creating a female underclass

Anthea is an aged pensioner, without family, and is thus welfare dependent herself, but she cannot understand why so many young women with children -- single, divorced or widowed -- are not given the appropriate government help they need to become independent and end up, instead, becoming welfare pariahs.

"Is it because our whole social fabric has disintegrated? Is it because families are breaking down and can no longer be relied upon to help their women when - through sickness, unemployment, old age, divorce, death of spouse, unexpected pregnancy or domestic violence - they are unable to take care of themselves and need help? Or is it a deliberate government policy to create a female underclass?"

"If the whole purpose of the Women's Liberation Movement of the 1960s was to free women from dependence on men," asks Anthea, "then why are so many women with children now on welfare?"

"There always has been, and always will be, vulnerable women," says Anthea, "it goes with our gender. But women are more vulnerable now than ever before because the welfare system has made them scapegoats."

"For instance," explains Anthea, "in every welfare state around the world, single mothers are treated like pariahs and so are the unemployed. Already, I am noticing that aged pensioners are being targeted, too. Very soon the western world will have more elderly people than taxpayers can afford to support - and the effect this is going to have on old people is frightening - especially female aged pensioners, like me, because of our longevity."

The feeling in the community is that most welfare recipients are lazy spongers who won't take care of themselves, and that their families should be taking responsibility for them - not the taxpayers. Anthea can appreciate this argument.

"I took care of my parents before they died and paid for all of their expenses," says Anthea, "and the only reason I’ve fallen into welfare is because I never married and had children. And, yet, even if I had married and had children, my children would now be in the generation that believes it’s the state’s responsibility to care for the elderly, not the children’s."

Anthea believes that families stopped taking responsibility for their own at about the same time as the age old tradition of women snaring themselves a husband as a lifetime meal ticket started to die out in the 1960s.

"The majority of women since the 1960s have spread their wings and rebelled against all of the old constraints," explains Anthea, "and many men have applauded female liberation as it freed them, too. But there are still traditional women - no doubt influenced by their families and the men they love - who continue to believe that the natural order rests upon male domination and as such they are happy to remain inferior to their men, and dependent upon them."

"These natural order type marriages are successful," explains Anthea, "as long as the husband remains living and capable of supporting his wife and family. When the husband dies or becomes disabled, his wife and children often end up dependent upon welfare."

There are other women, though, who do not see themselves as inferior to men and yet still expect their men folk to look after them!

"These women," says Anthea, "are responsible for the high incidence of divorce, and a lot of them end up depending on welfare, too. Modern marriage is supposedly based upon interdependence - two working people contributing towards the home and supporting each other - but while some men are willing to support their wives while the children are young, there are others who expect their wives to carry on working after childbirth."

When the inevitable clash about housework and childcare arises, Anthea sees the woman always coming off second best to the man.

Typically, Anthea hears the argument: "What use is women's liberation when all it means is that I have the dubious honor of working a full day outside the home, only to come home and work a full evening shift performing traditional mothering and housewifely duties while my partner is out with the boys, tinkering with his toys or nodding off in front of the television."

"These women are exhausted and angry," says Anthea. "When divorce arrives, some women carry on working without the additional burden of a partner to pick up and clean up after, but others go the welfare route and become scapegoats."

Anthea believes that many estranged mothers go the welfare route for the same reason that many widows with children choose the welfare route rather than face the working grind.

"The responsibility of raising children on their own is enormous," says Anthea. "Not every mother is capable of juggling work and family. They have a need to be taken care of, a need not to worry about where the next penny is coming from, a need to feel secure, a need to have time to take care of themselves and their children."

"There is also a great deal of disillusionment with work, a realization that it cannot give them the fulfillment they crave," explains Anthea. "This is especially true when the work they have been doing is of a menial nature."

And then, there are the unmarried mothers who just can't take care of themselves. Most are emotionally immature, they lack drive, they have no aims and they are considered unemployable.

"They are children raising children," sighs Anthea.

Welfare exists to take care of those who cannot take care of themselves - it is a safety net to protect vulnerable women from the streets - and while some women take advantage of it because they won't take care of themselves, Anthea believes it is pointless differentiating between the two.

"In a civilized society we take care of everyone," says Anthea. "Taxpayers get to support corporate welfare recipients as well as welfare women, so does it really matter?"

"What does matter," says Anthea, "is that it should matter to the women who choose the welfare route because it carries a stigma that disempowers them further than they are already. It makes them an underclass - they become scapegoats for all the welfare-bashers in our society."

For this reason - not because she ever resented her tax money going to support these women and their children - Anthea feels that welfare is a double-edged sword.

Anthea believes that these women need supportive jobs, appropriate training and social support - not welfare - but all too often the type of help they get lands them in terrible jobs, trains them with useless skills and alienates them from mainstream society.

"I’ve not had children myself," explains Anthea, "but I would imagine that bringing a child into the world is a supreme achievement, and raising that child involves a supreme sacrifice. Maybe a future solution for the dilemma of welfare mothers is to elevate motherhood to a supreme status."

"Hitler had some dreadful ideas, but he may have been ahead of his time with the baby farms and treating all mothers as goddesses."

This article first appeared as welfare scapegoats