In the United States, having the willingness to work and being able to rely on your own resources and capabilities without asking for help is seen as the ideal American way. This mentality is part of the belief of self-reliance; the ability to provide for your own needs without dependency on others. Stephanie Coontz (1992) talks in her essay We Always Stood on Our Own Two Feet about the importance of self-reliance within the American family. People saw this value as the standard for a family within our society, and any type of help needed was provided within the family itself. However, families have actually depended on outside resources since way before. In this paper I will argue the misconception that Americans have by believing self-reliance …show more content…
As Coontz (2011) mentions, these settlers could have not been able to survive without the abundant resources of game, plants and berries that were already on this land thanks to the agriculture abilities of Native Americans. These resources gave settlers the opportunity to survive and begin their journey on this land, however this did not mean families were self-reliant. The simple fact that from the moment the settlers came to America and began their lives with resources from the Native Americans can already rule out the characteristic of self-reliance from our past as Americans. From there on, many families depended on help from the community. Coontz (2011) points out that families depended on church institutions, neighbors, courts, and government officials for their survival. Without forgetting about the millions of dollars spent on acquiring land by the government and then being sold to private individuals, something families themselves did not accomplish. Regardless of all this aid, the mentality of self-reliance stuck with the settlers for many years to come. As this belief continued to resonate in American’s heads, the misconception of them doing everything on their own persisted; people could not help but implement this belief onto families and …show more content…
According to Sharon Hays in her book Flat Broke with Children (2013), she points the limited resources that exist for mothers and families like these. She mentions the various programs that currently do exist for these mothers such as SNAP, a program that aids in money for food as well as other helping with taxes such as the Earned Income Tax, TANF an aid for families in need, and Medicaid covers a limited amount of medical and dental expenses. Although such programs do exist, she emphasizes the requirements as well as the stereotype held for the recipient’s of these programs. These cash assistance programs aid a smaller amount of money than what realistically would be needed in order to feed or provide for a family. Now, to even be able to receive these scare resources requires mothers to have a low paying job or undergo many obstacles to obtain or maintain government help until the family is able to overcome their crisis. They are heavily criticized for receiving help and not being able to provide for their own and not fulfilling the American value of “self-reliance”. Women with these struggles are faced upon a situation where due to their circumstances, they cannot provide as much as the rest. If we were to
And what about the Native Americans? Most people know that they helped the Pilgrims grow crops and also taught them how to survive on this new land, but what about the Native Americans? Who taught them? They depended on their own self-reliance, judgement, or resources. They had no one to tell them which berries were good and which were poisonous, no one taught them how to kill an animal and prepare it to cook. They taught and relied on themselves.
...ty for increasing the likelihood that women will become homeless. Female single parent families rose form 23.7 % of all families in poverty in 1960 to 52.6 % of all families in poverty in the mid 1990's. (Hagen, 1994). As a result of historical growth in women's poverty and female headed family homelessness, it has been increasingly important for research to focus on the unique sets of issues and problems that women's homelessness presents.
When a woman is about to have a child and she’s homeless she is not able to go to the hospital and just give natural birth or a C-section because her and her husband have no type of insurance to cover for the cost of having the baby in an actual hospital. She may not even know what it feels like to give birth in a hospital because she has given birth to her children on her own with the help of her husband and the children turned out to be just fine and healthy with no medical issues.
...to provide enough incentive to single mothers with only one child to get these women to enter the labor market, which means that the program is failing to draw women away from traditional welfare programs. Failing to draw these women from traditional welfare programs means that the Earned Income Tax Credit is not succeeding in relieving the strain that traditional welfare programs can put on the economy. Due to welfare reform that has taken place in the last decade such as a “decline in cash welfare benefits for non-workers” (Hoynes, 2007) single mothers have far fewer options than they have in the past, and the expansion of the Earned Income Tax Credit program can be a savior for these single parents in need of assistance, as long as the assistance is enough to cover the costs associated with supplying labor to an economy while still raising a child. (Hoynes, 2007)
In addition to the absence of coherence in the nation's government, the welfare system also struggles because of its inability to change society's concepts of what a family should be, as it completely disregards those with single parent incomes (Berrebi). Unfortunately, the regulations and methods of the welfare system do not vary depending on an individual's circumstances, which can make it difficult to vouch for whether or not government aid should be awarded (Goodman). While welfare has many negative aspects associated with it, it also has positive effects, though they are rarely advertised.With the aid of technology and social science research, it has been proven that forms of government assistance are efficient in the fight against poverty, despite the issues associated with it (Berrebi). The abolishment of welfare would have significant effects on many individuals, which leads to the conclusion that welfare must not be abolished, but rather simply
---, “Self-Reliance.” The American Experience. Ed. Kate Kinsella. Boston, Massachusetts: Pearson Education, Inc., 2005. 391-392. Print.
It’s not easy to build an ideal family. In the article “The American Family” by Stephanie Coontz, she argued that during this century families succeed more when they discuss problems openly, and when social institutions are flexible in meeting families’ needs. When women have more choices to make their own decisions. She also argued that to have an ideal family women can expect a lot from men especially when it comes to his involvement in the house. Raymond Carver, the author of “Where He Was: Memories of My Father”, argued how his upbringing and lack of social institutions prevented him from building an ideal family. He showed the readers that his mother hide all the problems instead of solving them. She also didn’t have any choice but to stay with his drunk father, who was barely involved in the house. Carvers’ memoir is relevant to Coontz argument about what is needed to have an ideal family.
For women, the fallback position is self-reliance. Ideally, most of the young women discuss family and careers in terms of having it all. However, they realize that their standards for relationships and what they want out of them are extremely high. However, seeing their mother’s mixed messages, especially those of homemaker mothers who encouraged their daughters to get a good career and work hard, have pushed them to the fallback position of self-reliance. For most of the women who chose self-reliance, their fears allowed for this to become their fallback. They discuss marriage as being a potential false security, especially in a world where marriage is not considered permanent. They realize that to have the life and stability you need and desire, you must create that for yourself. One young woman feels the need to be self-reliant so she does not lose who she is as a person and has control over her own life and surroundings. (Gerson, 137) These women want to be able to support themselves and their potential families in a world where marriage is optional and reversible. They know from their own and their parents’ experiences, that financial situations and supporting a family can take a huge hit when couples separate, and these women don’t want to find themselves in a situation in which they cannot take care of themselves. (Gerson, 139) The main fear for these women who believe self-reliance is the best fallback is simply that of future stabi...
Welfare offers help to single mothers and low-wage workers in hopes to help them better their lives. The agencies take their information, requesting copies to verify income and expenses, and then files their claim. Often the benefits that are received are beyond what one could make working a minimum wage job. A single mother raising 3 children without a job, could receive $450 per month for food or more. If needing help to paying electric or gas that is available also. Housing assistance, and even TV and phone service can be obtained in some
If I can successfully shape my life around ideas of self-reliance I can be exactly who I want to be. I look around me and don’t want to conform to society’s standards, I recognize that there is an easy way out, but try my best to remain true to myself by following my heart with pure conviction. Because of my desire to remain true to myself, I closely identify with Emerson in “Self-Reliance”: “To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men, - that is genius.”
One out of 10 minimum-wage workers are single parents and nearly two-thirds of workers in the United States are women and the minimum wage falls far below what it takes to live above the poverty line. Many working-class parents are employees at home healthcare facilities, child care facilities, restaurants, fast food and other tertiary sector jobs (service-oriented occupations) which are known to have irregular and inadequate schedule times with little concern for a workers’ preferences. This leaves little room for parents to plan adequate child care every week. Most women like Jonelle, a home care worker and warehouse employee in Illinois, makes just above $21,712 a year for her family of two, which eliminates her for eligibility for food stamps. Any more of an increase above $25,812 and Jonelle will lose her child care aid. Child care assistance is especially tough for workers with infants who tend to develop illnesses and or
The reduced earnings of women have an impact on 7.4 million households run by single working women. Over two point one million families consisting of working single mothers were considered poor. An added two point four million working single mothers were severely struggling to barely make ends meet. They were falling between 100 and 200 pe...
Imagine yourself living on $14,000 each year under the poverty line. One might have trouble paying for child care, medical assistance, or even feeding their own children. One might struggle in finding a stable job or have a difficult time paying for social security income. The following paper will discuss, how welfare and poverty have affected the United States, what type of people are affected in the process, and how one can help provide cash payments for needy families who are under the given poverty line.
Despite the assistance they were getting, there were still 48.8 million people who were hungry and food insecure in 2010. Many of them had to choose between food or paying bills because they just did not receive enough aid to cover for their food expenses. In fact, the average amount the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program gives is $130 per month—way less than the typical family pays for food. In addition, many programs have time limits. Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) encourages people to obtain a job but limits the time spent on welfare to 60 months. It may have been effective in getting 70 percent of its recipients employed during the first year after leaving, “but more than 80 percent remained below the federal poverty level.” Because of these time limits, this 80 percent of people can no longer qualify for TANF, and are thus stuck in this vicious cycle of poverty. Charities struggle to fill in the holes, and people go to their local food banks for extra help. As a result, many people seek other alternatives, like payday loans, rent-to-own, and check cashing, that make them pay a poverty tax, or extra fees, because they have low credit or no savings. If the United States cannot provide what poorer countries guarantee to its people—food, education, and health care—then it is a sign that there needs to be some reform in government
In their article, they wrote, “If they reported such income, their welfare checks would soon be reduce by almost the full amount of this income, leaving them as poor as before” (Edin and Lein: 324). Government cannot eliminate poverty by reducing their welfare checks. Financial aid should be limited to a certain amount of time and the amount that mothers are provided, should not be lowered depending on the amount of income they receive aside of welfare. Also, they should provide better aiding programs to raise the quality of life for women and mothers living in poor situations. This programs should include aid to find more stable jobs to get them back into the working class or prevent them from becoming part of the