Single Moms Will Bear the Brunt of the Republicans’ Budget Cuts

When Mia’s son was an infant, she understood the expectations she would need to meet: A poor single mother living in Capistrano Beach, California, she had to care for his welfare and try to maintain a steady income, while also navigating the stigma that accompanied signing up for the federal and state benefits that would help keep her afloat.

“I felt a lot of shame that I couldn’t somehow do this by myself, or that I needed to get government help,” she recalled. “I remember hearing a lot of jokes about single moms raising kids, and the statistics about single moms and what happens to their children.”

Mia, who asked to be referred to by her first name to protect her anonymity, feels fortunate to have the support of her extended family in caring for her now 15-year-old son. When her son was a young child, she relied on the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children, or WIC; today, she participates in Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, previously known as food stamps. Her son has severe asthma and pulmonary issues, meaning that Medicaid covers the inhalers and doctor’s appointments that he needs to survive—medical care that she would not be able to afford without this assistance.

“We are in poverty, and I almost feel like I wouldn’t be able to leave it because I can’t imagine how much I would have to pay, and how I would be able to do that,” she said.

As congressional Republicans attempt to reshape the social safety net with a massive bill to extend tax breaks and dramatically slash federal spending, they have largely focused their efforts on tightening work requirements for childless adults, although portions of the measure would also affect parents receiving benefits. Mia is worried about how stricter work requirements will affect her family; in the past, she has had to participate in mandated employment training in order to receive SNAP benefits because a substitute teaching position did not grant her enough hours to meet preexisting requirements.

“It has been difficult to try to navigate, because I do work and I have a child, and I’m not exactly clear on when I’m supposed to do these like other hours,” she said.

For Mia, single motherhood can occasionally feel like a “trap.” At her current salary level, she is able to qualify for those Medicaid benefits that allow her son to receive the care he needs for his asthma. If she earned too much to be eligible for Medicaid, however, she would need to spend hundreds of dollars per month on her son’s medical needs. It isn’t that she wants to live in poverty; she simply does not know how she would support her family on even a middle-class salary.

“If you’re trying to get ahead, or you’re trying to move out of that poverty, you’re on your own,” Mia said.

Mia’s experiences are indicative of the struggles that single mothers in the United States have faced since the inception of the modern social safety net, a catch-22 of being expected to provide for their children while also feeling as if the supportive resources are insufficient.

American social policy has long been heavily influenced by concepts of deservingness. This stemmed in part from the nation’s foundational cultural concept of a “Protestant work ethic”—essentially, the idea that anyone who can work should work, and that individual labor is fundamental to a functioning community.

Federal assistance programs and tax policies intended to assist poor Americans are generally tied to income: If a person earns too much, they cannot receive some benefits, but if they do not have a high enough salary, they can be cut off from others. In the case of SNAP and Medicaid, a household with an annual income above a certain amount will no longer qualify for the benefits. Meanwhile, the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program, or TANF, requires households earn a certain amount to become eligible for cash benefits. With the child tax credit and the earned income tax credit, recipients must earn a certain amount each year in order to receive the full credit.

Federal supports for poor families are often crucial for single parents—especially single mothers—in part because single mothers are disproportionately likely to be struggling economically. Analysis by the Center for American Progress found that single mothers earn 56 cents for every dollar made by fathers. Roughly a quarter of single mothers are low-income, and single parents are more likely than married parents to be Black or Hispanic. Single mothers are also more likely than their married counterparts to struggle with food insecurity and are more likely to struggle with their mental health, in part because of the deep psychological stress caused by living in poverty.

Mia has been on and off government assistance for years, sometimes because she was working a job that paid her a salary higher than the earning requirements. But the shame and guilt that she felt for needing to rely on these programs sometimes kept her from taking the benefits for which she was eligible. That sentiment changed during the coronavirus pandemic, and she came to terms with the fact that she needs the assistance.

“I need just a little bit of support to keep things in balance because I go into debt, or I’m using money I didn’t have. So I worked through my own feelings of shame and embarrassment,” she said.

Single parents tended to struggle financially during the height of the pandemic, with one study finding that single parents faced higher rates of poverty, unemployment, food insecurity, and stress compared to two-parent families. That was alleviated in part by a temporary, pandemic-era program: In 2021, the poverty rate for single mothers and for children in general was slashed dramatically, largely due to the expanded version of the child tax credit that was briefly in place for six months of that year. This change, along with many of the enhanced benefits for low-income families implemented during the pandemic, was permitted by Congress to expire.

In general, social safety net programs, including non-cash benefits and tax credits, have been crucial to lowering poverty rates. Nick Gwyn, senior fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, noted that without these benefits, single mothers would likely see even higher poverty rates. But despite their effectiveness, he continued, they have not been a universal balm.

“They’re obviously also still much more likely to live in poverty, and there are a number of things that could be done to help single moms that we’re not doing,” Gwyn said.

Although most social safety net programs are generally oriented toward low-income families of any kind, TANF was explicitly designed to assist single mothers. That program has roots in “Mothers’ Pensions,” an early-twentieth-century policy that was targeted specifically toward low-income widows. These policies, administered by individual states, formed the basis of the New Deal–era Aid to Dependent Children, the first federal program that offered cash assistance to primarily white poor single mothers.

In the latter half of the twentieth century, perceptions about who single mothers were, and the expectations about how they should behave and be treated, began to transform. In 1962, Congress updated the Aid to Dependent Children program to the Aid to Families with Dependent Children, or AFDC, expanding eligibility requirements that made it easier for nonwhite women to participate in the program. Meanwhile, women began entering the workforce in substantial numbers—including married women—which helped shift public perspectives on whether a single mother could and should be working.

“It wasn’t until married mothers started working that we started thinking single mothers should be working [as well], even though single mothers always had worked at higher rates than married mothers,” said Jane Waldfogel, a professor at Columbia University’s School of Social Work.

By the 1980s, the perspective on single mothers had transformed from considering them as objects of charity to worrying that they were draining resources without contributing work. Black single mothers were disproportionately likely to be low-income, and the public perception of single mothers was influenced by racial bias. This trend was embodied by President Ronald Reagan’s denunciation of the “welfare queen,” a Black mother reliant on federal assistance who was not working. Critics accused the AFDC of discouraging marriage, in part because the program was specifically targeted for households without a male parental figure.

When President Bill Clinton and the Republican-led Congress tackled “welfare reform” in 1996, AFDC was replaced by a dramatically restructured program, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families. Unlike AFDC, two-parent households could qualify for TANF, without requiring that one of those parents be unemployed or disabled. With its explicit goals of encouraging “personal responsibility” through work requirements, reducing dependence on government benefits, and encouraging the formation of two-parent households, the creation of TANF indicated a desire to prevent the freeloading that many politicians presumed was occurring with the AFDC.

“It eliminated that entitlement to support, so there was no longer this federal guarantee of supporting mothers and children in poverty,” said Heather Hahn, associate vice president for management in the Family and Financial Well-Being Division at the Urban Institute, about the creation of TANF. “It had originally been on the community, and then it was the responsibility of the federal government, and now here it is shifting back to individual responsibility.”

Despite the emphasis on “work opportunity” in the creation of TANF, Hahn continued, “in the details of what’s happening, it’s really working to reinforce these racial and gender and class roles.” Although it remains the only direct cash-assistance program for low-income Americans, the amount of the block grants to states provided through TANF has not changed since it was first implemented in 1997. It also has restrictive work requirements that make it impossible for parents earning over a certain threshold to obtain the benefits.

Some experts have argued that an enhanced child tax credit could bolster low-income households more effectively than TANF. The 2021 expansion—which increased the credit amount, distributed it on a monthly basis, and fully extended it to low-income households—lifted millions of children out of poverty. However, the current version of the credit is not available to all families—and because it is not fully refundable, households too poor to file income taxes are unable to receive the full credit. The Republican bill would increase the child tax credit amount and index it to inflation but would not expand eligibility to the poorest households. A recent analysis by the Columbia Center on Poverty and Social Policy found that 65 percent of children with a single female parent would be ineligible for the full credit under the House bill.

Waldfogel argued that the emphasis on work in implementing social safety net policies has hindered single mothers who may be unable to obtain jobs.

“The reason for the single mothers who are not currently working or not currently working full time—it’s not because of lack of effort or lack of interest, it’s because they’ve got responsibilities that conflict, or they’ve got some kind of health limitations, or they have trouble landing a job, or they have trouble getting enough work hours,” said Waldfogel, who authored the recent book Child Benefits: A Smart Investment for America’s Future. “Yet the benefit system treats them as if there’s an issue with lack of effort, and we have to be concerned about work incentives and all of that. And if we had a more universal safety net, if we had universal child benefits, that wouldn’t be an issue.”

With Republicans’ One Big Beautiful Bill, another segment of the population has emerged as the primary target of cuts to assistance programs: childless adults without disabilities. The bill—which GOP lawmakers are attempting to pass through a process known as “budget reconciliation,” allowing them to avoid the 60-vote filibuster threshold in the Senate—would make dramatic cuts to Medicaid and SNAP, in large part by tightening work requirements for these “able-bodied adults without dependents.”

Although the Senate and House versions of the reconciliation measure differ in some respects, there are some key through lines in both. Both versions would require able-bodied childless adults between ages 19 and 64 to be working at least 80 hours per month to be enrolled in Medicaid, with redetermination of eligibility every six months. This policy could result in millions losing their coverage, with one recent study estimating that the cuts could also lead to thousands of preventable deaths.

Josh McCabe, director of social policy at the Niskanen Center, noted that work requirements for social assistance programs are popular with the public, particularly “when they think there are no competing priorities, and it’s within someone’s ability to work.” It could also signal a shift in public perception of deservingness: Unlike the Clinton-era welfare reform, the most explicit targets of the reconciliation measure are not single-parent households but able-bodied adults without dependents.

“With the reconciliation bill, there’s no one left to go after except childless men,” said McCabe. “Insofar as folks are paying attention to the trope about men staying at home playing video games all day, retargeting them for cuts, it in a way insulates single mothers who in the past may have borne the brunt.”

But parents would not be unaffected: The House measure would impose new SNAP work requirements for households with children above the age of 7, while the Senate bill would do the same for families with children above age 10. Moreover, the measure would push more of the cost of SNAP onto states, which could result in states cutting benefits.

The Senate bill would also impose new Medicaid work requirements not just for able-bodied adults without dependents but for the parents of children above age 14 as well. This would affect parents such as Mia, as adults with teenage children would need to prove that they were working, participating in a work training program, or receiving education to obtain the benefits.

“We see this deliberate addition of administrative burden to the safety net now, which is designed to reduce the number of people who can access the benefits that they’re eligible for, so that it will reduce the government spending,” said Hahn.

Both the House and Senate versions of the bill would also make changes to the earned income tax credit, or EITC, requiring households to apply for “precertification” for each qualifying child to determine whether they are eligible for the credit. Although congressional Republicans are aiming to reduce the number of duplicative claims, experts worry that adding more paperwork could discourage eligible households from claiming the credit, and could gum up the works for the overburdened IRS amid cuts to the agency. During President George W. Bush’s first term, a similar program had resulted in fewer eligible families receiving the credit, which some research has shown has a significant effect in cutting poverty.

The additional administrative burden could be particularly difficult for working single moms, said Kris Cox, director of federal tax policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

“Single moms with low incomes don’t have a lot of excess time, and don’t have a lot of excess capacity to provide new documentation,” said Cox. “So the bill is asking families who have the least resources in terms of leisure time and extra capacity to jump through an additional hoop in order to get the credit for which they are eligible.”

To Mia, the conversations in Washington that will eventually determine her fate have left her feeling like she won’t be able to ever get ahead, despite having played by the rules laid out before her. “You’re not allowed to take baby steps forward,” she said. “As soon as you take one step forward … you’re out of that zone, and you’re no longer supported.”