Read the article What's Happening to American Families? Choose one of the four policy initiatives described in the article and explain why the author thinks it is an important intervention. Do you agree or disagree?

The policy that I have chosen is....

PROTECTION OF YOUNG MOTHERS AND THEIR CHILDREN AGAINST POVERTY

The first policy need is for measures to protect young mothers and their children against poverty. It is not single parenthood alone, but the poverty associated with it that accounts for much of the pathology in the children in such families. Compare the situation in the U.S. with that in Sweden. In the U.S., the typical public assistance grant provides an income well below the poverty line. Intended as a spur to work, the payment locks mothers into a cycle of dependency due to the fact that the earnings from the part-time, low-paying work available to them are confiscated. The payments offer nothing to parents who keep just above the poverty line. Health care coverage is variable and uncertain, as though our nation believes that children of indigent parents do not deserve health care. Medicaid covers half of the cost of health care at best.

By contrast, in Sweden, payments to single mothers, in conjunction with day care, subsidized housing, and health insurance, provide a modestly decent standard of living. Swedish policy is designed to support high female labor force participation rates by continuing benefits at a generous level when women return to work. The married mother with a working husband remains far better off. What the policy does is avert destitution for single mothers. Such benefits must become the minimum goal of U.S. policy. The time is long overdue for a higher federal minimum wage and an extension of the Earned Income Tax Credit for working families with children.