A major goal of the Faces of Change project has been to give voice to a group of citizens who find themselves at the bottom of the economic ladder. Recipients of public benefits are invisible people and lead invisible lives, at least to most Americans. Their invisibility and lack of public presence has proven a rich medium for the emergence and growth of popular stereotypes of welfare recipients. Such conventional images have been absorbed by legislators and policy makers and been incorporated in not-so-subtle ways into the laws that now govern the authors’ lives. The title of the legislation that changed welfare, the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) of 1996, posits use of welfare benefits as first and foremost a question of individual responsibility. So stating, it frames economic status in moral terms: The exit from welfare and the path to self-sufficiency lies in accepting responsibility for one’s life. Implied, and occasionally articulated, is its corollary: Those who receive welfare have yet to fully accept this responsibility. However, the narrators’ accounts portray their lives as embedded in and influenced by family life, by their social network and by community context, thereby providing direct testimony about the real nature and scope of responsibility in lives as lived. This voice deserves a place on the national policy stage, balancing the uncontested individualistic premise that has thus far dominated welfare reform debate.

The lives of the citizens in these pages are not issue oriented or issue driven. They cannot be adequately captured in focused vignettes or policy statements. The stories document the adaptations of whole families, and even extended families, to PRWORA’s structure of incentives and sanctions, and more generally to impoverishment. The accounts enrich policy debate and public awareness by giving us life under welfare as an integrated fabric that weaves together many elements, from household resources, to external opportunities, to kinship, personal history and friendship. As we shall see, stories of whole family adaptations provide a refined lens that reveals the sometimes unanticipated consequences of public policy. More than that, they rise above the status of cases or examples to become stories of real people. They provide the human meaning of welfare reform.

First person accounts of life under welfare reform constitute a critical addition to our national understanding of how this particular set of public policies has changed individuals and their families. We have chosen to apply the term authors to those who offered their candid personal experiences for public view. In a genuine sense, they speak in their own terms. They have exercised considerable freedom to choose what was important to them to describe and to elaborate at will. The body of the texts offers testimony on this point.

The stories narrated in this volume represent the unvarnished accounts of Americans whose lives have been changed by welfare reform. Most of the citizens whose voices are heard here have received cash benefits from the welfare system, many have utilized job training in their attempts to secure employment, while others have used food stamps, Medicaid or local welfare programs. Some have become involved with welfare reform less directly as they stepped forward to assist their adult children who themselves were subject to the new welfare paradigm. What emerges as universal is their struggle to survive impoverishment, protect their children, and salvage hope for a better future and decent quality of life.

Common themes
Even a brief acquaintance with the stories in Faces of Change alerts the reader to commonalities in the daily rhythm of the authors’ lives as well as in their ultimate success or failure in finding employment and sustaining their families. Yet, the stories flow from communities as distant as Hartford and San Diego, and as distinct culturally as El Paso and St. Paul. Moreover, the states where authors live and raise children have enjoyed considerable latitude in tailoring PRWORA’s options to their own political climates. State level policies about issues such as eligibility thresholds and support for higher education display considerable variation. But, the policies of the states are variations on a theme. That experiences recur in communities spread across the United States strongly suggests that these represent underlying system issues with welfare reform. The stories provide a factual foundation for understanding interactions among the forces at work in the lives of poor and working poor families. They also invite us to critically examine that system with an eye to enhancing what has worked and reformulating what has not.

Children come first
A clear value base sets the stage for much of the narrative action in these stories. Authors are resolutely committed to the protection and welfare of their children. In this respect they differ not at all from their better off peers. Their responses to the incentives and sanctions of welfare reform are often patently tied to this touchstone in their accounts. There is often little distance between the interests of the children and those of the parent.

[My children] are my life. I’d do anything for them.

-- a 31-year-old payroll clerk, living with her two children in a housing project in New Britain [CT-4]

If our children seem to be falling by the wayside … we take care of them first.

-- a 38-year-old mother with one child, working temporarily for the U.S. Census and living in Hartford [CT-3]

My goal is to see them go somewhere … everything here needs to be based on the children as well.

-- a 30-year-old mother working part time as a day laborer and as an after-school teacher at her housing project in Atlanta [GA-4]

Parents go to considerable lengths to assure themselves about the quality of care provided to their children while they work or look for work. But the result of background checks can pose a real dilemma for parents who find that cost follows quality, but whose options are limited.

A week after I was out of the hospital [having given birth], I called all day care providers in the area to check on openings and see if I could get on a waiting list. Out of all the places, only four would have openings for when I needed to go to work. But I put myself on waiting lists for the others. I called the CCC, and out of ten places, all but two places had abuse and neglect complaints within the last month. It turns out the only two places that didn’t were expensive. … I can’t afford even the cheapest day care provider. I don’t know what I can do. I have to work.

-- a young mother about to begin a new job at a hotel in Green Bay [WI-2]

However, if issues of child safety and protection are unresolved it is sufficiently unsettling to interfere with work. Having tried and rejected two other day care providers during a seven-month search, a banquet waitress at a hotel in Waterbury, CT provides perspective on the importance of peace of mind about her children:

It’s just … Is she happy? Because if she’s not happy, you ain’t gonna be able to work! Straight up, you can’t! [CT-8]

Absent parents
Their heightened concern with the quality of child care is perhaps best understood in terms of the missing element in the family equation of most of these authors. Namely, they get little or no help from their absent non-custodial partners. When the single parent works, there is no back up if the children get sick at day care or in school. When the parent’s health fails, even temporarily, no one is there to take up the slack. And, there is invariably no second source of income. There is an absence of redundancy generally in the family system.

I think that mothers who work need more support as far as helping them with the family. I think they should do more as far as getting the father of the children to take responsibility.

-- a 40-year-old TANF recipient with four kids, who stopped working due to poor health, living in Washington [DC-4]

It is hard to support a child on a $400/month salary with no financial help from the child’s other parent. Also, child support agencies are not strict enough with non-custodial parents under 18 [years]. They let them slide continuously.

-- a 15-year-old mother with one child, working and attending school, living with her parents in Lafayette [IN-2]

A twenty-four-year-old author from Willimantic, CT had to remove her two boys from a good quality day care because her ex-husband failed to pay his share of the costs [CT-9]. In some cases, the non-custodial parent constitutes a threat that makes working and raising children even more difficult, as a young mother in Huntsville reports [AL-2]:

I had children by a man and we weren’t married. I receive no financial support from this man. I recently acquired a job, but I had to give it up suddenly, because my children could be playing outside, at the Boys Club or picked up for a weekend visit, and my kids’ father can grab them and not give them back. There is nothing the police can do or anything.

I haven’t found a child care provider that is willing to take on the responsibility of putting up with my children’s father.

With welfare reform framed as an issue of their taking personal responsibility by reporting for work assignments such as Work First, some single parents have begun to challenge the fairness of this prescription:

The President and Congress should make these fathers more responsible for their children. Why don’t they go to Work First if they can’t pay child support?

-- a 25-year-old waitress with two children, living in Detroit [MI-2]

The absence of these partners, who would otherwise play a strong role in supervising and providing for their children, raises disturbing questions about policy that focuses narrowly on the responsibility of the parent who has remained in place. There is little foundation here for the view that custodial parents have failed to accept responsibility for their children or for themselves. To the contrary, the responsibilities have been a heavy burden. The authors’ personal accounts argue that responsibility, even if abdicated, is certainly shared.

So, you know, being a mom and an employee isn’t always a piece of cake. You know if you are a mom full-time and you then have a full-time job, you know, are an employee – full-time job, there are people dependent on you at your job, there’s people dependent on you in your life and it takes a real mindful, strong person to balance all these things out and not become overwhelmed by [them and] give up on either side.

-- a 22-year-old immigrant mother of one child, on unpaid maternity leave in Allston [MA-1]

Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) as a bridge
The welfare system is sometimes used as a support during occasional periods of unemployment. It can serve to see people through hard times, special circumstances, and when parents and children are especially vulnerable. This was its original intent. The stories illustrate these uses.

I’ve had two children during my employment and had to take a leave of absence. It went well because I got 12 weeks to bond with [my] newborn. In order to get paid you have to save your benefit time to accrue time off. I would average about 6 weeks time accrued. When I didn’t have enough hours I would use the state’s welfare system to make up the rest of the time.

-- a 30-year-old mother with two children, working as a library supervisor and living in Roxbury [MA-5]

The authors also experience the kind of marital trouble that afflicts the broad spectrum of couples in this country. But they lack the financial reserves, or family resources, or agility with institutional supports to avoid falling back on the welfare system. TANF works for them.

I think that W-2 [Wisconsin Works] helped me get out of the slums. Because I had started my family early, eventually the relationship became abusive and W-2 was a way for me to get out of it. I didn’t need anybody to help me. With W-2, I had somebody taking care of my children with me.

-- a 28-year-old high school drop-out, working and supporting her children in Milwaukee [WI-6]

And, again like many others, authors run into trouble with substance abuse. Even if they have retained their employment during their period of addiction, employment can be threatened when they commit to a recovery program. Addressing their moral lapse creates an economic crisis.

I had opportunities for advancement at MBNA [a bank]. However, that didn’t work out ‘cause that’s when I went for treatment at Meadowood in New Castle and then to RCD [Recovery Center of Delaware] in Delaware City. So I had to put that on hold and I lost a great job there. That I will never forget.

-- a 35-year-old cashier with one child, living in Dover [DE-1]

However, by far the greatest use of welfare supports is by parents who live with what is not recognized as a crisis or a circumstance making them especially vulnerable. They are single parents without means. In these terms, their situation bears similarities to that of the widows and orphans whose plight was the original impetus for the creation of Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC). Unlike them, the authors whose stories appear here attract little public sympathy.

Lack of control
The adaptations of the authors’ families are precarious and easily disrupted. This arises from the absence of back-ups in their family system (above), and from their general lack of control over critical resources, including child care and transportation. If child care falters many of the authors are in jeopardy of losing their jobs by being absent from work. This is in part a consequence of holding entry level jobs that either lack leave benefits altogether or require waiting periods of up to one year before benefits begin to accrue. The same pattern holds for transportation. Their jobs are at the mercy of supports over which they exercise little control, and which occasionally fail.

Transportation is really undependable. If you are dependent on transportation in order to get to work on time it’s not going to happen. Some buses are on time; most trains are on schedule. Some buses, you know, it depends on the amount of stops they have to make and some buses ride right past you for whatever reason. Maybe they’re running late or - I’m not saying the bus is crowded - the bus will ride right past you and its half empty.

-- a 22-year-old mother of one child in Allston[MA-1]

The authors dislike begging rides or child care from family members or neighbors, and for good reason (see below, Family and Informal Supports). They seek increased control over their circumstances, particularly the basic supports of transportation and child care.

[If I had a car] I’d be able to take my kids to the grocery store if we run out of something. Um …if they got sick at school, I wouldn’t have to worry who’s going to get them. I could go and get them right away. I’d be able to transport them wherever they had to go. And, whatever we had to get, I’d be able to get it.

-- a 24-year-old high school dropout living with two children in Willimantic [CT-9]

The will to work
Related to their desire to re-establish control over variables in their lives that threaten the stability of their families, the authors view work and income as the key. Having money means they are more likely to be able to take care of the children and their needs. It also brings with it more control. Merely having the wherewithal to pay a bill can represent an experience that brings rare joy.

… so I had to come up with the monies to pay for medical - a physical [exam]. That was my first experience of ever paying a hospital in my life and it felt great. I felt great doing that. I really did.

-- a 37 mother with two children living in a low-rise housing project in Atlanta [GA-3]

Authors are prepared to invest whatever they have to establish work. The drive to succeed leads some to gamble on success.

I took the last of my money, along with help from Healthy Families, and paid my fines and got my [driver’s] license back. I got a job on my own at the Regency and start tomorrow. I don’t know how I’ll get there or what I’ll do with my daughter, but at least I’ve got a job. I want to work.

-- a young mother with one child in Green Bay [WI-2]

Providing for the children’s needs from the fruits of their own labor also brings a sense of fulfillment and competence. Sometimes it seems that merely working is its own reward.

Since I’ve been working, I see myself getting healthier both mentally and physically. I have realized that I’m happier than I was this time last year.

-- a 38-year-old mother with two children, working as a custodian for Kodak in Rochester [NY-10]

Having a job brings a positive attitude, happiness, and closeness with your family. … I can’t imagine going back to welfare.

-- a mother with three children, working for a temp agency in Clearwater [FL-5]

The work experience help[ed] me develop the responsibility of my own experience and to obtain a life style where I could be look[ed] at as a person.

-- a 31-year-old mother supporting three children as a receptionist in Lemon Grove [CA-3]

Balancing work and family
Authors describe eloquently the difficulties single parents have in balancing the demands of work and family. It affects all sides of life. There are pleasures or diversions you have to abandon.

If you like to go dancing every weekend, ain’t no way you gonna go dancing every weekend when you have a child and you single. I mean, maybe once a month, maybe once a month, otherwise you can forget it. There’s a lot of your single life you gotta let go. A lot! You have to say "Okay, I can’t do this."

-- a 39-year-old mother of two children, living in Waterbury [CT-8]

Seemingly simple problems, like having two young children, can present vexing issues that reveal weaknesses in the capacity of the child care system. Often family is called on or steps forward to fill the void.

My oldest son, who is three, goes to one provider, and my baby who is 19 months, goes to another one. This is because the provider who has my three-year-old didn’t have space for a baby. Both providers live on the same side of town, but it would be easier for me if I had them at the same place. …

My mom drives all of us to the providers, then drops me off at work. At the end of the day, I catch a bus home and my mom picks up the children, when she finishes work.

-- a 24-year-old mother supporting two children as a cashier at a car wash, living in Washington [DC-1]

Articulating work hours with the children’s school hours or child care availability is a balancing act that some authors have not mastered. A number of authors report abandoning jobs or giving up in their efforts to find work because of this impasse. This occurs particularly when family is not available as a back-up child care provider.

There aren’t many jobs with hours between the time your children go to school and get home. How do they expect your kids to get to and from school if you’re working? There are no buses, and you have to pay for before school and after school care at the school my kids go to.

--a 35-year-old unemployed mother with four children, living in Huntsville [AL-1]

… the biggest pitfalls remain the same. Many employers want you to be very flexible with your schedule and work weekends and holidays. My babysitter doesn’t work weekends or evenings. This makes it hard for me to find a job sometimes. Also, I have to work around my son’s school schedule because I don’t have any family/friends to help me do things. I really need a job that is flexible with me - one that allows me to take care of my family, as well as my work. Most jobs just don’t understand that you may not have anyone else who can take your kids to the doctors, etc.

-- a 28-year-old mother with two children, living in El Cajon [CA-2]

Work that fits
The kinds of work available to welfare recipients, documented in these stories, are generally entry level service jobs that have historically been filled by younger workers without families. Younger workers without dependents more easily bend themselves to the requirements and rewards of jobs that don’t carry health insurance, because they are often in good health or covered by the health policies of their parents. Such jobs have minimal leave benefits, or require substantial waiting periods before leave kicks in. They are a poor fit for parents who take seriously their responsibilities to their children.

I found a job working for Giant, and the hours did not work out with day care so I left. I missed three days, when my daughter was sick, and got laid off because you can’t miss three days in the first 90 days on the job. I then moved on to inventory and the hours again did not work out, because I was supposed to report at 5:30 a.m. in the morning, at the babysitter, but she can’t accept children that early in the morning.

-- a 19-year-old mother supporting her two children in Washington [DC-2]

The day-to-day requirements of such jobs vary, both as to task and schedule. Some require second shift work, early work, weekend work, variable hours, or overtime. In some of these positions the work hours depend on the weather (e.g., a car wash). The responsibilities of single parents are, however, not nearly so plastic and they cannot be as flexible as other single adults. Single parents are not free to adjust their schedules particularly when they rely on resources (e.g., child care) whose availability is beyond their control. For this reason, the banquet waitress living in Waterbury, having tired of not knowing when she will start and at what hour she will arrive home to her children, has decided to seek an office job [CT-8].

Many of these same jobs offer limited or no opportunities for advancement. And, above all, the pay level tends to be quite low. Even the success stories appearing in these pages report incomes close to the federal poverty standard for families of their size and structure. Here again, family provides additional needed support.

I chose to work in the school because the pay was great and the hours of work were comfortable to work. I would like to continue working here to reach my permanent status. The working conditions are great and I enjoy the atmosphere of my work area. I love working with children. … To get to work, I have my father bring me back and forth to work. My father is my way of getting around.

-- a 26 years old teacher’s aide with three children, bringing home $1,200 per month in Newark [NJ-5]

There is a fundamental incompatibility between the nature of entry level employment and the family developmental stage of the authors. This calls into question the wisdom of job training, insofar as it prepares welfare recipients for entry into these types of positions. In some cases, authors report pressure to take any job that is available. Job readiness classes at best lead authors into the dilemmas described above. The issue that has been cast as "work first" by policymakers would be recast as "work that fits" if we listened to the authors in Faces of Change.

My job training was not real good and I was supposed to take whatever job came first. … Also, when I or my children got sick, jobs didn’t like that. … The pay is low and employers do not help a small family.

-- a single mother in her twenties with four children at home, and living in Laurel [DE-3]

I have been looking for a job for a few months. There are many different jobs to choose from, but it was a struggle to find what I needed in pay and hours.

-- a 21-year-old mother with one child, pursuing her education and living on the south side of Lafayette [IN-3]

The "any-job-is-a-good-job" philosophy seems unlikely to lead families to self-sufficiency. Some workers have articulated this conclusion on their own.

[I was sent to a training program] that consisted of six weeks of English, computer skills and resume writing. … Some people need that, but the folks that take that type of training will be off the welfare rolls but will always be the working poor. … Because you are not skilled enough to advance, you will never get ahead. In some cases you will be worse off.

-- a 25-year-old mother with two children, working on her master’s degree in social work, living in Wilkinsburg [PA-2]

Family and informal supports
Welfare recipients use family and their informal networks as a support or fall-back when "the system" won’t provide what is essential to sustain family life. This requires some authors to move back in with their parents, in spite of having been independent for years. Doing so is not without its costs.

The amount of money I had left after taxes and day care wasn’t enough to move out from my parent’s house.

-- a 28-year-old mother with twins working two jobs in Detroit [MI-5]

When I couldn’t afford [the sitter], I moved back with my mom because I couldn’t afford to pay for the sitter, rent, [and] transportation. It got to the point where I couldn’t afford food. It wasn’t very good for any of us living with my mom. My mom got to the point where she was tired of us being there. When she woke up, I didn’t want to be around.

-- a 40-year-old mother with four children living in Washington [DC-4]

I did have a problem because my old car used to always break down. Since I started working my parents have helped me get a reliable car.

-- a 25-year-old waitress raising two children in Detroit [MI-2]

As documented above and throughout the stories that follow, families often step in to provide child care, transportation and other necessary resources to their adult children to keep them afloat in circumstances where institutional supports will not sustain them. This serves to make "the system" work for welfare recipients, in circumstances where it otherwise would not. It also amounts to shifting the burden to the families of welfare recipients, a policy that is thus far not openly avowed.

The accounts offer examples of child care providers not charging for time in care so as to ease the financial burden on authors (see WI-5). Friends can also become enmeshed where regulations defeat the efforts of authors to exercise control over their situations.

At one time I used to own a vehicle, and but, when I told W-2 that I owned the vehicle, they cut me completely off - I didn’t get day care, I didn’t get anything - because they felt that my car, even though it was used and old, was worth this amount of money [$5,000] so I had too much to show for it. … so eventually what I ended up doing was selling my car and borrowing somebody else’s , ‘cause I wasn’t allowed to own any, anything of any value and I believe it’s still that way.

-- a 28-year-old mother supporting her four children in Milwaukee [WI-6]

Personal responsibility in the context of welfare reform
The Faces of Change stories demonstrate emphatically that becoming self-sufficient is not simply a matter of personal responsibility. Time and time again the authors describe how their families and friends stepped in to share responsibility for caring for their children, providing transportation, buying them a car, or allowing them to move back home. Equally noteworthy, the non-custodial parents, on whose shoulders such contributions would ride well and naturally, are not present and remain unaffected by work activity requirements. The government has in effect shifted responsibility onto the families of those recipients who still retain a strong enough tie to benefit from their families’ direct support, at a time when we would expect adult children to be independent. A new dependency on family and informal supports has been, in a significant number of cases, substituted for the old, despised dependency on the welfare system.

In a somewhat larger sense, the process of impoverishment and its resolution nearly always implicate other forces and other people, whether they be an absent parent, lack of education, ill health or responsibility for the care of a disabled or chronically ill child, changes in the market for job skills, or the nature and capacity of community resources. The solutions we as a society fix on must recognize this complexity of cause. Our policies ultimately will say as much about our understanding, compassion and commitment to fairness as they do about the group of citizens upon whom, for lack of an effective voice, these solutions are imposed.