In the iconography of America, no group is as revered as mothers with children. Virtually every Norman Rockwell painting around these holiday times during my youth provided an almost saintly image of mothers - literally the bedrock of American values. Of course, how we've treated mothers and children in the real world has been something entirely different. It's only been within the last decade that the domestic abuse of women has been taken seriously by the police and the courts. Chronic discrimination against women and women with children is still endemic in the workplace and welfare "reform" was really an effort to ensure that poor women with children were forced to engage in low-wage work, even if they lacked adequate child care. What the hell, they can't fight back.
But despite all these challenges to full equality for women in American society, I, along with many other men with educated, poised, and independent young adult daughters, was hoping that the nation was on the road to full equality for women - that the nation could never step back. Over the last couple of weeks, two things have happened that brought it home to me that collectively the fight is still on.
The first, of course, is the virulent attack on abortion rights that has taken a central stage in the health care reform debate. This effort, if successful, will leave women with resources with options, but put up new barriers to poor women to control their own bodies and make their own moral decisions. The second is CSS's own survey of low-income New Yorkers, "The Unheard Third," which polled over 1,200 households by phone in July to get a reading on how individuals who are living in poverty (one in five New Yorkers) are doing. Suffice it to say that while everyone may be focused on Wall Street bankers losing six figure salaries, the real victims of this recession are poor women with kids.
This shouldn't come as a great shock for anyone following the recent news reports on national homelessness and skyrocketing unemployment. A series of recent reports by the Coalition for the Homeless gives graphic evidence of how brutal things are. New York City has its highest number of homeless families in its recorded history -- with over 39,000 individuals, including more than 16,000 children, sleeping in city shelters each night. Just as devastating are reports that the city is violating a court-ordered mandate and routinely turning people away because of curfew violations and leaving others to sleep on chairs, desks, and floors.
Overwhelmingly represented in these statistics are poor women with children. Our Unheard Third survey gives evidence of why this recession is hitting this group worse and also indicates that the problem will continue to escalate even as the recession begins to abate.
Just a couple of top line answers from our survey lay this out: nearly 25 percent of working mothers lost their jobs within this year, 44 percent reported having their wages and hours reduced, 23 percent had to delay or forgo medical care because of cost, 41 percent had utilities turned off, 34 percent fell behind in rent or mortgage payments - the list goes on for this demographic hit by a recession for low-wage workers that increasingly is estimated not to abate until 2014.
What we should expect in the next 18 months in terms of a virtual explosion of mothers and children in poverty is already in motion. It's being driven by another finding in our survey: 65 percent of our respondent working mothers reported having $500 or less in total reserve with 29 percent reporting having no money at all in reserve. As this jobless disaster drags on, the continued lack of resources will inevitably drive more and more women with children into the shelter system.
What we as a city and nation should do about it is going to be exceedingly difficult, given the political and economic climate. Immediate efforts to shift gears on welfare and other income supports are vital. In a full employment economy, crowing about reducing welfare rolls may be acceptable. But with city unemployment rates at near Great Depression levels for black and Latino communities, this is the time to make sure no one is destitute, particularly women and children.
In terms of job creation, as advocates we all applaud the "jobs summit" recently conducted by the Obama administration to deal with the national crisis. The difficultly is that none of the suggested efforts that focus on transportation projects, small businesses, or the green economy will have any significant impact on low-wage working mothers. It is time for the President, Congress, and the city leadership to begin giving more than lip service to how much we love mothers and children.