“Remember the Children: Mothers Balance Work and Child Care Under Welfare Reform,” a report from researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, and Yale University, offers the following preliminary findings about how families affected by welfare-to-work programs are faring:
|
- Young children are moving into low-quality child-care settings as their mothers move from welfare to work.
- A sizable share of women are moving into jobs.
- Wages are low, and households remain impoverished.
- Levels of economic and social support gained by the women are uneven.
- Young children’s early learning and development are limited by uneven parenting practices and high rates of maternal depression.
- Child-care subsidies are not being used by many of the women who are eligible for them. In Connecticut, for example, only 13 percent of the eligible mothers were found to be using the federally funded subsidies.
“Remember the Children” is available for $25 from the Graduate School of Education-PACE, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720; (510) 642-7223.
