Ending Behavioral Requirements and Reproductive Control Measures Would Move TANF in an Antiracist Direction

In one especially horrific example, some enslavers dug holes in the ground and forced pregnant women to put their belly in the hole to “protect” the child as they were whipped.8 The expectation that Black women have children did not reduce the amount of work demanded of them; some pregnant women worked to the point of miscarriage and new mothers had to work, sacrificing the health — and often the. [...] They conducted in-home assessments and observed the mother’s interactions with her children, the children’s health and conduct, and the decency of the home itself. [...] By the 1920s, the pseudoscience of eugenics advocated curtailing the birthrates of “unfit” persons including Black women through methods such as sterilization and marriage restrictions like miscegenation laws.45 Although eugenics fell out of favor by the 1940s, the pathologizing of Black motherhood and resulting coercive control of Black reproduction persisted.46 In fact, some policymakers’ argume. [...] In response to Louisiana’s denial of AFDC support to thousands of Black children, HEW in 1960 issued an administrative rule (known as the Flemming rule after HEW head Arthur Flemming) that states could not ignore the needs of the child if the home was determined to be “unsuitable”;56 state AFDC agencies had to help make the home suitable or move the child to more suitable living conditions, or ris. [...] The federalization of AFDC began eroding in the late 1980s and early 1990s when states began to apply for, and the federal government began to approve, waivers from federal rules (available under section 1115 of the Social Security Act).