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FLAT BROKE, WITH CHILDREN by Sharon Hays

FLAT BROKE, WITH CHILDREN

Women in the Age of Welfare Reform

by Sharon Hays

Pub Date: Feb. 1st, 2003
ISBN: 0-19-513288-2
Publisher: Oxford Univ.

The author of The Cultural Contradictions of Motherhood (1996) now examines the cultural significance of welfare reform.

Hays (Sociology and Women’s Studies/Univ. of Virginia) spent five years following the implementation of the 1996 welfare reform law in two locations, the first in a medium-sized southeast town, the second in a large Sunbelt city. Assuming that a nation’s laws reflect a nation’s values, she attempts to analyze what welfare reform says about work and family life in American society today. The author posits that there are two contradictory lines of rhetoric within the new policy: one goal of reform is to provide assistance to needy families so that children may be cared for in their own homes rather than in foster care; another is to end needy parents’ dependence on government benefits by promoting work. For single-parent families, these goals cannot be reconciled. Hays is careful to point out the new reforms’ benefits: income supplements for women with children, childcare subsidies, bus vouchers, and job training. But she wonders what will happen to the least skilled workers, the disabled, and their children when their benefits run out. Hays portrays the varied faces of welfare today. Elena, a 40-year-old mother of three, left an abusive husband and was doing well until a severe car accident rendered her temporarily disabled; she went through her savings and insurance and has been on welfare for six months. Christine, 24, has been unable to work since she had a massive stroke just six weeks after giving birth to her daughter, now 8. By contrast, 23-year-old Nadia has four children by multiple fathers and seems to lack any sort of work ethic; her past employment is limited to four months at a fast-food restaurant (“they don’t pay you nothing”) and two days as a hotel housekeeper (“too much bending over”). In showing both “deserving” and “undeserving” recipients, Hays presents a balanced portrait of the most controversial of all public programs.

Thoughtful and well researched.