Welfare.
My father considers it a dirty word. TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families) and SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) and WIC (Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children) allow low-income or no-income families to feed and clothe their children and themselves. Why is that so terrible, to help those in need?
I had no idea how despicable my father thought government assistance recipients were until my husband told him about being raised on welfare. I’m certain that we had spoken of this before (my husband and I have been married 17 years. It’s not like we’ve never mentioned it), but this time my father listened. And became absolutely furious.
He was visiting, a rare event due to distance and his job as a long-haul trucker. He was talking about how the “church” needed to take care of the poor, that it was not the government’s job, and his tax dollars should not go to help the lazy welfare queens. He acknowledged Fox News, Wingnut Daily, and some unknown random minister as references. My husband brought up that he had been raised on welfare, and that the church his family attended when he was a child did not have the funding to care for their congregation members. The church consisted of basically two families, and all were poor themselves. There was no bank account filled with collection plate funds to help those in need.
And my father was so disgusted he disowned my husband for it (my father's word, not mine).
Welfare.
My father considers it a dirty word. TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families) and SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) and WIC (Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children) allow low-income or no-income families to feed and clothe their children and themselves. Why is that so terrible, to help those in need?
I had no idea how despicable my father thought government assistance recipients were until my husband told him about being raised on welfare. I’m certain that we had spoken of this before (my husband and I have been married 17 years. It’s not like we’ve never mentioned it), but this time my father listened. And became absolutely furious.
He was visiting, a rare event due to distance and his job as a long-haul trucker. He was talking about how the “church” needed to take care of the poor, that it was not the government’s job, and his tax dollars should not go to help the lazy welfare queens. He acknowledged Fox News, Wingnut Daily, and some unknown random minister as references. My husband brought up that he had been raised on welfare, and that the church his family attended when he was a child did not have the funding to care for their congregation members. The church consisted of basically two families, and all were poor themselves. There was no bank account filled with collection plate funds to help those in need.
And my father disowned my husband for it (his word, not mine).
My husband was raised by a single mother, a mother who fled with her children out of an abusive relationship. How abusive? His father came after them with a shotgun when he realized they had left, stopping at family homes in search of them (thank goodness for shelters). His mother faced raising four children on her own. In the beginning, she had no choice; she was pregnant with her fourth child, and her eldest was seven. She needed government assistance, which was $300 a month (yes, the extravagant amount of $300 to support four children and one adult). Later, when she began to look for work, she realized that she could not afford to get a job; the medical benefits, the eyeglasses and such that she could qualify for would be taken away if she worked, and a minimum wage job could not pay rent, buy food, support four children and their health needs. She did the best she could, even to the point of selling plasma more often than she should have to help make ends meet. She eventually signed up to be a census worker, and after that boost to her ego and resume, decided to go to college (not a Christian one this time) and get a degree so she could get a job that would support her family.
Her struggles, my husband’s struggles, were meaningless to my father. They should have had self-respect and pulled themselves up by their bootstraps rather than look for a handout, he said. It’s very difficult to pull yourself up by your bootstraps when you don’t even have boots (or are 7 years old and can't work), but somehow, magically, people are supposed to. My husband did manage it, despite the difficulties. He borrowed money from a friend’s family to apply for college. He lived off student loans and money earned from being a TA and utilizing summer undergraduate research opportunities through the McNair Scholars Program. His undergraduate advisor (she is an awesome person) co-signed a loan so we could move across the country for him to attend graduate school. He received his PhD and finally (finally) landed a tenure-track position and then was granted tenure after a long, long job search. After a lengthy and difficult journey, he has “made it” and I am very proud of him.
Reality runs off my father like water. Instead of considering my husband’s real life, he spoke about the minister he had heard somewhere (radio? TV? He never said) who said that the Bible tells us that widows should be taken care of. What the Bible really meant by that, according to this minister, was that her family needed to take care of her, and if they did not have the means, then the church needed to do it. No government interference necessary. If the church attended did not have the means, then the person in trouble was supposed to find a church that had enough money and ask them for help, no matter if that church’s teachings contradicted their own religious leanings.
Or how about resurrecting child labor? That teaches kids the responsibility their parents lack, even if it does not teach them to read. My husband said that, had he been able to work as a child, his family would have forced him to, and thoughts of school and college would have been fantasies he dreamed about but would never attain (because, really, if child labor was reinstated, we all know that those children would never see a classroom).
So my husband became “that husband of yours.” My father concocted a trivial slight to rescind his relationship to my husband, all the while harping on welfare and how people needed to take personal responsibility for themselves.
I’m trying to figure out why he believes my husband has not taken “responsibility”. He got good grades, worked through high school, went to college, got his PhD, got a job, succeeded in research, and we finally managed to buy a house. In what part of that is my husband not taking responsibility for his life? Was it because he could not miraculously change the direction of his life at seven? So what if he needed help along the way? Is not the final result worth it? And if no, why not?
There are millions of families struggling to live day by day. I would much rather house and feed them through the government than have them suffering on the street, which is what would happen if churches were suddenly the focal point in helping the poor (not only do some churches not have the funds to help, but some espouse that if the poor just believed in God hard enough, He would grant them riches, so let Him take care of it). Of course, some people, through disability or other, simply cannot work. Should we toss them under the train tracks and brush our hands together, satisfied the problem is dealt with?
My father should know better. He knows how difficult it is to raise a family on nearly nothing, and he never would have managed a 30+ year career as a long-haul trucker if he had to raise my brother and I on his own, without the help of my mother. We lived in a small, sheltered Wyoming community—job prospects were (and still are) minimal at best, and he took what he could find. It was not enough. When my family fell on hard times in the early ‘80s, did “the church” help? No. In fact, the members did their best to punish and shame my family for being too poor. The Bible says, after all, that God helps those who help themselves—you must be lazy, or have done something terribly wrong, or God would not have taken away. My father has never been lazy (or done anything wrong for that matter). Despite his years of hard work, he makes less than I do, and I’ve only been at my current job for 11 years. For most of his working life he received poor pay (still does), had no medical insurance, had no retirement fund, nothing to reward him for long, tedious work days and long, lonely nights away from home.
In my experience, hard work means nothing. You can work yourself to death and never reap rewards, and, in fact, be looked down upon for not being more successful. I wanted to leave that environment of hopelessness and failure, and so I went to college and succeeded. My husband went to college to pull himself out of poverty and get his doctorate, and he succeeded. Neither of us could have done so without government assistance in the form of student loans. I suppose that makes me a terrible person as well (though my father has not said that in so many words, just hinted it).
My father ranted to me for over an hour, then told me that he did not want to strain my relationship with my husband. That is not the relationship he needs to worry about.
9:11 PM PT: Thanks for the recs. They are very much appreciated.