Financial Support of Children and the End of Welfare As We Know It

ly, the sensible strategy would seem to combine two goals: discouraging unmarried teen motherhood in the first place and, when it occurs, providing assistance for the child of the teen mother in a new format. Converting these principles into an agreement is not easy, however. As usual, there are both carrot and stick approaches. As for the first goal, a typically recommended stick is simply to deny AFDC to the minor mother," 5 requiring her to be supported by her own family. If her own mother is on AFDC, then the new child is added as a grandchild to the grandmother's AFDC benefit unit, a result which generally brings in a small amount of additional cash. This approach at least discourages young women from getting pregnant for the purpose of moving away from home and using the AFDC grants to rent their own apartments. Unfortunately, at least some young women who are so motivated appear to decide on this course of action in response to violence that is directed toward them in their mother's home." 6 115 For a discussion of the Clinton bill's approach to teen pregnancy, see Jodie LevinEpstein, Center for L. & Soc. Pol'y, Teen Pregnancy Prevention and Teen Parents, July 27, 1994. 116 Mike Males, Correspondence, New Republic, Jan. 2, 1995, at 4 (letter to the editor stating that "two-thirds of teenage mothers are past victims of s6xual abuses inflicted by men averaging more than 25 years old"). (Mike Males is a doctoral student in social ecology at the University of California, Irvine.) 2570 [Vol. 81:2523 Financial Support of Children This sad reality has caused liberals to oppose the cut-off if no exceptions are allowed. Another stick some conservatives have advocated would force pregnant teens to leave their regular high school and attend school elsewhere. This recommendation, which cuts in exactly the opposite direction to the efforts in which liberals have been engaged over the past two decades, is premised on the idea that too many teen mothers today are seen as receiving special treatment by their peers and, as such, set very bad examples. Yet another stick entails leaning on the fathers of these children. One way, as earlier discussed, would be to force the fathers to work and then to pay child support out of their earnings." 7 Even if it cost money to create the needed jobs for this group, the hope is that the threat would discourage more of these men from getting women pregnant. An alternative gambit would be to start enforcing the statutory rape laws-a role that prosecutors seem to have abandoned in recent times. Liberals, not surprisingly, have tended to. favor carrots. One is to provide poor teens with free contraceptives and free abortions. These measures, it is argued, at least curtail teen mothering that is not truly the young woman's choice. Right-to-life politics has tended to keep Republicans from endorsing these ideas. A different carrot would be to bribe young women not to become pregnant. For example, in selected high schools, females could volunteer to submit to regular (say, monthly) pregnancy tests on the understanding that if they passed they would receive so much money each time. If the amount were large enough to make a real difference in helping them to purchase desired items (e.g., clothes or CDs), this could have an impact. Indeed, it could change high school culture regarding the desirability of pregnancy in schools where it is now a common phenomenon. It would only be costeffective, of course, if it prevented enough births that the resulting social savings would cover what inevitably would be payments to many who would not have become mothers even without bribery. As noted earlier, conservative qualms about paying people to do the right thing might reduce support even if this tactic paid for itself, if only by the health care costs thereby saved. Furthermore, 117 See supra text accompanying notes 70-78. 1995] 2571