Illegitimacy is the greatest cause of long-term poverty in this country unless it comes down, the poverty rate won't, either. The law unleashed a flurry of activity to get welfare recipients off the rolls unfortunately, no one is watching the front door, where the next two generations of dependents are forming right now. Unless girls like Tamiesha stop having babies, the 1996 federal welfare reform law will surely disappoint. "My aunts 'n' stuff tell me what's going on, and it's, like, a hassle." "I don't want to get married," she says emphatically. Tamiesha may not strike an observer as an overwhelmingly fit parent, but she has no intention of getting help from a husband. ![]() "I tell 'em I can't give them a 100 percent guarantee," Tamiesha explains. ![]() The day-care director has tried to persuade her to come on time, without much of an impact. As usual, she has arrived late and is at that moment missing her second-period class, but no one seems in a hurry to get her on her way. While a host of beaming day-care workers rush to clean up the child, Tamiesha, tall and so thin that her slacks hang from her hips in folds, distractedly pours a gold necklace from one hand to another. Eighteen-year-old Tamiesha has just dropped off her two-year-old and now watches impassively as the baby throws his bowl of Cheerios over his head. Standing uncertainly in the middle of a lavish high school day-care center on Manhattan's Upper West Side is the future downfall of welfare reform.
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