Negro Urban Unwed Mothers Don't Make Use of City Welfare Agencies

A Harvard sociologist has found that Boston's welfare agencies for unwed mothers are being used disproportionately by suburban and white women rather than Negro and urban women.

In a report issued at an American Public Health Association convention last week in San Francisco, Dr. James E. Teele, assistant professor of sociology at the Harvard School of Public Health, doubted that these agencies actually discriminate against Negro and urban-dwelling women. The seeming inequity has arisen because of prevailing misconceptions of welfare agencies held by the lower class, he said.

This group fears the treatment it thinks it will receive from the welfare agencies, he said. While these fears are not usually justified, Teele explained, "they give shoddy treatment often enough to keep many away."

He advocated that Massachusetts should inaugurate a state-coordinated program of medical and social care for unwed mothers in order to help welfare agencies "reach out" to the presently neglected lower classes. Because of insufficient use of the now-existing state Social Service Exchange, which serves as a clearing house for the different social service agencies, many women never get the help they really need, he said.

Teele also thought that state agencies should supervise more closely the activities of maternity homes. "Indeed," he stated, "it may be time to require that hospitals have good social work departments even before they are licensed."

Teele recognized that it is difficult to get lower class families in need of help to use all the services available to them. Yet it is this group which has the greatest need of welfare services, and which suffers the most from being deprived of the use of these agencies, he said.