Highlights
- Men who do not work often make other isolating choices, which reduce their opportunities to build a social safety net for themselves and for their families. Post This
- Often what families need most isn’t a government program, but the local community coming together to care for them in crisis. Post This
- Families in poverty, or just on the edge, spend most of their incomes on the items that are often the most expensive: gas, groceries, and housing. Post This
It’s tough for working families to remember a time when it was harder to fill the gas tank or the fridge. Even with inflation slowing slightly, paychecks still aren’t going as far. In 2021, the inflation rate skyrocketed to 7% from 1.4% the previous year, and last year averaged 6.5 percent.
The inflation rate has slowed in 2023, but at 5% remains more than three times the overall 2020 rate, making what was once a tight budget for families an impossible financial situation. Sadly, the biggest price increases since 2020 are in food, shelter, and energy prices, forcing working families to make tough choices. Which bill goes unpaid? Which grocery items do we put back? Can we afford the gas to drive to work, or would we be better off on unemployment? Can we pay rent or do we need to move into temporary housing, like a motel or even a car?
These decisions aren’t exaggerated, and they’re not uncommon. They’re symptoms of economic insecurity, which puts children in these families at a higher risk of experiencing maltreatment than their economically-secure peers.
Why? It all comes down to the margin. Families who have more resources (savings, family and social support, etc.) have a wider margin. They can absorb higher costs and keep moving. Others with smaller margins just can’t. And that’s when crises most often strike.
Families in poverty, or just on the edge, spend most of their incomes on the items that are often the most expensive: gas, groceries, and housing. When the costs of those goods rise beyond the wiggle room a family has, then they may lose their homes or transportation, and without transportation, maybe even their jobs, and eventually, for some, custody of their kids. That’s a nightmare I’ve seen become reality for too many families.
Seeing few options, some individuals choose to join the millions of unemployed Americans who are dependent upon social-welfare programs. When a working family’s wages can’t keep up, and they don’t have savings or social support structures, one or both parents are more likely to opt-out of work entirely.
While this choice is often made from desperation, and some families can’t avoid this temporarily, a move toward dependence moves families away from the dignity and self-sufficiency that contribute most to human flourishing. Human beings were created to work, and unemployment among working-aged adults leads to adverse outcomes including poor health for them and for their families.
This is particularly true for men, who, when unemployed, are more likely to abuse opioids and pain medication, become depressed or lose hope, and do fewer socially beneficial things like get married and participate in religious or civic activities.
In other words, men who do not work often make other isolating choices, which reduce their opportunities to build a social safety net for themselves and for their families. That isolation, when mixed with financial stress, leads many families to a breaking point.
Better Together, the Florida nonprofit I founded in 2015, understands how the family—the most important institution in our society—can be torn apart by these external forces. Often what’s needed isn’t a government program, but the local community coming together to care for families in crisis.
We help economically insecure families build that critical social safety net while also helping parents find sustainable employment that widens their margins, better enabling them to weather inflation and other financial storms. Our local community of churches and volunteers have helped thousands of parents—single and married—not only keep their children and family together but also to find a job and keep it.
Through our Better Jobs program, we connect job seekers with employers who are willing to give them an opportunity, even if they have a record, a prior addiction, or another reason that some employers may view them as “risky.” Our Better Families program connects struggling families with the social support they need to get back on their feet. Volunteers from our church partners temporarily host children, keeping them out of the government-run foster care system, and mentor mom and dad to make sure the families and homes they return to are stronger than ever.
I believe the Better Together model can work nationwide. Unless we—as churches, communities, employers, and neighbors—are willing to pull together and take the risks, reaching out and helping each other in difficult times, we’re abandoning the most vulnerable among us: children and their families. We may not be able to stop inflation, but, together, we can put an end to isolation, and that’s a beautiful place to start.
Megan Rose is founder and CEO of Better Together, a Florida-based nonprofit that supports struggling parents by helping them work to build a better life, keep children out of foster care, and ultimately reunite families. She was awarded the Manhattan Institute’s Civil Society Award in 2019 and was a Manhattan Institute 2020-21 Civil Society Fellow.
Editor’s Note: The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or views of the Institute for Family Studies.
