The Aid to Families with Dependent Children program, which began in 1935 with the passage of the Social Security Act, has steadily increased in number of families and children served, reaching nearly a million families, in cluding over three million children, at the beginning of 1964. This program was aimed primarily at the problem of children left dependent by reason of death, incapacity, or continued absence from home of the parent who usually provided the family's means of support. The whole purpose of the program is not served by mere provision of financial aid to families who meet the requirements of eligibility, however. There has always been a concern that receipt of this form of aid have a constructive effect upon the lives of the families and children who are recipients of it. The 1962 amendments to the Social Security Act ushered in a new era of federal leadership and financial contribution to increase the emphasis upon social services to the families receiving this form of public aid. In a very real sense, the AFDC program is becoming the corner- stone of a multifaceted public family and child welfare program of aid and social services that is reaching into every locality of the nation and its territories.
PROBLEMThe prevalence of illegitimacy among the poor in this country constitutes a major social problem which has not received attention from psychological investigators. This lack of interest has apparently occurred because illegitimacy in lower classes and among Negroes has been viewed as resulting from subcultural differences in value systems, and thus has not been considered deviant behavior@, 4 ) . Recently, however, Goode(5) has offered data to support his argument that even subcultures with high rates of illegitimacy sanction marriage and prohibit the birth of illegitimate children. Thus, it seems probable that the birth of an illegitimate child will have the same negative implications for lower-class and minority group women as for the white middle and working-class girls who have been the subject of prior investigations. Several studies@* 9 , 12) have found that among such girls, illegitimate pregnancies are almost always accompanied by crippling defects of personality and intelligence. We would expect the same to be true among lower-class women.Approximately one-half of the mothers receiving public financial assistance under the Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) Program have borne at least one illegitimate child; and, of those, approximately one-half have more than one illegitimate Thus, although it cannot be considered representative of the lowerclass, this population seems very well suited for a preliminary examination of the relationship between psychological factors and illegitimacy among the poor. METHOD Research Ss, selected from the AFDC population of a single district welfare office in the San Francisco Bay Area, were administered a battery of psychological tests including the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS), the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI), and the California Psychological Inventory (CPI). I n individual sessions, the WAIS was administered t o each S by the senior author and an associate2; the CPI and MMPI, after the instructions were carefully explained, were sent home for completion and return. Subjects were told that they might have someone else read the test questions to them if it was indicated for any reason; and remuneration of $10.00 per S was promised if the tests were carefully completed and returned.From the test sheets returned, the standard MMPI and CPI scales were scored by IBM computer as were several additional scales which seemed relevant t o our purposes. The additional scales scored were Harris' ( 6 ) MMPI subscales, Barron's (1) Ego Strength and Welsh's(lO) Anxiety and Repression scales. The WAIS was scored and converted into scale scores and I& measures in the standard manner.Subjects. Forty Negro and 40 white women participated. Twenty women of each race had only one illegitimate child (termed unipara) and 20 had more than one child born out of wedlock (termed multipara), yielding four sample cells with 20 Ss in each: White unipara; white niultipara; Negro unipara; Negro multipara. Ss were randomly selected for each of the sam...
sour concern with achieving better co-ordination of the efforts of the educational and social welfare agencies of the community is grounded on the premise that these two types of agencies must work closely together if the children and youth of the community are to be well served. This would seem an obvious premise scarcely worth reiterating if it were not for the observable fact that such co-ordination of effort is nearly nonexistent in many of our American communities and approaches the ideal in none of them.Co-ordination of the efforts of educational and social welfare agencies in meeting the needs of children and youth has two aspects. One is the relationship of the educational agencies of a community to the existing social welfare agencies as they collaborate in meeting the problems of individual children or groups of children and youth and work together toward improving the effectiveness of both the educational and social welfare services of the community. The second is the utilization of social-welfare-trained personnel within the schools themselves. This second aspect is commonly referred to as the development of school social work and results from an expanding concept of the purpose and function of the educational agency rather than a new concept of social welfare.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.