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For anyone who was even paying attention to my comments and ramblings, here is a recent article. They are reporting findings and statistics that have been known about for longer than last week. The numbers or families receiving TANF has been decreasing and discrepancies rising between need and assistance in most states when looking at TANF participation since passage of welfare reform in the 1990's. Many have hailed these numbers as proof that welfare reform was working. Now that poverty has extended into more American living rooms than before we see some of those same individuals claiming that keeping people from assistance was not the intention of the original legislation. Really? I have read some of it and seen first hand the consequences of its implementation and that is not what I take away from it. That was at the heart of its very intention.

Can we at least come away from this financial turmoil knowing that poverty is not the personal fault of single mothers and not punish them through policy? If you jump to concluding that life choices have decided such a fate, then ask whether or not that conclusion secures your understanding of yourself more so than it explains someone's circumstances whom faces the choice of asking for help. I think that for most it is the former.