Flat Broke with Children: Women in the Age of Welfare Reform - download pdf or read online

By Sharon Hays

ISBN-10: 0195132882

ISBN-13: 9780195132885

ISBN-10: 0195176014

ISBN-13: 9780195176018

Hailed as a good good fortune, welfare reform led to a dramatic decline within the welfare rolls--from 4.4 million households in 1996 to 2.1 million in 2001. yet what does this "success" seem like to the welfare moms and welfare caseworkers who skilled it? In Flat Broke, With young children, Sharon Hays tells us the tale of welfare reform from contained in the welfare workplace and contained in the lives of welfare moms, describing the demanding situations that welfare recipients face in coping with their paintings, their households, and the foundations and rules of welfare reform. Welfare reform, skilled at the floor, isn't a rosy photo. nearly all of grownup welfare consumers are mothers--over ninety percent--and the closing dates imposed via welfare reform throw thousands of those regularly single, determined girls into the hard work marketplace, the place they need to settle for low wages, the main menial paintings, the poorest hours, with out merits, and little flexibility. Hays presents a vibrant portrait in their lives--debunking a number of the stereotypes we've got of welfare recipients--but she additionally steps again to discover what welfare reform finds in regards to the which means of labor and relations existence in our society. particularly, she argues that an inherent contradiction lies on the middle of welfare coverage, which emphasizes conventional kinfolk values at the same time its ethic of "personal accountability" calls for ladies to paintings and depart their young children in childcare or at domestic by myself all day lengthy. Hays committed 3 years to vacationing welfare consumers and welfare workplaces, one in a medium-sized city within the Southeast, one other in a wide, metropolitan zone within the West. Drawing in this hands-on learn, Flat Broke, With young children is the 1st ebook to discover the impression of modern welfare reform on motherhood, marriage, and paintings in women's lives, and the 1st publication to supply us a portrait of ways welfare reform performs out in millions of neighborhood welfare places of work and in thousands of houses around the state.

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New PDF release: Flat Broke with Children: Women in the Age of Welfare Reform

Hailed as an exceptional luck, welfare reform ended in a dramatic decline within the welfare rolls--from four. four million households in 1996 to two. 1 million in 2001. yet what does this "success" seem like to the welfare moms and welfare caseworkers who skilled it? In Flat Broke, With young children, Sharon Hays tells us the tale of welfare reform from contained in the welfare place of work and contained in the lives of welfare moms, describing the demanding situations that welfare recipients face in dealing with their paintings, their households, and the foundations and rules of welfare reform.

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Additional resources for Flat Broke with Children: Women in the Age of Welfare Reform

Sample text

Independence, in this context, often looks like a job on the graveyard shift at Burger King or Dunkin' Donuts, a job that forces you to spend half your wages on substandard childcare and leaves you unable to buy winter coats for the kids. A look at the process through which these more disturbing outcomes emerge and attention to the larger practical and cultural consequences that follow from them will, I hope, provide some basis for reconsidering the deeper meaning and importance of those original principles and for reevaluating the social changes and the political, economic, and cultural mechanisms that have distorted them.

But there is more. The popularity of welfare reform has also followed from its ability to satisfy even more numerous constituencies, at the same time it arose from a much more widely shared set of higher moral ideals. If you scrub off all the controversy and contradiction of welfare reform, at bottom you can find a set of honorable moral principles. 34 There is nothing inherently contradictory in these principles. The reasons they emerge as contradictory and even punitive relative to welfare reform is that this legislation takes place in the context of massive changes in family and work life, deepening levels of social distrust, rising social inequalities, and an increasingly competitive and global capitalist marketplace.

Depending upon one's angle of vision, welfare reform can be seen as a valorization of independence, self-sufficiency, and the work ethic, as well as the promotion of a certain form of gender equality. On the other hand, it can serve as a condemnation of single parenting, a codification of the appropriate preeminence of lasting family ties and the commitment to others, and a reaffirmation that women's place is in the home. Further, it is certainly no accident that the primary guinea pigs in this national experiment in family values and the work ethic are a group of social subordinates—overwhelmingly women, disproportionately nonwhite, single parents, and of course, very poor.

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Flat Broke with Children: Women in the Age of Welfare Reform by Sharon Hays


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