Welfare, Fathers and Those Persistent Myths

I believe all of those myths is what kept so many men from marrying the women they had children with. Someone started spreading that untruth and it spread like wild fire. I think there were certain Social workers that did tell the women that if a man was found in the house they would lose their assistance. The sad part is, the assistance was barely enough to live on.

Does the state discourage poor fathers from being present in their children's lives? There are the emblematic images, like Diahann Carroll as a single mother on welfare in the 1974 movie Claudine, struggling to hide her boyfriend from a social worker.

Urban legends tell of "man in the house" rules that prohibit men from living under the same roof as moms who receive public assistance. Between media images, half-truths -- and also well-meaning but flawed policies -- the belief that the welfare system undermines poor families has been entrenched in the public mind for decades.

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