Blog #7

In chapter three of Chaudry’s Putting Families First, they explain the plethora of child care sources that Julia had to put her daughter, Jacqueline, in before she was four years old. Over the first four years of Jacqueline’s life, she had six different child care “spells”. There were many factors that contributed to Julia’s situation- absence of a father, pursuing education, unreliable welfare programs, low paying internships, loss of grants if working, and miscommunication between different programs. Many women are at the low-income poverty level because they are single parents; they are raising multiple children on their own because the father is not around or imprisoned. In attempt to get a fulltime job and further their educational accomplishments, many mothers return to school. Although a higher academic status is ideal when looking for a job, a mother must consider childcare while she is at school and how she will pay tuition. The Work Experience Program that provided welfare for Julia was often late in childcare payments or did not write the checks for the correct amount. If there is not a reliable source of payment for childcare then the childcare is not stable; the WEP lost of all her paper work therefore completely stopped making payments. Although internships and even jobs can help pay for household costs, many times grants or other funding can be cut if there is another source of income. Also, when women are working a minimum wage job it is hard to make advances in pay because the only other jobs they are offered are also minimum wage. Most minimum wage jobs do not offer benefits or health insurance, but if someone is working they are not eligible for grants or government help. In the video, one man sometimes had to skip on his prescription drugs because he did not have enough money. It almost seems that minimum wage jobs are not even worth having because it disqualifies an individual from government aid and it is not enough to support a household. In the end Chaudry concluded that “when Jacqueline was in her most stable care arrangements that Julia was able to move from progressively better internship experiences into a full-time job and off of welfare” (Page 94). Since minimum wage jobs do not yield stable childcare, it is hard to single mothers to obtain fulltime jobs.