Tuesday, November 29, 2005

Letters for November 28 - Trapped by bad decisions
And they're off! Here comes the letters crucifying the welfare mother for her "choices" and offering no solutions to the problem. To be fair- I don't have any solutions, either, except for access to good education and free birth control. But what do I know.

I found the article on welfare "trap" interesting ("State targets welfare 'trap,' " Press, Nov. 20). It focused on Martell Hughes, who could not get a job or get off welfare. At 16 she was pregnant, married at 17 and now single with six children.

Between 16 and 39 it seems she lacked responsibility for her own actions. The travesty is that Miss Hughes kept having children at the expense of her children's needs. Could this be why half who leave welfare are back on within a year?

Could be. My question is, where are the fathers of these children? Why aren't they ever held accountable for their "lack of responsibility"?

Hold welfare recipients to standards where poor decisions lead to real and drastic consequences. Welfare and societal norms lack condemnation for actions that put people in the Welfare system. Today, if you can't afford a child or children, you get food stamps, subsidized housing, WICK, daycare and welfare. These policies do not work or hold accountability. Taxpayers would be much more likely to support a welfare safety net if they saw that it was for people who hit hard times beyond their control.

Perhaps, solutions should start at home, church and in the local community. Pressure should be put on poor decision making. To make one mistake is human. To make the same mistake again and again without penalty propagates the problem.

What "real and drastic consequences" do you suggest? Take the children away? Jail time for the mother? Forced sterilization? How about free abortions? Probably wouldn't like that one so much, would you? The writer talks of vague "consequences" and complains that feeding and housing don't work. So, do we throw these children into the street to punish their parents "choices"? Stop feeding them?

These letters irritate the shit out of me. Long on blame, short on real solutions. The kids are here. They are hungry. They need a roof over their heads. It really doesn't matter the circumstances of how they arrived. This mother could have been hit with "hard times beyond her control" such as the father up and leaving or lay-off from a good paying job. We don't know, do we? But these sanctimonious fools point their wagging fingers at the Mom, with no thought of the responsibility of the Dad, and no idea of how this woman arrived where she did. And their only answers to the problem seem to end up punishing the children in the end. It's sexist, it's classist, and it's wrong. < /end of rant >