It's a tough time for American families. With divorce, poverty, crime, disease and violence all wreaking havoc on them, studying them might make for a depressing occupation.

But Maureen Marcenko has found the opposite to be true.

"What is very important, and I've seen it over and over again, is how people who are facing tremendous odds often overcome those odds through their own resources and the support of others, and they manage to do quite well," says Marcenko, a researcher at Penn's Center for the Study of Youth at Risk and an associate professor at Penn's School of Social Work.

How the families do as well as they do is both a focus of her work and a finding of her work. "I work with families on different issues: families living in poverty, emotional disturbance, families who had a parent who was chemically dependent or at risk of losing a child [to foster care]," she says.

"I got into the field by studying families with children who had developmental problems. I was interested in what they did to cope under enormous strain."

Prior to coming to Penn three years ago, Marcenko worked as a counselor for the Philadelphia School District, identifying teens at risk for suicide.

This month, she and a colleague published a study on welfare mothers and the obstacles they face trying to find jobs and get off assistance.

Marcenko and Jay Fagan of Temple University's School of Social Work found that a lack of job skills and training, not the ability to learn those skills or even the desire to find work, was the chief obstacle in getting jobs. In fact, they reported that nearly 90 percent of the women surveyed had some prior work history.

Marcenko and Fagan studied 77 mothers who were receiving Aid to Families With Dependent Children and had children participating in Head Start.

"Our data show that the barriers to work do not include substance abuse, health problems, deficits in literacy or a lack of interest in working," says Marcenko. "Women need training and education to prepare them for the job market and support to help them care for their children."

Marcenko and Fagan published their findings, "Welfare to Work: What are the Obstacles?" in the September issue of the Journal of Sociology and Social Welfare.

"The current policy [of welfare reform] does not adequately account for situational and personal factors necessary for a successful transition from welfare to work," Marcenko and Fagan wrote. "Without greater attention to these barriers, the policy is likely to fail or be implemented at high personal cost to recipients and their families."

The study also reported that many of the women had high literacy levels. "So it wasn't that they didn't have the skills to learn new jobs; it was that they didn't have the training to qualify for a job," says Marcenko. "That, and the low assistance with child care."

Ninety-six percent of the women were single, says Marcenko, and the time needed to care for a child was also a hindrance in finding and maintaining a job.

"In Philadelphia, the school day ends at 2:45," says Marcenko. "Who gets off work at 2:45?

"Most of the mothers with young children also walk their children to and from school. How are mothers going to assure the safety of their children and cover child care until they get home from work?" She says child care and after school programs would have to be increased so mothers could participate in training and work.

Marcenko and Fagan conducted the study three years ago. The average age of the mother was 29, and the women, on average, had three children. One-third of the mothers were actively looking for work, says Marcenko, but 69 percent of those looking for employment said they needed help in locating a job.

Marcenko also cautioned that their sample did not represent all mothers on aid because the mothers in this study were from a Head Start program. "But if this group of mothers is going to have trouble transitioning from welfare to work, you can imagine that the situation is even worse for families who don't have the services of Head Start," Marcenko says.

Studying families with severe problems can be depressing, she says, but it was while doing research on mothers who were HIV positive that she discovered something important.

"I expected it to be all doom and gloom and sad, but there was a tremendous amount of hope and looking to the future," she says.

Marcenko takes this optimistic spirit to heart. Last year she started a family as a single parent by adopting a daughter, Olivia, who is now four years old. "She's the light of my life," says Marcenko.

Return to Compass Features for October 22, 1996