Welfare and Dog Tricks
(Part 1)
by guest columnist Rachel Jacobsen
WHEN I WAS 21, I told myself I wanted to experience everything there was to experience in this human body. And sure enough, I’m finally on welfare.
Now I am a “welfare mother.” A stigma is placed on me. I am a caricature, white trash, sex craved and fat, yelling vulgarities in public, wearing stained clothing, a befuddled alcoholic cigarette and crack addict loser and all the other stereotypes that come to mind.
My social worker is a kind hearted Filippina woman, with a tendency to repeat carefully and loudly everything she says to me. She says that women used to be able to receive welfare for six years with no questions asked. Then it was three years, then one year, then six months, and now it’s three months. Believe it or not, it might change to six weeks.
My kid just turned three months; and isn’t it just the way, I’m finally swallowing my pride and applying for welfare. So in order to receive the welfare grant (a mere $440 a month) I have to jump through some hoops to prove I am “transitioning to employment.”
Yeah right.
My kid can’t even support his neck by himself, and I’m supposed to be out there looking for a job.
The American Medical Association recommends breast feeding for at least six months; but some moron in Congress decided that three months would do. Probably a man; probably not a doctor; probably an old fart with hemorrhoids who golfs.
Luckily, I can “pump” my breast milk. This feels a little like pressing a bruise very hard repeatedly, for a half hour, then doing it to the other tit. I can then refrigerate it and give bottles to the underpaid babysitter who will watch my child for ten hours a day (eight while I work and two commuting).
I’ll get to spend four waking hours with my child a day. He will share his first crawl, steps and words with a stranger whom I do not know. Perhaps many strangers whom I do not know.
This is what welfare wants me to do.
But there is an option, the nice social worker lady says. I could prove to the government that I am “transitioning to work.”
In other words, I have to take a class of some sort. There is one offered, but I have to leave my newborn with a “child care expert” while I attend it. I say no way.
She is sympathetic. There is one more option, I can take a parenting/working mother class; this one allows me to bring my newborn.
Oh joy.
I’m not a derelict, or stupid, or a bad parent. I’m just poor. I try to tell this to my kind-hearted social worker. She gets kind of weird.
Suddenly I feel like a five-year-old; she is repeating things three times now. She’s used to dealing with irate welfare mothers like me. I can tell. But I don’t want to take the class. It’s the weather; my kid might get sick. It’s too far. It’s a two-week intensive seminar.
I don’t tell her this. But I’ve called the seminar people.
NEXT: The rest of this, as our guest columnist reveals her reservations about the seminar people.
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