Patsy T. Mink: “Mr. Speaker, the matter that I want to turn to now is a proposal that comes from our colleague, Jan Meyers of Kansas.…”

“Mr. Speaker, the matter that I want to turn to now is a proposal that comes from our colleague, Jan Meyers of Kansas. She has proposed that one of the ways to deal with this problem of welfare reform is to require teenagers under the age of 18 who become pregnant and have a child as a single parent be required to live at home. As I said earlier, I am not for forcing people by law, by mandating, that they go to work. I believe that given the incentives and the support of child care and so forth, that these parents will go to work. They can improve themselves. Just by earning minimum wage, they would get better than $125 a month. On this teenage parent situation, perhaps the moral argument ought to be that society should try to encourage the teenager to stay at home and remain with their parents, but this cannot always be the case. You might have an abusive family situation, totally disengaged with the reality of providing the support for this teenaged parent, and so again, I do not support the idea of creating a mandate that applies to all teenagers below the age of 18.”