Position paper on Forward: Making Ends Meet, How Single Mothers Survive Welfare and Low-Wage Work

In this reading, Christopher Jencks, proceeds to decipher the ongoing struggle of single mothers and their survival on welfare and low-wage work. "Making Ends Meet" discusses that almost all poor, single mothers supplement their regular income with some combination of off-the-books employment and money from relatives, lovers, and the fathers of their children. According to this excerpt, irregular income has a dramatic effect on our picture of welfare mothers' economic status. Some state that helping …

…feel that termination of the welfare system would be beneficial for any of the participating parties. The purpose of the system to better our society and help bring those who are poor and in need, out of a depression so that they are able to function and provide for themselves without aid. No, I do not feel that the problem is ever going to have a solution, but at least we could skim the surface.