Source: The Fatherless GenerationKenya N. Rahmaan
It has been rumored by many that welfare destroyed the Black family, but why? Is it because that’s what we’ve been told by so many people we don’t quite know where to trace the origin? When, in reality, besides the apparent reason, Black families are EVERYWHERE, it makes the premise ridiculous. Secondly, historically, the statement is blatantly false. For instance, the government never intended welfare for Black women or families. According to Susan W. Blank and Barbara B. Blum (1997), in 1935, the federal government enacted ADC (Aid to Dependent Children) into law, a subsidy provided to families with fathers who were deceased, absent, or unable to work. These families had to qualify for modest payments, which allowed the mothers to stay home to care for their children.
In addition to keeping a clean home, having clean children, and behaving decently, these women were non-Black. The government refused to pay ADC or other subsidies to Black widows or abandoned mothers caring for their deserted offspring. If a man in the home could not earn outside because of a disability, the family was also left on their own. At the end of the 1930s, a significant shift occurred, separating the non-Black widows considered deserving from the less deserving single mothers. The impact directly reflected the ADC program, which reinforced the nation’s marriage patterns changes because of increased divorces and out-of-wedlock births.
By the 1950s, during the Great Migration and World War II, the Federal government began excluding children from the ADC program based on their birth status, typically denying eligibility to any child born to an unwed mother after she began receiving the subsidy (Blank and Blum). The focus was on single mothers and mothers having babies out of wedlock. During the 1960s, government officials were under a microscope because of exclusion policies. Besides the rules baring single mothers, Black widows and families still faced disqualification mainly from receiving benefits since its inception nearly two decades earlier. If anything, racism, not welfare, was destructive to Black families.
The caseloads had doubled as the population in the north swelled due to the Great Migration. Throughout the fight for welfare rights, Black migrants were able to gain access to ADC benefits by the court-ordered cessation of discriminatory regulations like the “suitable-homes” rules, by the influence of a growing welfare rights movement, and by welfare officials and social workers who encouraged the poor to take advantage of public assistance (Blank and Blum). Contrary to popular belief, the government did not forcibly remove men from the family home once the welfare program transferred from ADC to AFDC-Aid to Families with Dependent Children in 1962. Blank and Blum explained that federal law required state efforts to establish paternity for AFDC children and allowed aid to go to unemployed male parents with a work history. Although the welfare program began transitioning to a more focused ‘welfare-to-work’ and self-sufficiency ideology, mothers could stay home and raise their children. At the same time, men were still considered the primary “breadwinners” and had to work during that era.
One of the biggest misconceptions is that fathers were not permitted to live in the homes with their wives, girlfriends, or children if the mother received welfare benefits. This rule or law allegedly destroyed the Black family bond and structure. While it is true that a man-in-the-house rule did exist, its origins, existence, and demise are not shared in its entirety as they should be for the full impact. Although the practice may have started to make an impact, that impact was minuscule compared to other life-altering events in the Black community and short-lived.
The “man-in-the-house” plays the most significant part in the lie that welfare somehow destroyed the Black family. http://bit.ly/40akSqS The “substitute father” rule, according to C. Frank Goldsmith Jr. (1968), children otherwise eligible for benefits under the AFDC program are denied assistance if their natural parent maintains a continuing sexual relationship with someone of the opposite sex. Concerning the man-in-the-house rule, Alabama’s Supreme Court held unanimously that a case brought before them, King v. Smith, was inconsistent with Title IV of the Social Security Act, 42 USC §601-09 (1968) (Goldsmith, Jr.). Other states followed suit. People often confuse the man-in-the-house rule with house raids depicted on videos. We often see raids of public housing units looking for men not permitted to live there because their names are not on the lease. Kicking men not listed on low-income housing leasing occurs to this day.
There were and are many attempts to destroy the Black family. Three life-altering events are listed BEFORE welfare is declared the winner of said destruction. The audacity of people to state unequivocally that an entire population of people and their relationships within their families are destroyed while looking at those same people. What’s worse is that this talking point is quoted and shared based on a public safety net and a piece of paper saying whether or not you are now ‘holy’ enough to have babies together. However, before 1950, the United States government didn’t care if Black people were married, nor did they care about the family structure. As the late great Tupac Shakur famously said, “True eyes realize true lies.”
References
Blank, S. W., & Blum, B. B. (1997). A brief history of work expectations for welfare mothers. The Future of Children, 7(1), 28. https://doi.org/10.2307/1602575
Goldsmith Jr., C. F. (1968). Social welfare–the “man in the house” returns to stay. North Carolina Law Review, 47(1), 1-10.
