Stay at home, moms - making teen mothers live at home

Washington Monthly, Sept, 1996 by Amanda Ripley

It sounds wholesome, but requiring teen mothers on welfare to live with their parents may do more harm than good

Keep children who have children at home where they belong," President Clinton decreed this spring, calling on all states to "make it clear that a baby doesn't give you a right, and won't give you the money, to leave home." The welfare reform legislation recently passed by Congress and signed by Clinton makes it clear indeed: All states will now have to mandate that teen mothers who receive public assistance not only stay in school, but live at home. Amidst the outcries surrounding the reform's passage, next to nothing was said about this seemingly benign provision. The messy details of the live-at-home rule, however, say a great deal about what we can expect from this round of welfare reform.

Even before the federal requirement, the live-at-home rule has been spreading like wildfire among the states. Since the Family Support Act of 1988, states have had the option of requiring parents under 18 to live at home or in some supervised adult setting in order to receive welfare. Twenty-one states have already chosen to implement the provision--13 in the last year alone.

That's because, at first glance, the policy sounds so sensible. Teen moms need all the support and structure they can get. It is hardly unreasonable to require them to live in adult-supervised environments. Policymakers and much of the public agree that the government should not pay teens to move out of their homes; yet in many places, teens have been getting a bigger check when they do so. Proponents reason that the live-at-home rule will end this perverse incentive to move out.

Except that, more often than not, teen mothers don't leave home for a bigger welfare check. They leave because they're either not welcome or not safe at home. And that's only one of the policy's flaws. Even as the federal government rushes to expand the requirement, for example, there's remarkably little data by which to evaluate the impact of the policy. And while the welfare legislation does contain a provision to exempt teens from unsafe homes, the exemption is vaguely phrased and relies solely upon the discretion of overworked, often undertrained, state caseworkers. Meanwhile, the alternative to sending teens home--adult-supervised group homes--costs more money than either the federal government or the states are willing to put out.

Home Is Where the Hurt Is

Lawmakers are right on one count: For impoverished young mothers, living alone is far from idyllic. Takesha Mitchell, who first ran away from home at age 15, lives on her own with her two children in D.C. She says there's no one to help her. Each month she receives $326 in cash assistance, but "it's really, really hard" to make the money last. Mitchell says she wants to work because she's so bored at home. In the meantime, her check was recently scaled back. Sometimes, Mitchell says, she gets so frustrated with her children that she catches herself falling into the same abusive patterns her mother taught her.

The possibility of Mitchell abusing her children is frightening. But so is the prospect of Mitchell and her children returning to the home where she learned that behavior firsthand. Mitchell says she left home because her abused her mentally and physically and used drugs. Eventually, she says, her mother wouldn't let her return anyway.

Teen mothers are more likely to come from families that are already poor, have been on welfare for over a generation, and are headed by former teen parents themselves. "If kids have a supportive family environment, nine out of ten times they will stay," according to Lauren Paine, program manager at Ruth's House, a structured living center for teen mothers in Massachusetts. When teens do move out, it's usually for good reason.

Recent studies show that a majority of poor teen mothers have been victims of sexual abuse, and that incest survivors are more likely to become pregnant during adolescence than girls who are not sexually abused. A 1992 study by the National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect sampled a large and diverse pool of young mothers who became pregnant as teenagers. The researchers found that nearly half of the women had been raped at some point. About the same proportion had been violently abused. Over two thirds had been sexually abused, a majority of them by a family member when the girls were not yet 10 years old. These numbers are dramatically higher than the rates for the general female population.

The scant data collected by state welfare agencies confirm these findings. Michigan, which enacted the live-at-home requirement in 1992, found that 46 percent of the 1,468 teen mothers who lived independently in 1994 had been kicked out by their parents or guardians. Thirty-seven percent would be at risk of injury, abuse, or neglect if they moved back home. Almost as many teens were already known to Michigan's child welfare workers because their families had been involved in cases of abuse or neglect.