Aid to Families with Dependent Children

“ Here there are thousands of homes awaiting the foundlings, without money and without price, where the child would have the best advantages the country could afford; or if it be too weak or sick to be moved, or the managers fear the experiment of placing-out, let some responsible nurse be selected in the country near by, and the foundling boarded at their expense. The experience of the Children's Aid Society is, that no children are so eagerly and kindly received in country families as infants who are orphans. ”

“ So too, changes in our child support enforcement system can reduce welfare dependency. Parents who bring children into the world have a responsibility for these children, whether they live with them or not. The administration is taking steps to ensure that States are able to do a better job in locating absent parents, establishing paternity, and collecting child support on behalf of AFDC recipients. We also have asked the Congress for new laws that would increase child support award amounts for both welfare and nonwelfare families. ”

“ There is now, however, no recognized social responsibility for giving support to poorer members of the family within one household. There is no pressure to bring those needing material relief tinder the roof of the well-to-do of the family circle. Even parents cannot claim residence with adult children, although they can claim by law some support commensurate with their children's income. It is seen now that the duty of aid does not carry with it the obligation for personal association. ”

“ Children by nature are dependent. The point of welfare reform must not be to punish children but to help their families become independent. To be independent with dependent children, a person must be able to succeed both as a worker and a parent. That's what most Americans have to do these days. ”

“ The man of the family, unless disabled, should do all the asking. This means, of course, that wives should not be sent to charity offices and private families to ask assistance, and that every charitable agency, public and private, and every church worker and every teacher should positively refuse to receive any message or appeal for relief sent by a child, except in those rare cases where all the adult members of the family are disabled. The neglect of this simple precaution has often kept children away from school, and has tempted parents to use them to excite sympathy. ”

“ No. 628, 74th Cong., 1st Sess., 17 (1935) , the original goals of the AFDC program are stated as follows: 'With no income coming in, and with young children for whom provision must be made for a number of years, families without a father's support require public assistance, unless they have been left with adequate means or are aided by friends and relatives. * * * Through cash grants adjusted to the needs of the family it is possible to keep the young children with their mother in their own home, thus, preventing the necessity of placing the children in institutions. ”

“ In the instant case, the only distinction between those children with respect to whom assistance is granted and those children who are denied such assistance is the size of the family into which the child permits himself to be born. The class of individuals with respect to whom payments are actually made (the first four or five eligible dependent children in a family) , is grossly underinclusive in terms of the class that the AFDC program was designed to assist, namely, all needy dependent children. ”

“ By the President of the United States of America
A Proclamation
More than 15 million children are living in families where the father is absent, and nearly one-third of those are living in poverty. More than half the families who should receive court-ordered child support to not receive full payment, thus depriving children of billions of dollars in support each year. In some cases, these unfortunate children are left without the necessities of life.
The American people willingly extend help to children in need, including those whose parents are failing to meet their responsibilities. ”

“ We want parents to care for their children. But under the Republican plan, single mothers struggling to preserve their families will have to pay $4 billion in fees for the Government's help in collecting child support they're legally due. That's a tax hike on responsible mothers and their children which will lower their already modest incomes. ”

“ Cutting child care will make it harder for parents to get off and stay off welfare. It will therefore cost us far more down the road than it will ever save in the near term.
Some people in Congress want to take even more extreme steps that will hurt, not strengthen, families. They don't want welfare reform unless it cuts off all help to children whose mothers are poor, young, and unmarried. ”

“ If we value work, we can't justify a system that makes welfare more attractive than work if people are worried about losing their health care.
If we value responsibility, we can't ignore the $34 billion in child support absent parents out to be paying to millions of parents who are taking care of their children--. If we value strong families, we can't perpetuate a system that actually penalizes those who stay together. Can you believe that a child who has a child gets more money from the government for leaving home than for staying home with a parent or a grandparent? ”

“ In the fight against poverty, we now know it's essential to have strong families-families that teach children the skills and values they will need in the wider world. How many self-made men and women in America owe their success to the strength of character given to them by hard-working, loving parents? Yet when we ask whether our welfare system has encouraged family life, we must answer: far from it. Among the welfare poor today, families as we've always thought of them are often not being formed. ”

“ Families are the cornerstone of our Nation. Yet, today, tens of thousands of America's children are living within our child welfare system, without the sustained love and care of permanent families. For many of these children, often shuttled from one living situation to another, adoption opens the door to loving parents and permanent homes, where they can put down roots and learn what it means to be part of a safe, stable family. Adoption gives children who have been orphaned, abandoned, or abused a precious second chance at happiness ”

“ We are confronted, however, both in the movements for aid to maternity in care before and after childbirth, and in all the many provisions for child-saving that publicly supported Boards of Health are everywhere inaugurating, with a tendency of the greatest strength and social appeal, tendencies toward a sharing by all of the burdens heretofore borne only by the heads of families. Some way must be devised by which such sharing will not cheat society of any gains to character and to sense of family responsibility which old systems of economic support of children have given the race. ”

“ For several years, the Federal government has worked with the States to recover child support payments from non-custodial parents. Collections for these children have improved dramatically in recent years, enabling thousands of families to leave the public assistance rolls. ”

“ If deadbeat parents paid all the child support they should in this country, we could immediately move over 800,000 mothers and children off welfare. Let me say that again: If deadbeat parents paid the child support they owe, we could move immediately over 800,000 mothers and children off welfare. This goes way beyond welfare. Millions of children of working parents would have more secure lives and much brighter futures if the errant parents, absent parents, paid what they owe. ”

“ Finally, the old welfare system actually weakened families, by discouraging couples from marrying or living with their children. We want to change that, so starting next year there will also be bonuses for States that do the most to get poor children into two-parent homes, where we know they have the best chance of breaking the cycle of poverty.
Supporting hard-pressed working families and helping people to make the transition from welfare to work isn't just the right thing to do; it's also the smart thing. ”

“ This spring I will send you a comprehensive welfare reform bill that builds on the Family Support Act of 1988 and restores the basic values of work and responsibility. We will say to teenagers if you have a child out of wedlock, we'll no longer give you a check to set up a separate household, we want families to stay together; say to absent parents who aren't paying their child support if you're not providing for your children we'll garnish your wages, suspend your license, track you across state lines, and if necessary make some of you work off what you owe. ”

“ I believe we should help working families cope with the burden of child care. Our help should be aimed at those who need it most: low-income families with young children. I support a new child care tax credit that will aim our efforts at exactly those families, without discriminating against mothers who choose to stay at home. ”

“ Grants would be awarded to groups that promote successful parenting and strong marriages and to faith-based and community organizations that help unemployed or low-income parents and their children avoid or leave welfare. This initiative will help spur new community-level approaches to aid low-income families. ”

“ That there is no need of any more public institutions for the care of destitute children, and that much of the money now devoted to orphanages, etc., might be more usefully spent in securing homes for such children in private families and paying their board. ”

“ Even where the children are by good training and education fitted for productive industry, when they marry, the early familiarity with the parochial relief makes them improvident, and they fall back upon the poor’s rates on the lying-in of their wives, on their sickness, and for aid on every emergency. In every district the poor’s rolls form the pedigrees of generations of families thus pauperized. The total number of orphan children on account of whose destitution relief was given from the poor’s rates in the year ended Lady-day, 1840, was 112,000. ”

“ For families who stay together not only do better economically, their children do better as well.
In particular, I challenge the fathers of this country to love and care for their children. If your family has separated, you must pay your child support. We're doing more than ever to make sure you do, and we're going to do more, but let's all admit something about that, too: A check will not substitute for a parent's love and guidance. And only you--only you can make the decision to help raise your children. ”

“ The gravest problem of public charity is the support and training of dependent children, because that has to do with the making of future citizens of the republic as well as the relief of immediate suffering. ”

“ We have to change welfare so that it strengthens families, and not weaken them. There is no substitute, none, for the loving devotion and equally loving discipline of caring parents. Governments don't raise children, parents do. There's some people out there who argue that we should let some sort of big, new institution take parents' place, that we should even take children away from parents as we cut them off welfare, even if they're doing a good job as parents, and put the children in orphanages. ”

“ The failure of some parents to meet their child support obligations threatens the health, education, and well-being of their children. Compounding this problem, States have experienced difficulties enforcing child support obligations once a parent has moved to another State. With this Executive order, my Administration takes additional steps to support our children and strengthen American families by facilitating the collection of delinquent child support obligations from persons who may be entitled or eligible to receive certain Federal payments or Federal assistance. ”

“ The Program seeks to prevent child abuse and neglect, avoid removing children from their homes, support family reunification services, and help those children who are unable to return home by providing crucial adoption and post-adoptive services. These important resources benefit families across our Nation and hold the promise of a bright future for countless young people. ”

“ The question may well be debated whether or not an average man in ordinary economic general conditions should be unable to care for more than three children below the earning period if his wife is a competent housemother and thus earns her part. If such a condition of restriction upon family increase is accepted as inevitable and permanent in our industrial order, then surely the cost of rearing children must be far more widely distributed. In such a condition there would be needed social help for fathers and mothers far more definite and inclusive than merely the aid to expectant mothers. ”

“ In connection with orphan and other child-caring agencies, a greater emphasis than ever before is being put on the question of how to reduce the life to one of normality, and the "placing-out" of dependent children in homes where they can grow up as normal children is now a popular faith. ”

“ Because the tasks facing foster parents often include special challenges, such as care of a child who is physically or mentally handicapped or who has been emotionally or physically abused, the mothers and fathers whom society qualifies to accept this added responsibility must be held to a high standard. To accomplish this goal, many more happy and successful families must be willing to step forward and to offer to share heart and home with children desperately longing for both. ”

“ But our fathers cannot always meet their responsibilities to their children without help. That is why it is crucial that we lift up our fathers through efforts like the reauthorization of the Welfare-to-Work program so that more low income fathers can work, pay child support, and become more involved with their children.
We can never truly repay our fathers-whether biological, adoptive, foster, or stepfather-for their many precious gifts to us, for their steadfast faith in our potential and abilities, for their unwavering devotion and unconditional love. ”