Real Welfare Reform: Help for Working Parents
BARBARA BERGMANN's new book, Saving Our Children from Poverty: What the United States Can Learn from France, will be published this fall by the Russell Sage Foundation. American welfare system, dysfunctional as it currently is, takes care of a real problem: there are single mothers who cannot earn enough to support their families, given their need for child care and health care. Sooner or later, the country will have to awaken from its pipe dream. A governmentfree America will not bring on a problem-free America. For the foreseeable future there has to be a government program to help some parents with some of the expenses of raising their children. When it does wake up, the country can start to consider whether there is an alterna-