¶ … child is safe," Edelman states, "Young families of all races, on whom we count to raise healthy children for American's future, are in extraordinary trouble. They have suffered since early 1970s a frightening cycle of plummeting earnings, a near doubling of birth rates among unmarried women, increasing number of single- parent families, falling-income and skyrocketing poverty rates." Other sources support Edelman's belief that poverty is a significant problem for many of America's children. Poverty is a serious problem for our nation, and one that will not easily be solved.
Both individual states and the federal government, concerned about the rising cost of welfare payments, have attempted to force people off welfare by adding restrictions. For instance, in some states, the guardian parent of children (typically the mother) can only be on welfare for a finite number of years. While the policy is understandable, it does not reflect the reality some poor mothers face. In Missouri, for instance, a young woman...
She had been on welfare and reluctantly re-applied for it so she would have some way to support her children, but was turned down. Because of previous periods on welfare when she could not work, she had met the state's five-year total limit (Friedlin, PAGE).
This mother is not an isolated case. The Philadelphia Inquirer recently reported that more than half of the children living in Philadelphia county between the ages of 5 and 17 live in poverty (Philadelphia Tribune, PAGE). Poverty by itself might not be a crisis except that childhood poverty correlates with other significant societal problems. Research shows that children from poor families have fewer educationally-related materials at home, such as books; are less likely to go to community sites and events that could broaden their background knowledge, and that they are likely to be allowed to watch a lot of television. They are more likely…
