Single moms living in poverty and children born into those households didn't capture much attention in recent statewide elections. Trends suggest paying attention might be very important.
This past summer The Phil Hardin Foundation in Meridian brought 10 Millsaps College students into the community to work as interns with various agencies. Assignments varied, but political science major Evan Jones got to do some interesting research. His task was to investigate key social and economic challenges facing the city.
After documenting population trends and increasing disparities in income, educational achievement, and racial composition, Jones came across data he found shocking – the plight of single mothers, particularly those of color, and their children.
He found poverty, low educational achievement, and little access to health care were common characteristics. He found the proportion of single mother households in Meridian surprisingly high and persistent. He researched this information after noticing the high rates of teen pregnancy and high incidence of low birth weight babies in the city. He called these trends "a catalyst for the cycle of poverty."
Hmmm.
A 40-year study of brain development in disadvantaged children found those most at-risk of poor brain development were those born to poorly educated, single moms living in poverty.
The Abecedarian Project followed children from birth over a 40-year period. Almost two years ago, Dr. Cathy Grace, then the co-director of the Graduate Center for the Study of Early Learning at Ole Miss, brought project directors Drs. Craig and Sharon Ramey to Jackson to discuss their findings. Key among them was that early intervention can save these children from broken lives.
Across Mississippi 18% of total households are single mom families (23% in Meridian). As these high proportions persist, our already high numbers of children born to poorly educated, single moms living in poverty will continue to grow.
Dr. Grace, now retired, also brought Nobel Prize winning economist Dr. James Heckman to Jackson. He made it clear to Gov. Phil Bryant and others attending his briefing that investing in comprehensive, high quality, early childhood interventions would yield a 13% return on investment.
The choices seem clear. We can do nothing and allow more and more at-risk children to suffer poor brain development, struggle to succeed in schools, and have trouble developing basic skills. Or we can intervene with these children, save them, and turn them into productive workers and citizens.
Concerned professionals like Dr. Grace continue to champion intervention but there has been no response at the state level.
My sense is that government in Mississippi will continue to do little. So, what's the alternative?
Across the country, interfaith coalitions have come together in many communities to address systemic issues. With multiple churches located in nearly every Mississippi community, a broad interfaith movement could provide the needed interventions. That's the approach under discussion by a group in Meridian.
Of course, any coming together in Mississippi has its own challenges. Yet, it would seem that saving children before they are broken for life would be a very kingdom thing for people of faith to undertake.
“Jesus said, ‘Let the little children come to me, and do not stop them, for it is to such as these that the kingdom of heaven belongs’” – Matthew 19:14.
Crawford is a syndicated columnist from Meridian.
Sunday, November 17, 2019
Bill Crawford: Saving poor children – a government thing, a kingdom thing, or nothing?
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24 comments:
Between SNAP, EITC, TANF, Section 8, Head Start, public school funding, CHIP, Medicaid, WIC, and other programs the money is already taken from the public. The fact that the recipients and administrators squander it is not the fault of the people that are forced to pay into the pot with no ability to provide oversight or accountability.
No worries. I'm sure Gov. Elect Tater Tot will make solving this problem one of his top priorities.
Trump and Phil got their ass handed to them. Go Tigers
Meanwhile the media and entertainment celebrate empowered women raising children without a partner, and the government actually rewards it financially. I fear there may not be workable solutions to much of this but it's clear what we're doing now is failing spectacularly.
I found this comment alarming. Even more alarming is that the author would include it in his testimony:
"He found the proportion of single mother households in Meridian surprisingly high and persistent."
What the hell, pray tell, is surprising about that? It's not like we've not known that single mothers are the predominant class of young parents in this state and have been for over forty years.
And, yes, to this green-horn youngsters surprise, that is not only the case, but it's been 'persistent' almost forever. Welcome to reality.
We might be surprised how people's lives can be changed if we stop rewarding reckless behavior with government payments. That is, stop giving more money for more kids.
Not sure of the best way to accomplish this, but aid should be withheld until both parents are listed on the child’s birth certificate. Too many baby daddy’s are getting off the hook, without having to pay child support.
Wouldn't it be cheaper on taxpayers to pay the "baby mill" contributors to not have children they don't want? The only reason they have them in the first place is to get government checks.
Note the irony in requiring a license, certificate, and training for most everything except for producing children.
in some states they give visa gift cards for keeping the state paid doctor visits to these single moms. They pay them extra just to keep the appointment. How much do you want to give them? All of those benefits should be tied to work of some sort, people don't respect things given for free. What were doing now is not parking and increasing it is not going to make anything better.
What specifically is "poor brain development," and what specifically is causing it? All that I read are generalities.
Is it poor nutrition? Watching mom banging another baby-daddy? Mom doing crack/meth?
@1:26 PM - exactly. These "studies" are more foundation laying for "gubment grants" empire building, and rice bowls, with no accountability.
I thought LBJ fixed all of this mess? What happened to the "great society?"
Well, I'm all for helping the starving babies around the world.
But let's don't forget that the fat actress
Sally Struthers was waddling around a 1980's Ethiopian refugee camp begging for our money.
Yeah, for 'one dollar per week' we could fatten em' up with bowls of rice.
That we did.
Fifteen years later, these same little babies grew up to shoot down and kill our troops.
Remember the movie "Blackhawk Down" ?
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0265086/
That's a true story.
4:02 I totally agree. The key to success is education, career, marriage and then children in that order. If you have children out or this order you may have a harder time achieving your goals. It seems the government does not want to solve the problem with illegitimacy.
It’s too easy to collect money owed to unwed mothers and expedite the process. The IRS does it well! We are too smart of a people to not implement a process to collect the birth cost and support for Mississippi’s children.
The Department of Human Services is an Agency slow to act and no teeth to make a difference. Our children deserve better.
“We might be surprised how people's lives can be changed if we stop rewarding reckless behavior with government payments. That is, stop giving more money for more kids.”
Exactly. There should be bad consequences for bad life choices. If you reward a behavior you get more of it.
What would Jesus do? I doubt anybody in 2019 Mississippi has any idea.
See you in church!
I think we might make great strides against this problem if we could only decide what to do about it. The record will show that since we accelerated the 'helping' of these folks, births to unwed mothers have skyrocketed. It's easy to see that having a government safety net encourages more immoral behavior. So to many of us, more government handouts would only make the problem worse. Perhaps we should limit the number of children that we are willing to pay for? That is, a mother with one child, or two children (or whatever number was decided) would not be allowed government assistance until she was sterilized (at taxpayers expense). And so long as she asked for no government money, she could have all the children she wanted. I do agree with the overriding theme of the article - it is a problem we should be solving. Our well intention efforts to date have only made the problem worse.
In America a girl that has a child before marriage has an 80% chance of living in poverty the rest of her life. Teen pregnancy is the problem.
I'm not sure what the noted PhD from Oxford, along with her Nobel prize winning associates, or the Millsaps students found in all their studies that we didn't already know.
A great suggestion - let's promote 'early intervention'. Heck, I don't have a PhD, nor have I received the benefits of a Phil Hardin internship. But let me offer a better suggestion.
EARLIER intervention. Or actually, NON-intervention. Quit trying to solve the problem of unwed mothers, beginning often in their teenage years, raising children in poverty by ignoring the basic, beginning problem. Those single mothers know the 'intervention' that creates these babies. They know that they are in poverty and that having the babies will make them eligible for at least some income (without having to work daily to earn it). I don't know if they care about the long term effects on the braim development of that child, but if they do it evidently doesn't stop them from engaging in a second, or third 'intervention' with the same or another baby daddy.
Yes, there certainly is a problem in Meridian and across the state in many of its counties - Hinds probably being the worst. But for all the 'intervention' that one may think is being ignored by our state leaders (those that won and those that lost, as Bill correctly notes by inference) - what is actually being ignored by these studies, thesis writers, and professots is that once the cycle is underway the horse is already out of the stable.
Let's figure out how to nip this problem I'm the bud - or actually, before there is a bud to nip. Otherwise, it's like a cat chasing it's tail - a continuing cycle that nevery actually solves the problem.
4:38 and I are in total agreement. I believe paying these so called mothers not to have offspring makes more logical sense....Do the math!
Point out to me one Biblical reference to Jesus or anybody else rewarding poor behavior. We are admonished to care for (feed) those who are lame and sick, not those who wallow in generations of greed, sloth and misbehavior. I missed you in church. Perhaps you were smoking a hind-quarter and couldn't make it yesterday.
Another leftist syndicated columnist complaining about the results of leftism.
CRAWFORD: “Jones came across data he found shocking – the plight of single mothers, particularly those of color, and their children.”
Seriously? How can a Millsaps political science major be so ill-informed about a tragic situation that has existed for a very long time; probably longer than said political science major has been alive?
What would leftist so-called leaders like Chokwa Lumumba be doing for a living if crime rates in Jackson were equal to the crime rates in, say for example, Brandon?
When one has answers to these two simple questions, one can fully understand why leftist love evil, why they love lawlessness, why they love chaos, why they love crime and refuse to fix said crime by allowing violent criminals off with little or no bond, why they love homelessness, why they love heroin needles and human poop on their streets, why they love killing babies (now even after they’re born), why they violate federal law and protect violent illegal alien criminals from being deported, and most importantly, why they have kept poor people down.
One word answers both questions.
Here's some bad news for those who think intervention doesn't work, there is research has measured the effectiveness in a multitude of categories.
The improvements range from 17% to 61% depending on the quality of the programs. Mississippi doesn't have quality programs.
The areas that aren't improving are with children with learning disabilities,and teen pregnancies especially in Red States.
Opposing sex education, reducing the availability of birth control in all forms just added fuel to the problems. Indeed, more white teens are having children out of wedlock.
The 2008 recession didn't help . Nor has the widening increase in the Nation's wealth going to only 2% of the population. There's some increase in the middle class but compared to the increase in the cost of living, not much upward mobility.
But, continue to believe that a nation with a small percentage of wealthy and a higher level of poverty and violence than any other western country has a rosy future. Read the characteristics of " an unstable democracy" and see how many boxes we are ticking.
Sorry , folks, but this fate of this country isn't just about you or even this State. But, if we are indictive at all, it's in what not to do to succeed.
An unwed mother of three is more likely to entire the kingdom of heaven than a smart young prince of Mississippi with a graduate degree. "Always treat others as you would like them to treat you: that is the Law and the prophets." Jesus of Nazareth
8:31 I think you missed the point, unless your point is we should all become unwed mothers for then we would have a better chance at heaven. I think it’s safe to assume that everyone wants what’s best for the moms and kids. But we disagree about how to get there. This idea that fewer handouts is automatically bad for the poor is just a one way to look at it. If you are helping your child with homework and your idea of ‘help’ is to solve all the problems for them, then you may not see the other side of this. But the other side has valid points and they aren’t intended to make to problem worse.
It is rather interesting to see scripture being quoted by supporters of a leftist Democrat party so radicalized that they not only approve of killing unborn babies up until the day prior to birth, they support the killing of babies on the day of birth.
Of course some can say not all of us leftist Democrats support these barbaric acts, but then we never seem to see them quoting scripture to their party leaders that do…do we?
You may easily fool the naïve children at Millsaps College, with their willingness to gobble up any crock of HS their leftist professors run up the flag pole, and you may even fool the little old ladies at the Methodist Church on Sunday, but please don’t think that your quoting of the scripture, is fooling everybody else.
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