countries which until recently suppressed out-of-wedlock childbearing
(Figure 3).
In many Latin American countries, a large proportion of births to
unmarried women has been the reproductive pattern during centuries, and
this continues (Figure 3). But in some countries, out of wedlock
childbearing remains in check, e.g. Japan, Republic of Korea, Republic
of China, Taiwan, Greece and Israel. And it must be increasingly
apparent that not only children of individual married couples, but all
6
children in countries where wedlock births are the norm, are greatly
benefited by this practice. The annual UN Demographic Yearbook presents
little out-of-wedlock birth data for African countries, reflective of
the usual practice of polygamy there and the inadequate registration of
vital events.
Discussion
Unfortunate consequences of zooming childbearing by unwed women in
Scandinavia and in the United Kingdom during recent decades are not yet
as glaringly apparent as they are in America's ghettos and in many Latin
American countries; because it is mainly a recent, first-generation
phenomenon: with many of the unwed parents living in stable domestic
union and only moderately dependent upon public support. Nevertheless,
as in America, excessively liberal welfare support laws and policies
will likely prove an irresistible lure for many young women unwilling or
unable to successfully attract and wed supportive husbands. Hence,
increased social parasitism and deteriorating child care is the expected
result, with offspring not receiving the essential parental care
ordinarily provided by both parents living in wedlock. This bodes ill
for future generations.*
While militant feminists often decry the abuse women not infrequently
suffer from men; they seldom mention the generative fact: that a large
proportion of the men engaging in such abusive behavior were themselves
much-abused as children by lack of adequate loving maternal/paternal
care. As measured by the unfortunate consequences -- especially by their
murderous criminality -- the child abuse suffered by a large proportion
of children born to and retained by unwed and irresponsible AFDC mothers
is of the most damaging kind. The future well-being of this society
demands that women reproduce only when they are able to secure and
provide the loving care that every child needs and deserves -- which
ordinarily requires that they attract and marry and so retain the loving
and likewise dedicated help of the child's father in the support,
nurturing and raising of their offspring.
* When visiting Denmark, my ancestral home, during May-June 1995, I
encountered widespread belief that marriage was really not so important,
because many of the unmarried parents of children lived together.
Furthermore, even if the mother lived alone, generous government child
payments and unemployment payments enabled them to live quite
comfortably. Consequently, as in the U.S., increasing numbers of mothers
depend on public funds rather than upon the earnings of themselves and
dedicated husbands. Inevitably, I believe, this arrangement will result
in increasing incidence of "shattered children" there, as occurred in
the USA. In fact, on the day of our departure, June 7, 1995, a
substantial article appeared in Denmark's largest daily newspaper,
Jyllands Posten, reporting a remarkable increase in uneducable,
disobedient, antisocial and criminal adolescents during the previous
five years -- highly reminiscent of the shattered youths which emerged
in American cities several decades earlier. Denmark has long been
renowned for its excellent child care standards, but an increasingly
casual disregard for the importance of marriage as the usual basis for
the bearing and rearing children may likewise degrade this function in
Denmark, with disastrous results.
Conclusion
A viable society may be destroyed in many ways: as witness the decline
7
and fall of the Roman Empire, whose martial vigor during centuries was
eroded by the counter tenets of Christianity, and which was then
destroyed by the invasion of barbarians from the north and east(13). As
witness also the recent dissolution of the USSR: in large measure a
cumulative result of the seemingly innocuous action by communist
governments in guaranteeing everyone a job -- thereby eliminating much
of the distinction between gainful employment and social welfare
support, and resulting in dwindling enterprise due to creeping and
eventually overwhelming welfare parasitism. And witness also the United
States: where well-intended, overly-liberal, and fundamentally unwise
AFDC welfare laws and practices introduced since the 1950s invited
welfare dependency and sapped the quality of America's families and
youth so severely that large urban communities became increasingly
uninhabitable. Unlike the barbaric invaders of the Roman Empire,
America's barbaric horde emanates from within -- from millions of
single-parent AFDC households, devoid of paternal presence, support and
discipline. This swelling tide of shattered, barbaric youth is a clear
and present threat to the way of life America enjoyed during centuries.
Drastic pruning of U.S. welfarism is urgently needed if this nation is
to survive the 21st century.
References
1.
2.
Murray C
Losing Ground
Basic Books, New York, 1986
Murray C
The Coming White Underclass, The Wall Street Journal October 29,
1993
3.
Moseley R
Detroit’s Welfare Empire, Atlantic Monthly, April 1960
4.
Moynihan DP
Employment, Income, and the Ordeal of the Negro Family. The Negro
American
Ed. Parsons T and Clark KB, Beacon Press, Boston, 1965
5.
Moynihan DP
Professors and the Poor. Understanding Poverty, Basic Books, 1968
6.
Gilder G
The Case for Child Allowances, Human Life Review Winter1984;10:7-13.
7.
Dash L
When Children Want Children: The Urban Crisis of Teenage Cildbearing
William Morrow and Company, New York, 1989
8.
Raspberry W
“Facing the Family” and “Disarming the Welfare Trap”, Op-Ed columns,
The Washington Post, February 1 and 6, 1993.
9.
10.
Snow T
Compassion’s Fine, But Welfare Discourages Work, USA TODAY,
September 25,1995
Ravenholt RT
8
Fatherhood by Choice and Contract, The Seattle Times,
11.
27 June 1994
Drolet JJ, Dorr LM
Tuberculosis Mortality and Morbidity, New York City, 1893-1930.
Reference Statistics, New York City Health Department, January 1932.
12. Grigg ERN
The Arcana of Tuberculosis. With a Brief Epidemiologic History of
the Disease in the USA. Part VI. American Review of Tuberculosis and
Respiratory Disases. 1958;78:51-71.
12
Ravenholt RT
Tuberculosis Control Assisted by Family Planning
Journal of Chronic Diseases 1987;00:1-4.
12.
Gibbon E
The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Penguin Books, The Viking
Press, London 1952.
Post Script (1998): While directing the global population/family
planning assistance program for the U.S. Agency for International
Development (1966-1979), my attention and activities were largely
focused upon the quantitative aspects of population dynamics in the less
developed countries – seeking to enable poor women and couples to limit
their children to those they truly wanted. But subsequently while
working with CDC, NIDA, and FDA, and, especially, since retiring from
the federal service and returning to Seattle, I became greatly concerned
with the rising tide of “shattered children” borne by unmarried women
and largely supported by overly-generous AFDC payments made by Welfare
Agencies, with little concern for the devastating effects of such
payments in creating “America’s Shattered Child Plague”. Hence,
beginning in the 1980s, I read extensively upon this topic, often
thought about it, and began writing critically about it.
But I soon learned that the agencies and journals which should have been
most interested in solving this huge social problem, had been misled by
Moynihan et al into thinking the problem could be largely solved by
simply increasing welfare expenditures along existing lines. Whereas I
believed that major changes must be made in welfare programs, to avoid
paying single women for promiscuous out-of-wedlock reproduction.
Finally, in the 1990s, a number of Republican State governors, and many
Republican Congressmen became strongly interested in revising state and
national welfare laws. Consequently, I began corresponding with them and
sending them earlier drafts of “America’s Shattered Child Plague”; also
to President Clinton who manifested increasing interest in modifying
welfare laws and practices.
Governor Tommy Thompson of Wisconsin became the Nation’s leading
Governor in the movement to reform State welfare practices; and in the
fall of 1993, I sent my article “America’s Shattered Child Plague” to
Governor Thompson and to Gerald Whitburn, Secretary of the Wisconsin
Department of Health and Social Services. A copy of his letter to me,
9
March 15, 1994 follows:
The Letter, “Fatherhood by Choice
Secretary Whitburn, also follows:
and
Contract”,
referred
to
by
Also, as Congressmen Newt Gingrich and Jim Nussle led the Congressional
action
to
fundamentally
change
federal
welfare
legislation,
I
corresponded with them – to convey my views; and especially to alert
them that the reason Senator Patrick Moynihan was so stridently against
their proposed welfare legislation, was that Moynihan had been a
principal architect of welfare legislation from the 1960s to the 1990s.
Responses from Jim Nussle follow:
Although President Clinton proposed changes in the welfare law, it soon
became evident that he wanted to make a new welfare omelet without
breaking any political eggs. It couldn’t be done; and so it was
imperative that the Republican leadership held his feet to the fire on
this issue. And it is to Clinton’s credit that he signed the Workfare
legislation in 1996. I am ordinarily an admirer of Bill Clinton, but on
the issue of Welfare Reform, I give the Republican leadership foremost
credit.
Fortunately, the legal changes made during the last few
already had considerable impact on welfare dependency. With
changes now occurring in many related parameters, there is
for improved epidemiology -- documenting
programs that
well, and changing those that are not.
10
years have
the dynamic
urgent need
are working