The Catch-22 for Working Parents

In the midst of the pandemic, hundreds of dollars began to appear each month in the bank accounts of American parents. The deposits were an expansion of the child tax credit, meant to help families cope with the pressures of lockdown, and recipients no longer needed to earn a minimum income to be eligible. Unlike before, unemployed parents could benefit too. Reaching many of the families left out by other cash-aid programs, the expanded child tax credit lifted millions of kids out of poverty, reducing food insecurity and anxiety among low-income parents along the way. But amid concerns from politicians and pundits that the credit would discourage parents from working outside the home, Congress allowed it to expire at the end of 2021. The decision reflected a position toward needy families that has dominated policy making for decades: The government doesn’t just give money away. If parents want help, they’re going to have to work for it.

[Read: The pandemic exposed the inequality of American motherhood]

It wasn’t always this way. At the beginning of the previous century, the U.S. had the exact opposite stance—it insisted that mothers stay home with, which provided cash payments to mothers without a breadwinning husband. In addition to character requirements, recipients were typically forbidden from working for pay. In 1935, these pensions morphed into Aid to Dependent Children (later Aid to Families With Dependent Children), a national program similarly designed to allow single mothers (and later, poor parents more generally) to stay home.