Mother's Little Helpers

Welfare-to-work kids are all right

The welfare reform act of 1996 put many single welfare mothers back in the work force. While there was widespread concern that this would have bad effects on their children—who presumably benefit from a mom around the house, especially with no father around—preliminary research reported in the March 7 issue of the journal Science indicates otherwise.

A team of researchers led by P. Lindsay Chase-Lansdale of Northwestern University surveyed 2,402 low-income children and their mothers in three cities. The kids, ages 2?4 and 10?14, were surveyed over the course of 16 months from 1999 to 2001. The researchers assessed the children's cognitive achievement, problem behaviors, and psychological well-being.

For the younger cohort, the study found that "whether or not the mother left welfare, entered welfare, took a job, or left a job between interviews had no discernible link to preschoolers' development." In other words, welfare reform seems to have neither helped nor hurt the young ones.

For the early adolescents, there was almost no noticeable effect. But where there was, "the most consistent pattern was that mothers' transitions into employment was related to improvements in adolescents' mental health." Mothers' leaving welfare for either short- or long-term work seemed to lead to decreases in early teen drug and alcohol use.

Researchers also found that working mothers didn't greatly diminish the amount of time they spent with adolescents; they sacrificed other activities to make time for work. Preschoolers did spend less time with working mothers but with no apparent short-term ill effect.

The authors are appropriately modest about the long-term implications of this study, conducted during the tail end of the last economic boom. But they do theorize in the paper's conclusion that the early adolescents' psychological benefits might come from a self-esteem boost and decrease in anxiety when mom becomes a bread-winner.