Give Moms Cash

Do you enjoy healthy babies and stable relationships? Dole out the baby bucks.

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A potentially groundbreaking study confirms what advocates for women and families have long understood to be true: Even a relatively small amount of direct financial support to poor moms helps their kids’ cognitive development.

Evidence abounds that poor children on average start school with weaker cognitive skills, and neuroscientists have shown that the differences extend to brain structure and function. But it has not been clear if those differences come directly from the shortage of money or from related factors like parental education or neighborhood influences.

The study released on Monday offers evidence that poverty itself holds children back from their earliest moments.

While the researchers who conducted this particular study are not willing to speculate on why cash payments may have improved children’s cognitive functions, there is a wealth of related previous research that gives us some ideas. We know, for example, that poverty = stress, and that children are one factor that can keep low-income women struggling in the United States. Our lack of childcare, paid leave, and material support for poor families means that low-income moms are making impossible choices: Working multiple jobs and unpredictable hours to keep a roof over their babies’ heads while knowing that time with their babies — reading to them, holding them, feeding them — is necessary to their physical health and intellectual development. Deciding between less-nutritious fast food that offers the gift of time and more-nutritious homemade food that means forgoing story time or a long tuck-in. Choosing between a cheaper apartment that may pose environmental hazards and damage a baby’s developing systems or working more hours to afford a nicer space that they then have no real quality time with their kid in.

The payments in this study were roughly $300, approximately the same as the Biden Baby Bucks that were going out before supposedly “pro-family” senators cut them off. It’s a relatively small amount that, for struggling families, can make a big difference.

Conservatives typically object to these kinds of payments because they say that it discourages work and discourages marriage. Which is odd, given that conservatives also typically argue that the best family set-up is when mothers stay home with their children, especially when the children are young. But apparently the “best setup” should only be on offer to women who marry men able to financially support them — not a possibility even for most women who are married, and not a a consideration for most women who haven’t met a guy they actually love and want to marry.

It’s also true that financial support strengthens marriages. Welfare payments only weaken marriages when people realize they will lose their benefits if they marry — then, predictably, people who are living on the financial edge forgo marriage, because it’s economically unsound. But when states have allowed welfare recipients to continue receiving benefits even when they married — something Minnesota experimented with a while back — low-income women were both more likely to marry and more likely to get themselves out of abusive relationships.

We know that couples who are financially stable tend to be more romantically stable. It’s a truism to the point of cliche that money is the number-one thing that couples fight about, but the more complicated reality is that daily stress of poverty frays many (most?) of the relationships a financially struggling person has. And the daily stress of poverty is the most trying on a poor person’s most intimate relationships — especially those they share expenses with, or spend money on. It is much, much more difficult for a romantic relationship to survive when both parties are stressed about keeping the lights on and paying rent. Financial stressors create relationship discord. And if you take away extreme financial stress or at least lessen it, any given relationship is more likely to survive.

If you’re pro-marriage, in other words — or pro-kids-being-raised-by-two-parents — baby bucks that don’t count against other government assistance is one of the most effective policies. Conservatives should support it. Those who don’t should be ashamed of their hypocrisy.

And even if, like me, you don’t think promoting marriage should be a primary goal of social policy, the reality is that most Americans want to be married, and most Americans who are married want their marriages to last.

We also know that the stress induced by poverty brings a series of cognitive and physical ills. Poverty-induced stress literally short-circuits one’s decision-making capabilities, making it more cognitively difficult to plan for the future. Stress isn’t just psychological; it induces a physical, biological response, and prolonged stress physically wears down the human body. People who live in poverty in the US have limited access to nutritious food and limited time to make it (and often limited access to a kitchen — lots of people live out of hotels or makeshift spaces with only a microwave or hot plate); years or decades of consuming heavily processed and nutritionally bereft food takes a tremendous physical, cognitive, and even emotional toll. That hurts poor moms, who in turn have less physical, cognitive, and emotional energy for the children who depend on them. All of this starts poor kids off at a profound disadvantage.

This is a choice that we are collectively making. Other prosperous, developed countries do things differently: They support people who are struggling, and particularly mothers and children. Cash payments per kid and state-sponsored childcare are commonplace worldwide; it’s the US that is the outlier. And these child benefits have a long track record of widespread social benefits.

The reason poor kids and poor moms are struggling is that they don’t have enough money. It turns out that the most obvious solution — give them money — may have been the best one all along.

xx Jill

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Photo by Andre Taissin on Unsplash