One of the most widespread, and thusly, effective, stereotypes of those on welfare is the public perception of the AFDC family. Since the rise of “family values” as a popular political issue, the families of the poor have been the target of the political right - both their single-mother based structure, and their primary motives for having children in the first place, are under scrutiny. Recent sentiment, especially from the right, has been that young, unmarried, and unprepared girls have children out of wedlock only to coll

Both War on the Poor and The Working Class Majority do a fine job of taking on this stereotype and it’s many facets, citing precise statistics that speak louder than any unfocused generalization. To counter the idea that welfare and out-of-wedlock births are inherently related, War on the Poor presents and supports several self-described realities: That welfare does not increase out-of-wedlock births, that lowering benefits will simply will not reduce these births, that women on welfare do not have more children than those not receiving benefits, and that the “profit” that a family attains with the birth of additional children is quite marginal.

Although stereotypes are powerful, they must be thought of as one form of paranoia. Like paranoia, there is no real basis- the people who believe in a stereotype give reasons that are vague and without legitimate support. Luckily, one can rise above these ideas quite easily. It’s easy to be suspicious of something- a person, group of people, the future, etc.- when you have no information about that thing. Therefore, the best weapon to counteract a stereotype in the war for opinion is information. only by taking into account all the information that is

Some topics in this essay:
Instead Zweig, , War Poor, Roukema Jersey, Class Majority, war poor, additional children, surrounding poor, person family, class majority, public perception, out-of-wedlock births, single mothers,