Growing Up On Welfare Article Commentary
Growing Up On Welfare Article Commentary
In the article, “So How Did I Get Here?: Growing Up on Welfare”, Rosemary L. Bray raises some important issues dealing with the welfare system and people’s beliefs.
Bray’s family had to turn to welfare after her father was gambling most of his paycheck at the races in the year of 1960. At that year Bray states that the “poverty threshold for a family of five in the United States was $3,560 and the monthly payment to a family of five from the State of Illinois was…a total of $2,190.72 a year.” Bray offers this as proof to the false belief that people living on welfare are living comfortably.
Bray’s family was on welfare for eighteen years. Bray states that they survived by the kindness of strangers and friends, churches, and her mother’s ability to save and use every penny wisely. Bray believes that her family utilized welfare the way welfare was designed to be used. The next generation did more than survive without the use of welfare; three of them went to college and the other two have decent jobs.
Bray goes on to state that many people believe that the people on welfare are young, single African American women with many, many children. In all actuality, the people on welfare are white, single women with less children than most nuclear families. Bray believes that this racial myth will cause damage to the welfare program. People believe that African American women are staying on welfare, having more children, and receiving more money. The truth is that a welfare recipient only receives so much money and it will not increase if that recipient continues to have children. The final myth that Bray wants people to recognize is that welfare does not make life easy; welfare makes it possible to barely survive.
I chose this article because for me this is a personal issue. I am what people call “a welfare child”. My mother met my father when she was 13 and my father was 23. They married when she was 16 and he was 26 in California. The rules of my mother’s high school at that time stated that a married woman could not attend high school if she was married because a married woman was considered and adult....