De Quattro 1

Sophia De Quattro
Howe
SL: Moral Philosophy
6 May 2014
A Blessed Burden
Put yourself into the perspective of a teen mother. Imagine the
immense disappointment you would feel after calling 5 places a day,
with the only answer you receive is a solemn no. After establishing a
relationship with the rentees and earning their respect, they have no
choice but to deny you after you ask if they can accommodate for
Section 8, a housing vouched funded by the U.S. Department of
Housing and Urban Development that helps low-income residents
receive rent assistance. Their dream crushing response echoes
throughout the hollow hope you possessed minutes before, Im so
sorry but I cant work with the financial caps that are placed on us with
Section 8. This situation, not to be mistaken, is a real life incidence of
Chioma, a member of Young Moms Marin.
The director of the program, Teresa Ashby, invited her after
giving birth to a beautiful baby boy at the age of 14, 5 years ago. As
you enter the premises of St. Pauls Church in downtown San Rafael,
CA, the location that serves as a meeting place for Young Moms Marin,
there is an overwhelming sense of warmth and comfort. Downstairs,
the young mothers (ages 15-25) meet for a two-hour support group

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each week. For the duration of this time, the children are brought
upstairs to a fully functioning playroom with music, food, and familiar
faces. Adults and interns from local high schools and colleges in the
community, one being Dominican University of California, watch the
children. These weekly sessions are structured to be a proactive time
of learning and enjoyment; its purpose is to help develop a safe and
nurturing environment for the children and mothers alike. For most of
the parents and children, this is the only place that holds any sense of
consistency. The meals and social gatherings spent around other young
families help to create a sense of communitythe inspiration behind
the Young Moms Marin support group. Each family that joins the group
come from marginalized communities and deal with numerous
struggles, such as lack of financial and parental support.
The young women that attend Young Moms Marin are
representative of the population in our nation facing extreme hardships
with a child to support; however, the mothers seldom receive sufficient
governmental aid or family members offering to lend a hand in helping.
The cultural belief system of the parents can have an affect on whether
or not they approve of their daughter having a child, but it is more so
their marginalized, ethnic backgrounds that they do not have the
opportunity to provide for their child and grandchild(ren). Similarly,
U.S. federal and state aid has been an additional disappointment in
helping to support single-mother families. The expectation for single-

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mothers to support themselves and their child is a flawed perception
on a global scale; there must be a call for a more reformative system
and increased resources so that the youth of marginalized populations
are not to grow up developmentally stunted and economically
disadvantaged.
Alongside the work that I was involved with at Young Moms
Marin, the Honors Moral Philosophy course, Ethics from the Margins
honed in on many relevant discussions on what we commonly refer
mothers with government aid as welfare moms. In Sharon Hays
opening chapter of Flat Broke With Children: Women in the Age of
Welfare Reform, she introduces the topic with the Personal
Responsibility Act. It provides readers with a sense of the basic attitude
the U.S. government holds towards single, impoverished mothers. To
put simply, there is no room in the national agenda for restricting the
welfare system in favor of single-mothers. She finds the Personal
Responsibility Act to be flawed, further mentioning that it is a vessel of
instilling the conflicting values of work and family life in America. To
relate back to Young Moms Marin program, the purpose of this
community partner is to help alleviate the apprehensions that
accompany parenthood.
The national poverty rate for single mothers and their children
have risen over the years. Randy Albelda states in his article Different
Anti-Poverty Programs, Same Single-Mother Poverty, The September

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report showed the poverty rate for single mothers and their children
rose as well: from 32.55 in 2009 to 34.2% in 2010. Facilitating the
needs of every parent that does not make sufficient means for his or
her family is a task that this nation still has yet to perfect. DataCenter
is working with Young Moms Marin to increase membership in order to
assess the conditions needed to appropriately serve the young parents
in Marin County. Additionally, the partnership will use the data to boost
their advocacy efforts for programs and services Young Moms Marin
provides. The group recently received a $15,000 grant form the State
of California to survey other poor young moms in Marin. They have
developed a powerful presentation about their surprising discoveries,
which the group has begun to present to the Marin community. The
intentions of this is to bring a more positive light on welfare and teen
pregnancytwo subjects that are relentlessly looked down upon in
todays society. Hays, who marvelously deciphers the fundamental
contradictions between the ethical ideals of individual autonomy and
self-determination, discusses the ethical debates surrounding welfare
mothers. Our society has become accustomed to the widespread belief
that a universal responsibility to connect with and commit to other
members of our societies is imperative for the continuation of a
standard moral life.

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An examination of past reforms to the anti-poverty systems is
important to understand how this belief has been internalized. Albelda
explains:
This reality was built into the design of the first generation of
federal anti

-poverty programs in the United States. Developed

beginning in the New Deal

era, these programs were aimed at families with no able-bodied
male
breadwinner and hence no jobs or wagessingle mothers,
people with
disabilities, and elders. Putting single mothers to work was
thought to be
undesirable. Or, white single mothersthere was much less
reluctance in the
case of black single mothers, who were largely excluded from the
various

anti-poverty programs until the 1960s. (1)

At one point in time, America felt that providing assistance to singlemothers was morally correct and a worthwhile investment. Programs
including Food Stamps, Medicaid, and housing assistance programs
were developed to help sponsor a country that aided those unable to
be self-sufficient. Government transfers to individuals in the 60s stood
at an impressive $24 billion (Reuss, 1). No person is born able to

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survive on his or her own, and it is with both forces of nurture and
nature that one can transition into supporting oneself and,
subsequently, others that are dependent of support; for example, the
child of the mother. However, in 1996, during President Clintons term,
Congress abolished an Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC)
and replaced it with a block grant called [Temporary Assistance to
Needy Families (TANF)]... The new anti-poverty regime implied a new
social compact with the non-disabled, non-elder poor, supported by
both conservatives and liberals. This set the grounds for legislative
changes for the proceeding decades in a pursuit to promote
employment, and received welfare as part of compensation. As
mentioned earlier, governmental aid seemed to stand at a fairly
reasonable amount; however, in 2010 that total ($24 billion) was 100
times as large. Even after adjusting for inflation, entitlement transfers
to individuals have grown by more than 700 percent over the last 50
years (Reuss, 1). If these statistics are accurate, then it is crucial to
find explanation for why poverty in our nation, especially amongst the
population of single-mothers, is such a long-term and domineering
component to our society.
Two girls from Young Moms Marin attended a class session during
the semester to offer explanation of government aid from personal
experience. The initial eligibility interview, which is also covered in
Flat Broke With Children: Women in the Age of Welfare Reform, is one

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of the main problems with the system. Hays claims this bureaucratic
system to be an interrogation of the mothers, saying by the time the
potential client reaches this point, she has already filled out a 14-page
form asking about every aspect of her familial and financial situation
(44). Sylvia, a group member of Young Moms Marin, explained her
social worker as invasive and unsympathetic to her situation. Programs
such as Young Moms Marin are a modern approach to uplifting this
marginalized population. The stressors the young women are placed
under can induce a mental suffocation when needing to set priority as
a adolescent or young adult, student, and mother. As the perceptions
society holds against single-mothers transforms, hopefully a strong
advocacy towards connecting the mothers to groups similar to Young
Moms Marin remains. For the mothers that do not possess the
necessary resources to provide for their child, this could be exactly
what is needed to inspire a functioning family structure in order to
promote a better life for both the child and the mom.

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Sources Cited
Hays, Sharon, Flat Broken with Children: Women in the Age of Welfare
Reform.
Oxford, NY: Oxford University Press, 2003. Web. 6 May 2014.

Albelda, Randy. Different Anti-Poverty Programs, Same Single-Mother

Poverty.
Dollars & Sense. 2012. Web. 6 May 2014.

Reuss, Alejandro. The Big Lie about the Entitlement State. Dollars &
Sense, 2012.
Web. 6 May 2014.