Americans are a nation of doers. Whether it's carving out a nation, with little more than guts and determination as tools, or going to war to stand up for ideals - very few Americans have ever actually shirked their responsibilities.

Another area in which citizens of this country have shown this attitude and shouldered their responsibilities, is in helping their neighbors or the less fortunate.

Americans don't mind helping those who may need help getting started or who may have had some bad luck, but they certainly do not want to support anyone indefinitely. Which is why so many people have balked at helping their neighbors when that help has gone beyond the short-term and become the long-term charity known as welfare.

The idea of neighbor helping neighbor is not a new one, but it became the this country's basis for community development, beginning with the first colonists. They began a tradition enacted again and again as settlers moved west - of making a festive all-day occasion out of helping to build homes for their new neighbors. Not only was help given raising the roof of a new home, but the help was often accompanied by gifts of poultry and livestock or much-needed f@ng tools.

Americans have also been forthcoming in times of crisis, as was easily evidenced by the help given to survivors of recent hurricanes, tornadoes and floods.

Although this generosity is seemingly open-handed and unending - it actually is not. There are limits. To paraphrase an old adage, we don't want to help anyone who is not willing to work hard at fixing their own problems too.

Help seems to be freely given in this country when it's perceived that the needy person is starting out fresh or trying to overcome adversity. But when does charity become a hindrance rather than a help? Why did the Aid For Dependent Children program, designed to help families during the Great Depression, turn into such a fiasco?

It seems the seeds of this charitable dilemma rest with one of the program's major stipulations: aid cannot be given to a woman with children if her husband is living in the home with her. This single stipulation has led not only to creating a multi- generational welfare burden but has also indirectly caused many of our current societal problems.

In the early days of the program, this stipulation made sense. At that time it was thought to be in society's best interest to keep mothers at home raising their own children.

Although there were women in the work force, usually they were single women supporting themselves until they married, or women who worked in family-owned businesses. But as far as society was concerned in those days, mothers of small children had only one place to be - at home. Another decision which played a role in helping to create the welfare boondoggle it is to day was the dissolution of the Civilian Conservation Corps.

Even though the AFDC program was originally designed to help only penniless widows and their children, it was enlarged to accept those families left fatherless when men left home in search of work during the depression - many of whom found work with the CCC. Where, men were trained in new skills or at least given work until they could find jobs of their own.

At the time this seemed like the perfect solution. The men were put to work building and creating the country's infrastructure in the form of highways and parks, while their wives and children were cared for by AFDC.As long as this two-pronged solution remained in place, few families stayed on the welfare rolls very long.

So how did we get from a program which in the beginning helped many families get back on their feet to a program which seems to encourage people to become shiftless and lazy bums?

Fast forward a few decades to the 1960s. The economic boom of the 1950s was grinding to a halt and once again families were finding themselves in economic crisis. AFDC or welfare is there for the asking but still with the stipulation that only families headed by single mothers are eligible for aid.

So, in order to feed their families, men were once again encouraged to leave. But this time there wasn't a CCC program to provide work or training until their family was back on its feet. They were simply told to go so their babies could eat.

And they went, by the droves. Some to fight a war in the rice paddies of Vietnam; but many to disappear into the dawning of the Aquarian spirit which was sweeping the country.

In other words, they became hippies.

Fast forward another thirty years to today. We now have a nation of taxpayers so infuriated by a massive welfare burden that they are no longer interested in finding a solution to the problem. They just want it gone - as gone as those disappearing fathers during the 1960s were.

So now what do we do? How do we still keep alive that great American tradition of neighbor helping neighbor but still allow them room to become independent of our aid?

Welfare reform with its promise of throwing people off the dole in droves can't really be the answer - not and have us stay true to our ideals. The only solution is to remove the stipulation that AFDC is for single parent families only and create a work training program like the CCC.

Better yet, bring back the CCC. Has anyone taken a good look at this country's parks and highways lately? It's been 60 years since many of them were built and they could certainly stand to be spiffed up a little!

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If you would like to drop the author a note about the article please email to deborah@ipa.net

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