How kids fare in new welfare era

Professor Loeb emphasizes the need to establish child-care centers responsive to the kinds of work these mothers do. Many women in the survey work irregular hours, evenings, and weekends. Finding child-care centers that are flexible enough to accommodate their work schedules is difficult.

Patino, who took part in the study, faced child-care problems for her youngest daughter. Even now, her rotating work schedule makes it hard to arrange daycare.

Similarly, another participant, Deserie Varela of San Francisco, worried that her youngest child was spending 10 hours a day in child-care while she worked as a home-care aide. Her three children, she says, "really didn't like the fact that I was gone all day. In the beginning, they were trying to mess up a little bit in school. I had to straighten that out."

Because of health problems and the need to find better housing, Ms. Varela had to quit her job after two years and return to welfare. "It felt good to work, and I liked what I was doing," she explains. "But at that time it was just too hard." Her 45-minute commute each way on public transportation was difficult. She also needs to find a new apartment by April 27. After that, she hopes to return to work.

Bruce Fuller, a study director from the University of California, Berkeley, calls the report a "sobering warning that simply requiring single mothers to work more in very low-wage jobs is not likely to boost the well-being of young children. We can't put all our eggs into forcing women to work more hours in low-wage jobs, if the policy goal is to improve young kids' environments."

President Bush's answer to that challenge is to fund new efforts to promote higher marriage rates – since poverty rates are highest for single-parent families.

Aside from the political controversy over that proposal, such a result may be difficult to achieve. As Connecticut women in the study began working more, their newfound financial self-reliance apparently had a wider impact: They married less often than those who faced less pressure to work, researchers noted.

Fuller also challenges Bush's proposal to double the work requirements for mothers with very young children. "He doesn't want to spend any more money on child care. Our findings suggest that an investment in quality child-care centers would help accomplish the goal of improving child well-being."

Douglas Besharov, a scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute in Washington, is encouraged by the report's general absence of alarming findings. "You have a group of people [conducting this study] who are no friends of welfare reform, and they're really hard put to find any substantial increase in hardship. Theirs is not the only study that comes to that conclusion."

As for Bush's plan for 40 hours of work per week, Mr. Besharov says flatly, "It's not going to happen. Either Congress won't pass it, or, if it does, the states won't implement it. That's because there are so many loopholes. The federal government has no ability to impose these kinds of work requirements."

Whatever lawmakers decide, Varela has a wish list: "To have a really good-paying job, and a nice home, so that my kids would not have to be raised around here [in San Francisco public housing]."

Patino's wish is short: "A raise," she says simply. Then, in comments that would warm the hearts of policymakers, she adds, "Now that we're off aid and out of that system, we're leading a much happier life. The path where we're going is a much brighter one. Children deserve a lot more than what being on aid gives them."

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