Blog # 9

The relationship between working poor women’s conditions and children living in poverty are closely intertwined. Children who are currently living in poverty were most likely brought into that poverty because of the poor status of their mother. If the family the child is coming from is poor and the Mother cannot provide for the child they will be born into poverty. This becomes tricky because you don’t want to penalize the child for something it had no control over yet it isn’t entirely the mothers fault either. It is hard enough for single females to find a decent job with a comfortable salary but when you add a child to the equation it makes everything harder. Single working mothers can only do so much; how can they support a child when sometimes they can’t even support themselves?

Looking at charts from the National Center for Children in Poverty shows that the conditions affect the children and the poverty level. The characteristics of poor children in American are close to the same as working poor woman; most are black, Latino, American Indian, and Asian. If you came to this country as an immigrant your chances of being below the poverty level are high, especially if you are a child coming from a single working mother. Another important statistic that I learned from the charts was that the younger the child the higher the poverty; this is because when the child is at its youngest the mother will have minimal experience working. As the child gets older the mother will hopefully acquire more experience and knowledge that will allow her to obtain a better high paying job. Most of these women we are talking about are very young, some even still children themselves. The jobs of these women to try and provide for their families will continue to be a struggle for years to come.