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Welfare-to-Work & Kids
With Jennifer Brooks and Kristin Moore
ChildTrends
Tuesday, July 31, 2001; 2 p.m. EDT

Early studies have found that adolescents may face difficulties -- including increased behavioral problems and lower school achievement -- when their parents are in welfare-to-work programs. The findings have been published in a new research brief by ChildTrends.

Jennifer Brooks and Kristin Moore of ChildTrends were online Tuesday, July 31 at 2 p.m. EDT to take questions and comments about the new report.

The transcript follows.

Editor's Note: Washingtonpost.com moderators retain editorial control over Live Online discussions and choose the most relevant questions for guests and hosts; guests and hosts can decline to answer questions.

Jennifer Brooks and Kristin Moore: For those of you who have not had a chance to read through our research brief, we thought it might be helpful if we provide a brief introduction to the topic.

Our brief takes a look at the findings of three evaluations of welfare-to-work programs relating parents' participation in these programs to the well-being of
their adolescent children. These early studies have found that adolescents may face unexpected difficulties when their parents are in welfare-to-work programs.
These negative outcomes for adolescents occurred despite increases in family income and more positive effects for younger children in some of these studies. These findings come as a surprise to us and other researchers, given that adolescents were generally expected to be less
affected than younger children by their parents' participation in welfare-to-work programs.

One key finding is that the adolescent children of parents
enrolled in welfare-to-work programs showed increased
behavioral problems and lower academic achievement.

We should note that the brief refers to these findings as "early warning signs" for a good reason - we only have three studies published on this topic so far, the impacts are not dramatic in size, and in no instance were all aspects of adolescent functioning negatively affected
by these programs (although there were never instances of positive impacts).

Still, these findings occurred in three out of three studies examining this issue and involve important aspects of adolescent well-being,such as problem behavior and school achievement. These findings are noteworthy and deserve consideration as Congress begins to debate the
reauthorization of welfare reform in the coming year.

Three possible explanations are explored in this brief: the quality of relationships between parents and adolescents, parental monitoring, and adolescents taking on adult-like roles and responsibilities in their families.

Arlington, Va.: Can you explain the basic findings of your study?

Jennifer Brooks and Kristin Moore: We briefly discuss the findings in the message we just posted. But to reiterate, we describe the results of three new studies focusing on the impacts of welfare-to-work programs on adolescent chidlren. These studies show no positive impacts on adolescents, some neutral effects, and some evidence of negative effects on adolescents. Taken as a whole, they suggest that there may be unexpected negative implications of parents' assignment to welfare-to-work programs for their adolescent children.

Washington, D.C.: What would ease this sistuation? After school programs? Parent education?

Jennifer Brooks and Kristin Moore: It is hard to know exactly what would work to ease this situation because at this point we don't know what explains these negative results. After school programs would help if the problem is unsupervised time. If teens are caring for younger siblings, the answer may be to have easier access to child care for these families. If parental stress is the cause, solutions are more complicated, but would including family supportive work policies. In some cases, a supportive marriage or support from extended family members might ease stress.

Washington, D.C.: The reports I read at The Heritage Foundation are totally different from your report. For example, racism is not the cause of welfare, but receiving welfare and having kids is.

Jennifer Brooks and Kristin Moore: We're not sure what report of our work you read, but our work does not address racism. We would need more information to respond more fully to your comment.

Bethesda, Md.: How do children whose parents are in welfare-to-work programs compare with those who are simply on welfare? Any data on long-term effects -- how/when kids get jobs as adults, attitudes toward education, etc.?

Jennifer Brooks and Kristin Moore: These findings are from experimental studies comparing parents assigned to welfare-to-work programs to similar
parents not assigned to participate in these programs. The groups are comparable at the beginning of the study - after
several years, the teenagers whose parents were assigned
to a welfare-to-work program show some evidence of negative outcomes and no evidence of positive outcomes.

Washington, D.C.: Were your findings surprising to you?

Jennifer Brooks and Kristin Moore: These results were surprising to us and others. The majority of the focus was on how younger children (especially pre-school children) might be affected by these programs. There was no clear expectation that adolescents would be affected by their parents participation in these programs, although some thought they might benefit from role modeling or be harmed by a lack of supervision.

Falls Church, Va.: So, what's the option? For people to stay on welfare? What kind of example would that set for adolescent children?

Jennifer Brooks and Kristin Moore: There is no turning the clock back on welfare reform. But we need to think about welfare recipients as participants in a family, where issues of supervision, stress, adolescents becoming adults before they are ready, child care for younger siblings by older siblings are all potential issues.

Washington, D.C.: Do you think the Bush Administration will heed this new finding?

Jennifer Brooks and Kristin Moore: Yes. We expect that the Administration and Congress will be interested to learn more about the reasons that underlie these findings. The development of specific new policies need to be informed by a stronger understanding of why these negative findings are emerging.

Bowie, Md.: Probably the very best thing for the development of kids would be for every parent not to have to work but spend full time child-rearing. Obviously that would be ridiculous, so we have to have some kind of trade-off between the need for parents to work and to spend time with kids. What's so special about this situation that we should pay these parents not to work?

Jennifer Brooks and Kristin Moore: It is not our recommendation that one should pay these parents not to work. Indeed, the evidence for younger children does not show particularly negative impacts. However, acting out and problem behavior by adolescents is something to be concerned about. Youth development and after-school programs as well as other supports for families might be appropriate options. However, specific policy options await research that identifies the specific pathways that confirm and explain these negative impacts.

Arlington, Va.: Do you think that the Welfare to Work program is a failure because of the detriment it apparently does to a families homelife?

Jennifer Brooks and Kristin Moore: No. There have been a number of positive results of welfare to work programs, including increased parental employment and increased family income. Moreover, negative impacts do not seem to characterize younger children. However, the subgroup of families with adolescent children seems to warrant, unexpectedly, more attention than they have received.

North Brentwood, Md.: I think as a society we are very ambivalent about child care issues. Falls Church was asking what kind of example an unemployed parent is to their children. But on the other hand, we stress the value of at-home parents. So is a woman a 'bad mother' because she's not home for her kids, or is she a 'bad mother' because she's not out earning a paycheck? If you're poor, you get it both ways and no choice.

Jennifer Brooks and Kristin Moore: We think that it is difficult to simultaneously maximize all goods. However, as society moves forward with welfare reform, it appears necessary to support families, particularly poor families with adolescent children, in additional and perhaps unexpected ways. Women, adolescents, and society will be better off if we can figure out appropriate ways to support families making the transition to work.

Reston, Va.: You say your control group was "similar" to the study group. Do you mean socio-economically? What was the control group's status as far as working: were they working couples? single working parents? Welfare parents?

Jennifer Brooks and Kristin Moore: The individuals were randomly assigned to participate in a control group or the experimental group (as participants would be in a biomedical study). So in the aggregate the groups were similar in all ways. At the beginning of the study, both the control group and the experimental group were primarily single and receiving welfare in all three studies.

Maryland: Hello. I was curious if you had a breakdown by gender, sex, disability, race on your report?

Jennifer Brooks and Kristin Moore: No, we don't have these subgroup breakdowns. But, given that all welfare families are disadvantaged, there were findings to suggest that adolescents from the more advantaged welfare families (those who had worked more or received welfare for a shorter period of time at the beginning of the study)were more likely to experience negative outcomes.

Washington, D.C.: What specifically do you think are the factors between the welfare-to-work programs and the difficulties of teenagers whose parents are on them? I look at some programs and see a definite lack of child-care provisions when getting people off welfare and working.

Jennifer Brooks and Kristin Moore: For these adolescents, the issue isn't child care, per se. But supervision and activities during non-school hours might be one of factors accounting for these impacts. However, lack of child care might be part of the picture, since adolescents might be called on to take care of their younger siblings. There is also some evidence that these adolescents are more likely to be working at a level that may be problematic for the adolescent. There is also some evidence that parents are responding to their adolescents more harshly, perhaps reflecting the stress that parents experience.

Additional analysis is needed before we are certain that child care or after-school care is the explanation for these findings.

Washington, D.C.: Does ChildTrends suggest a solution to help kids whose parents are on welfare-to-work programs? Is there any solution that would help them?

Jennifer Brooks and Kristin Moore: The solution depends upon what further research shows is the actual pathway through which these impacts have come about. However, we don't anticipate that there will be a single solution or approach to meet the needs of all families. But a family-centered or two-generational approach that considers the well-being of both parents and children is a direction that many states are moving, as they struggle to meet the needs of these families.

Somewhere, USA: How many participants did you have in each of these studies?

Jennifer Brooks and Kristin Moore: There were about 740 adolescents in the Florida study, about 700 in the Minnesota study, and about 1250 in the Canadian study.

State College, Pa.: Do you think that the parent out working and spending less time with their children is the cause of the increased problems with the children, or the drastic change of 30 hours less a week with their child be more the cause? If the program was set up to gradually give the parent more hours over time, would the shock to the household be less, therefore reduce the negative impacts on the children?

Jennifer Brooks and Kristin Moore: Further research is needed before we can know for sure what the underlying pathways are. Until we know this, it is difficult to propose precise solutions. This seems like a reasonable potential strategy, but there isn't specific evidence at this point that a specific number of work hours or pattern of transitioning to work is the answer.

This is why we refer to these findings as "early warning signs" - to highlight the need for further study.

West Chester, Pa.: Are you continuing to collect data from programs in other states?

Jennifer Brooks and Kristin Moore: There are several more experimental studies that include adolescents and at least two more will be publishing results within coming months.

West End: Having worked with people in poverty, I am curious whether we need to know more about these two groups.

From my experience, those who remain in "traditional" welfare programs tend to be the disabled and other people who, for whatever reason, are considered unemployable. Isn't it reasonable that the parenting skills or family environment of somsone who is disabled and on welfare is likely different than someone who is not disabled?

Jennifer Brooks and Kristin Moore: There have not been enough disabled families in these samples to look at them as a separate subgroup. But certainly the needs of disabled adults with children on welfare warrant attention.

Washington, D.C.: As a result of this study, how will you change or enhance your future policy analysis on youth outcomes in welfare-to-work programs?

Jennifer Brooks and Kristin Moore: Studies to date have collected only limited information about adolescents and their lives. We would want to include a larger array of outcomes for adolescent children and increase the sample size so that more subgroup analyses could be done. We would also want to follow families over time, so they would could explore potential pathways. We would also want to obtain information from adolescents directly, as well as from teachers and parents.

Arlington, Va.: You say there were no positive outcomes, but what about important intangible outcomes. A parent who works is likely to provide a more positive role model about responsibility, self-reliance, economic independence, etc.?

Jennifer Brooks and Kristin Moore: Those were certainly among the hypotheses at the outset of the studies. Most policymakers anticipated positive outcomes among adolescents for exactly these reasons. As yet, there is a surprising lack of positive impacts. Future work should explore positive as well as negative outcomes.

Mt. Rainier, Md.: It seems there are a variety of welfare-to-work programs in different states, but most of them create a lot of stress (at least initially) for the family. There's a big impact when your basic caretaker is suddenly wrenched away from the family for 9 - 10 hours a day, and is now coming home very tired. Major stress in trying to provide child care, ditto trying to get transportation. A child old enough to perceive and understand this might well resent these changes.

Jennifer Brooks and Kristin Moore: Your conjecture provides an interesting hypothesis. It's certainly the case that adolescents may be more aware of any stress that the parent is experiencing. Indeed, because of their awareness, they may either be more understanding of their parents' stress or more drawn into trying to help the family, by getting a job, caring for younger siblings, or providing emotional support to the parent. These things are likely to fall out differently in different families.

Newark, N.J.: Dr. Brooks,
First I want to say that I find your work fascinating and extremely important. I'd like to know how you think this brief (and the work you and your colleagues are doing in general) will impact the research agenda coming out of the federal government (specifically HHS)? Or, how you would like to see this brief impact that agenda?

Jennifer Brooks and Kristin Moore: This question provides a good way to end this discussion. As you can tell by our earlier responses, we think these findings are potentially very important and hope that public and private funders continue to explore the implications of welfare reform for children and adolescents.

washingtonpost.com:

That was our last question today. Thanks to everyone who joined the discussion.

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