And it continues...... (Chicago, Lake Forest, Atlanta: home, to buy, high schools)

[emathias]

Originally Posted by lenniel

...
The problem is the lack of focusing on having a mother and father married to raise children in the poor black community.

As Atlanta said, stupid breeds stupid and that cycle continues.

Then I assume you oppose the drug war because it puts black males so disproportionately into jails, taking them away from their children and thereby contributing greatly to the very problem you identify.

[Atlanta_BD]

Originally Posted by rhawkins74

This is true for TANF but not for the rest of the benefits.

Food stamps is not a lot either, which have also been reduced. Do you really believe welfare recipients are getting thousands of dollars a month? They aren't. And those who get housing assistance. Where do they live? In bad areas.

[rhawkins74]

Originally Posted by Atlanta_BD

Food stamps is not a lot either, which have also been reduced. Do you really believe welfare recipients are getting thousands of dollars a month? They aren't. And those who get housing assistance. Where do they live? In bad areas.

I can take you to and introduce you to many who are getting over 1000/mo in foodstamps, plus they work part time, and also get money for childcare.

[holl1ngsworth]

Originally Posted by rhawkins74

I can take you to and introduce you to many who are getting over 1000/mo in foodstamps, plus they work part time, and also get money for childcare.

And housing assistance.

[CCrest182]

Originally Posted by chicagobear

Well, if the government didn't give unmarried women money for having children, they would have fewer of them.

This is unfortunately true. The government treats single mothers like royalty, and then the media tries to relieve all accountability from the mother. The father's not innocent, but until this culture can finally lay some responsibility onto the mother, nothing will ever change.

[CCrest182]

Originally Posted by emathias

Then I assume you oppose the drug war because it puts black males so disproportionately into jails, taking them away from their children and thereby contributing greatly to the very problem you identify.

... why do they get involved with drugs in the first place??? The majority of criminals are raised by single mothers...

[nana053]

What so many don't understand is that poor women put children before marriage for many reasons. I suggest reading Promises I Can Keep: Why Poor Women put Motherhood before Marriage by Kathyrn Edin and Maria J. Kefalas.

Promises I Can Keep: Why Poor Women Put Motherhood Before Marriage: Kathryn Edin, Maria J. Kefalas: 9780520241138: Amazon.com: Books

Over a span of five years, sociologists Kathryn Edin and Maria Kefalas talked in-depth with 162 low-income single moms like Millie to learn how they think about marriage and family. Promises I Can Keep offers an intimate look at what marriage and motherhood mean to these women and provides the most extensive on-the-ground study to date of why they put children before marriage despite the daunting challenges they know lie ahead.

MMO: Poverty and the*politics*of*care by Judith Stadtman Tucker

By the early 1970s, the War on Poverty was over, and the War on Welfare -- and the mothers who depend on it to support their families -- was underway. Welfare was recast as the cause of poverty and social decay rather than a flawed and incomplete response to it; tough-minded lawmakers concluded that the system’s principal shortcoming was providing cash benefits to poor women who gave birth to children out of wedlock -- children they feared were destined to repeat the cycle of poverty.

[Atlanta_BD]

Originally Posted by rhawkins74

I can take you to and introduce you to many who are getting over 1000/mo in foodstamps, plus they work part time, and also get money for childcare.

I know people who work in social services whose job it is to put people on food stamps, and I have never heard of anyone getting $1,000 a month in food stamps, especially not in Illinois. In fact many Chicagoans move to other states that pay more in benefits.

[lenniel]

Originally Posted by emathias

Then I assume you oppose the drug war because it puts black males so disproportionately into jails, taking them away from their children and thereby contributing greatly to the very problem you identify.

You have to step much further back and ask "why are black males selling drugs?"
I'll bet that most black males selling drugs or who are in jail for selling drugs don't have a father at home, married to their mother, teaching them that selling drugs is not the correct path in life.

[Atlanta_BD]

Originally Posted by CCrest182

This is unfortunately true. The government treats single mothers like royalty, and then the media tries to relieve all accountability from the mother. The father's not innocent, but until this culture can finally lay some responsibility onto the mother, nothing will ever change.

Right. It's all on the mother. The fact that the mothers are blamed and little is mentioned to make fathers accountable speaks volumes of the misogyny that poor single mothers are faced with.