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

Washington Monthly, Sept, 1996 by Amanda Ripley

Ideally, each state would implement a generous exemption policy backed up by funding for alternative living centers. Each agency would employ specialists with more expertise and fewer cases to deal with all adolescent recipients. Teen mothers who have been abused would have access to extensive support services to interrupt the cycle of abuse. They would receive increased education and job training services, since victims of abuse often suffer from stunted developmental growth. And states would have to monitor the effects of the live-at-home requirement and perform reliable analyses on its long-term impact.

This wish list, of course, has as much chance of being fulfilled as universal health care does of clearing Newt's Congress. In the meantime, the only welfare "reform" the government has approved cuts spending by $56 billion. Real welfare reform costs money. But until politicians and the public accept that, we will continue to see policies like the live-at-home requirement--a provision that has never been evaluated for its efficacy, that contradicts the little we know about teen motherhood, and that could force teen mothers unwilling to return home into even more desperate straits. With little ado, that policy just became federal law. It may also become a lesson in how a well-intentioned but poorly conceptualized solution can turn out to be a problem of its own.