Cuts to social assistance in British Columbia mean single mothers are on their own.
by Dorothy Woodend August 6, 2002

http://www.rabble.ca/

Imagine the hardest job you’ll ever have — 24 hours a day, 7 days per week, with no time off, and a boss who never says a word of thanks. Then imagine doing this job all by yourself while the rest of the world looks down on you as a parasitic no-goodnik, living off the graces of others.

If you’re human, you’ll probably experience one of those white heat moments in your brain, the kind where you realize no matter what you do, you are completely screwed. This could drive any sane and rational person into despair, much more a new mother, up all night with a baby in a nasty little basement apartment.

Single mothers have always been a vulnerable group, but raising kids in the current cultural moment is arguably more difficult than it used to be. “Where was the mother?” we all scream when anything goes wrong. There is a never-ending vigilance to childcare that previously never existed. If you take your child to the park, mall, pool, you must maintain visual contact at all times lest they be kidnapped or molested the moment you take your eyes off them.

The capper? A recent study from Columbia University reports that the children of mothers who go to work full-time before the youngsters are nine months old have poorer mental and verbal development at age three than those with stay-at-home mothers.

British Columbia's Liberal government initially planned to kick mothers off welfare when their children were a year old. (The age has now been moved up to three.) Coupled with the crisis in daycare, this is still a laugh-so-you-don’t-cry situation. I know women who are currently paying upwards of $900 for daycare; finding anything under $700 per month is considered a minor miracle. If you feel like you’ve fallen down the rabbit hole, this is only the beginning, Alice. It gets curiouser.

Under proposals made by the Liberal government, a criminal who has murdered, beaten and robbed someone has the right to Legal Aid, but a mother of three fighting to retain custody does not. A single mother on social assistance who reports any extra income to her social worker will find that extra income lopped off her cheque the following month. And a single parent entering the job market may start full-time employment with a minimum wage of $6 an hour — which won’t even cover most rents, much less support the cost of full-time childcare.

Even while it orders single mothers to look for work, the B.C. Liberal government is busy saturating the job market with thousands of qualified people, cut from the ranks of the civil service. Want to cry yet? Suck back those tears: there’s more.

A women with one child needs $1,555 per month just to meet the low-income barrier. Working thirty-five hours per week at $6 an hour, she grosses only $910. Even after the 500-hour introductory wage has been bumped up to $8 an hour, her gross of $1,210 is hundreds below the poverty line. Then there are the little luxuries like babysitters, daycare, bus fare, food and clothing.

Of course, women are wily creatures who find means of feeding and housing their kids in the meanest of circumstances. Take Erin R., a single mother with a fifteen-month-old daughter. In order to keep her job as a waitress, she’s had to find creative means of securing childcare. “As for sitters, I have three. One is a sixteen year old and I pay her $6 and I have to get her here and home. The other I pay $8 and go to her home. But with her I claim subsidy. I get $10.95 back for every time my daughter goes to this sitter. The third person is a friend with whom I trade babysitting. I started back to work in April (2002) and only work part-time because I can’t afford to pay childcare costs full-time. The government offers minimal help to low-income people but it still isn’t worth working and walking away with only a few dollars after the month is over.”

Women for Women Needing Welfare, a B.C. grassroots organization, highlights a whole package of threats for single mothers:

-eighteen per cent cuts to welfare rates for single mothers;
-news return-to-work requirements for single mothers;
-elimination of the Family Maintenance exemption (allowing those receiving child support payments to keep $100 a month); and
-elimination of the Earnings Exemption (allowing single welfare recipients with a child to keep $200 a month).

Combined, these changes mean some single mothers lose as much as $370 per month. Needless to say, that’s a loss that can have serious consequences.

Still more bad news. Time limits imposed on welfare eligibility mean some women will be denied entirely, regardless of their situation. Disability benefits have also been reduced and refugee claimants — many of whom are women — will also be refused assistance. All of this has the potential to create deadly situations for single mothers and their children, including increased risk of violence and sexual exploitation.

If you’re scared you won’t be able to feed or shelter your children, you’re more likely to enter into unwanted sexual relationships with men and less likely to escape situations of domestic violence. And with more than a million dollars in funding cut from women’s sexual assault centres and support programs, there aren’t many places to go even if you manage to leave an abusive spouse.

If we have any illusions left about the slippery slope of welfare reform, all we need to do is look south. It was then-U.S.-president Clinton’s welfare reform act of 1996 that forced single mothers off welfare and into largely low-wage jobs — without benefits or daycare support. Not to be outdone, current U.S. president George W. Bush has proposed that US$300-million of the welfare budget be earmarked “to promote marriage,” with a further $135-million for “abstinence-until-marriage” education. Some U.S. states are now forcing welfare mothers to attend lectures about “the importance of fathers.”

My mother was a welfare mother with four kids all under the age of six. After escaping from an abusive marriage, welfare was her ticket back to sanity, self-reliance and education. When she stayed home, she thought of the welfare cheque (a princely $400 per month) as a well-earned salary for raising her children as best as she knew how.

Over and over, research has shown the way to get people off welfare and break the cycle of poverty is to improve access to education, training and jobs — a fact that we still haven’t learned even in the infancy of the Twenty-First Century.