I'm only just now getting back to this. Had to be in the office early today and then travel with one of our execs for most of the day.
OK, after you amplified your answers a bit, Breukelen, I feel I understand them better. I was just curious about whether or not you were married or had kids, and I have to add that being over 50 is not older than dirt.

I feel fairly certain that, if left to their own devices, churches and other non-profits wouldn't truly take up the slack left by withdrawal of social welfare support to single moms and their children. It's a lovely idea, but we already know from Bush's resoundingly "successful" (my tone here is sarcastic for those who can't hear it) faith-based initiative that that plan is mostly lip service and not much more.

Here in our area, the non-profit agencies and churches that help poor folks, which include people on welfare and lots of working poor who don't quite qualify, are totally strapped for cash and have few resources to help right now. I don't see how that will get better with more demand. Our food banks have empty shelves. If those single moms and children who qualify didn't have food stamps and WIC support, they'd be hungrier than they already are, and many of them are hungry now.

I don't know what the answer is, but I don't think further reduction of welfare benefits is it. I know there are a couple of states--I believe Wisconsin is one of them--who've had tremendous success in training/skilling these welfare moms and weaning them from social benefits, and I wish other states could follow suit. I do know that since the 1990s, welfare spending overall is down by almost half and that--no surprise here--poverty is up correspondingly. For social workers and volunteers who work with these folks to try and get them services, it feels very hopeless because we see people with real needs going without the most basic supplies.

As for the matter of requiring fathers to marry women before they father children, rotsa ruck. It's hard enough for many of them to commit to women when no children are in the picture. I like the idea of incenting fathers not to add to the problem of illegitimacy, but relying on the "system" to pluck that child of unmarried, poor parents out and put him in an orphanage certainly sounds tricky. I like the idea of insisting on implantable birth-control for every woman who's even at minimal risk of bringing an illegitimate child into the world, but every time I open my mouth about that, I get called a communist. I prefer to think of myself as a children's advocate.

I must now put my mind to feeding dinner to a family of four (three if you don't count my sister, who won't eat anyway) and temporarily veer from the social problems of our time. Talk to you later, BA!