By Ashley Burnside

Prevailing racist and paternalistic narratives about people living in poverty has inspired policies rooted in behavioral control within public benefit programs. These policies require people to behave in a certain way or have a specific family configuration to be eligible to receive certain public benefits. For example, cash assistance is often tied to specific requirements such as that a parent must engage in work activities for a certain number of hours per week for the family to receive cash. The current benefit structures are reflective of decades of controlling policies implemented in response to sexist and racist assumptions that Black mothers applied for welfare at higher rates to avoid working and instead rely on government benefits for their livelihood.

These policies are rooted in a history of behavioral requirements to receive cash aid. Under Aid to Dependent Children (a predecessor to today’s cash assistance program), some states implemented home searches and midnight raids to determine if a man was in the household of a woman receiving monthly cash assistance. The assumption behind these practices was that such a man should be financially supporting the household, rather than the government. If a mother receiving cash assistance lived with a man who was not the father of her children, her benefits could be cut under state “man in the house” laws. Between the 1940s and 1960s, some states passed “suitable home” laws that allowed caseworkers to deny cash benefits to families if they were deemed unfit due to moral or health determinations. For many Southern states, simply being an unmarried mother was enough to be deemed “unsuitable.”

In 1996, Congress and President Bill Clinton passed the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA), which made significant changes to our nation’s public benefits system. The legislation came on the heels of the “welfare queen” narrative promoted in the 1980s, intended to fuel resentment toward people living in poverty by falsely painting them as “lazy” and “fraudulent.” PRWORA adopted this narrative by implementing new requirements for accessing public benefits that ultimately deemed whether recipients are “deserving” based on behaviors and work status. One of the biggest changes PRWORA made was ending the Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) cash assistance program and replacing it with the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program.

While AFDC was an entitlement program that supported families with children living in poverty, TANF is a block grant provided to states that has remained frozen over the past three decades. PRWORA implemented work participation rate measures that states must meet to receive their annual TANF funding and added time limits for receiving cash assistance, creating more paperwork burden for state agencies as well as for recipients. PRWORA gave states a great deal of control in how they administered their cash assistance programs.

Over the decades, TANF caseloads have declined dramatically. In 1996, when the program was created, TANF reached an estimated 68 out of 100 families living in poverty; in 2023, the program only reached 21 out of 100 families. Despite claims to the contrary, this caseload decline is not because families are financially stable and no longer need cash support. Rather, this decline is largely driven by families who are eligible for cash assistance no longer receiving it. Complicated paperwork requirements, time limits, restrictive work reporting requirements, small monthly benefits, and stigma all contribute to this phenomenon.

In addition to establishing the work participation rate and time limits, PRWORA also implemented new and continued existing policies to control how parents formed their families and financially supported their children. Such policies are rooted in paternalism, racism, sexism, and homophobia and include, but are not limited to:

• Promoting Two-Parent Households and Reducing Out-of-Wedlock Pregnancies: The TANF program has four purposes that were defined under PRWORA which guide how states can spend their federal block grant dollars. One of these is to “encourage the formation and maintenance of two-parent households.” Some states spend TANF funds toward marriage counseling courses in line with this purpose, under the assumption that children are better off when they are raised by married parents. These biases from the government of what family structure is best for children are paternalistic and stigmatizing, and exclusionary of couples who cannot access the institution of marriage (including same-sex couples when the PRWORA law was passed, as well as disabled couples who receive disability benefits and risk facing a marriage penalty). Limited TANF block grant dollars should go toward financial support for families, not marriage counseling classes for families of all income levels.Another TANF purpose is to reduce out-of-wedlock pregnancies, meaning some states spend TANF dollars toward abstinence and teen pregnancy prevention programming intended to control sexual behavior. States also spend their TANF funds toward so-called Crisis Pregnancy Centers, or anti-abortion centers, which can exacerbate pregnancy health challenges—another example of states spending government dollars to control reproductive decisions rather than to help families afford their groceries and bills.
• TANF Family Caps: Under family cap policies, if a parent receives TANF cash assistance and gets pregnant with an additional baby while receiving benefits, their monthly cash benefit will not be increased to reflect the addition to their household. This policy was driven by desires to control the reproductive decisions of people receiving welfare, specifically Black women, and was intended to deter parents from having additional babies to boost their monthly cash payment—a racist, sexist, and false stereotype not rooted in families’ financial realities. Under TANF’s predecessor AFDC, states applied for a waiver to implement TANF family cap policies. PRWORA gave states unfettered control to implement such policies, but over the years, most states have opted out of TANF family cap policies. Six states (Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Mississippi, North Carolina and South Carolina) still have such policies in place. This leaves parents with less financial support as they are giving birth to their child, worsening the baby’s health outcomes.
• Child Support Requirements: When a family applies to receive TANF cash assistance, the parent must agree to participate in the child support program, which includes identifying the noncustodial parent to the state, and sign over their rights to child support payments. (There are exceptions for domestic violence victims who do not feel safe making such a disclosure.) This requirement was included in the PRWORA law and existed under the prior AFDC program. If the TANF applicant does not meet these requirements, they will have their cash assistance benefit reduced or be ineligible to receive monthly cash assistance. This invasive policy puts TANF applicants in an uncomfortable position of reporting the noncustodial parent of their child to the government. If the noncustodial parent does not pay recurring child support payments, they can be criminally prosecuted, have their driver’s license taken away, and face other penalties.

Once the child support payment is made, instead of going to the custodial parent and child, it goes to the federal and state governments to reimburse them for the TANF payment going to the family. This is backwards and means fewer dollars are ultimately going toward the child. Some states have implemented child support passthrough policies that pass a certain amount of the child support payment (often between $50-$200 per month) directly to the custodial parent. Research has found that there are positive benefits for families when they receive child support payments, and has also concluded that when child support payments are passed on to the children, more noncustodial parents pay support, and they pay higher amounts.

This requirement operates under an assumption that the government knows what payment arrangement is best for parents, rather than giving them the agency to determine their own contribution amount and schedule. This policy can leave parents feeling disrespected. Parents must report personal and financial details about the noncustodial parent when applying for their TANF benefits, as well as when they believe they got pregnant with their child. Some parents have reported hesitation about disclosing the name of their child’s noncustodial parent out of fear that it will get them in financial and criminal trouble. Whether families participate in the child support program should be their choice, not a requirement to get financial support.

All states should end TANF family cap policies and implement child-support passthroughs to allow families to keep their child support payments to invest in their children. At the federal level, lawmakers should change the purposes of the TANF program to focus on reducing poverty and promoting child well-being, rather than promoting two-parent marriage rates and reducing out-of-wedlock pregnancies. Federal lawmakers should also remove the child support cooperation requirement and the cost recovery process in the TANF program.

Instead of conditioning cash assistance on conforming to specific household types or engaging in certain behaviors around reproduction and family financial contributions, public benefits should be rooted in the unique needs of recipients. Benefit administration should be centered in principles of autonomy, respect, and dignity, not policing behavior.