Backlash Against Welfare Mothers

Author : Ellen Reese
Publisher : Univ of California Press
ISBN 13 : 0520938712
Total Pages : 374 pages
Book Rating : 4.17/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Backlash against Welfare Mothers written by Ellen Reese and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2005-07-29 with total page 374 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Backlash against Welfare Mothers is a forceful examination of how and why a state-level revolt against welfare, begun in the late 1940s, was transformed into a national-level assault that destroyed a critical part of the nation's safety net, with tragic consequences for American society. With a wealth of original research, Ellen Reese puts recent debates about the contemporary welfare backlash into historical perspective. She provides a closer look at these early antiwelfare campaigns, showing why they were more successful in some states than others and how opponents of welfare sometimes targeted Puerto Ricans and Chicanos as well as blacks for cutbacks. Her research reveals both the continuities and changes in American welfare opposition from the late 1940s to the present. Reese brings new evidence to light that reveals how large farmers and racist politicians, concerned about the supply of cheap labor, appealed to white voters' racial resentments and stereotypes about unwed mothers, blacks, and immigrants in the 1950s. She then examines congressional failure to replace the current welfare system with a more popular alternative in the 1960s and 1970s, which paved the way for national assaults on welfare. Taking a fresh look at recent debates on welfare reform, she explores how and why politicians competing for the white vote and right-wing think tanks promoting business interests appeased the Christian right and manufactured consent for cutbacks through a powerful, racially coded discourse. Finally, through firsthand testimonies, Reese vividly portrays the tragic consequences of current welfare policies and calls for a bold new agenda for working families.

Author : Ellen Reese
Publisher : Univ of California Press
ISBN 13 : 9780520938717
Total Pages : 378 pages
Book Rating : 4.12/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Backlash against Welfare Mothers written by Ellen Reese and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2005-07-29 with total page 378 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Backlash against Welfare Mothers is a forceful examination of how and why a state-level revolt against welfare, begun in the late 1940s, was transformed into a national-level assault that destroyed a critical part of the nation's safety net, with tragic consequences for American society. With a wealth of original research, Ellen Reese puts recent debates about the contemporary welfare backlash into historical perspective. She provides a closer look at these early antiwelfare campaigns, showing why they were more successful in some states than others and how opponents of welfare sometimes targeted Puerto Ricans and Chicanos as well as blacks for cutbacks. Her research reveals both the continuities and changes in American welfare opposition from the late 1940s to the present. Reese brings new evidence to light that reveals how large farmers and racist politicians, concerned about the supply of cheap labor, appealed to white voters' racial resentments and stereotypes about unwed mothers, blacks, and immigrants in the 1950s. She then examines congressional failure to replace the current welfare system with a more popular alternative in the 1960s and 1970s, which paved the way for national assaults on welfare. Taking a fresh look at recent debates on welfare reform, she explores how and why politicians competing for the white vote and right-wing think tanks promoting business interests appeased the Christian right and manufactured consent for cutbacks through a powerful, racially coded discourse. Finally, through firsthand testimonies, Reese vividly portrays the tragic consequences of current welfare policies and calls for a bold new agenda for working families.

Author : Gwendolyn Mink
Publisher : Cornell University Press
ISBN 13 : 150172889X
Total Pages : 276 pages
Book Rating : 4.91/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Whose Welfare? written by Gwendolyn Mink and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2018-09-05 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over the past few decades, the goal of welfare reform has been to move poor families off of welfare, not necessarily out of poverty. By that criterion, the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act of 1996 has been successful indeed: throughout the nation, millions have vanished from the welfare rolls. But what has been the cost of this "success" to the women and children who were the overwhelming majority of recipients? Here a group of distinguished feminist scholars examines the causes and the impact of recent changes in welfare policy. Some of the authors trace the politics of welfare from the 1960s, emphasizing how attitudes toward "motherwork" and "working mothers" have evolved in the backlash against poor women's motherhood. Several other authors consider the effects of the new welfare policy on employment and wages, on the lives of noncitizen immigrants, on poor women's ability to escape domestic violence, and on their reproductive and parental rights. A third set of authors explores dependency and caregiving, along with the role of feminist thinking on these issues in the politics of welfare. Whose Welfare? concludes with a historical analysis of activism among poor women. By illuminating that legacy, the volume challenges readers to build progressive agendas from the demands and actions of poor and working-class women.

Author : Kathleen Mullan Harris
Publisher : Temple University Press
ISBN 13 : 9781566394994
Total Pages : 234 pages
Book Rating : 4.96/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Teen Mothers and the Revolving Welfare Door written by Kathleen Mullan Harris and published by Temple University Press. This book was released on 1997 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Kathleen Mullan Harris reveals the relationship between black teenage mothers and the welfare system. Does welfare encourage them to maintain a life of dependency? How does education, marriage, and employment impact this relationship? How do these women escape dependency? Harris's account is based on Frank Furstenberg's Baltimore study, which began in the 1960s and has continued for more than 20 years. This study traces the paths of these mothers and provides commentary on the changes in the welfare system and the way society perceives welfare recipients. Not only are job prospects worse today but so are welfare benefits, and the abortion rate has risen drastically.

Author : Linda Gordon
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 452 pages
Book Rating : 4.61/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Pitied But Not Entitled written by Linda Gordon and published by . This book was released on 1995 with total page 452 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When Americans denounce "welfare", most are thinking of the program of aid for single mothers and their children--the only program of the Social Security Act to become stigmatized. Gordon uncovers the tangled roots of competing visions of welfare and shows that welfare reform can only work if it recognizes that single motherhood is an enduring aspect of contemporary life.

Author : Mimi Abramovitz
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 168 pages
Book Rating : 4.40/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Under Attack, Fighting Back written by Mimi Abramovitz and published by . This book was released on 1996 with total page 168 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Named an "Outstanding Book" by the Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Human Rights in North America "Abramovitz introduces the reader to cutting edge socioeconomic analysis. . . . It is not possible to come away from Under Attack, Fighting Back with a sense that welfare is a simplistic topic or that the human consequences of adjustments in the existing system are inconsequential." --Labor History "This lively and informative book deserves to be widely read. It provides an excellent history of AFDC and the activities of various women's groups who have campaigned hard over the years for improvements in services to the poor." --Journal of Sociology and Social Welfare "Extraordinarily lucid and useful . . . " --In These Times In this short, eye-opening book, Mimi Abramovitz describes the heartless assault on impoverished single mothers in the name of "ending welfare dependency." Outlining the history of Aid to Families with Dependent Children, Abramovitz shows how the manipulation of gender, race, and class have made welfare vulnerable to attack. This new edition brings a well-received work completely up to date with analysis of recent developments in welfare "reform" and activism.

Author : Sheila Shaver
Publisher : Edward Elgar Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1785367161
Total Pages : 480 pages
Book Rating : 4.68/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Handbook on Gender and Social Policy written by Sheila Shaver and published by Edward Elgar Publishing. This book was released on 2018-09-28 with total page 480 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Providing a state of the art overview, this comprehensive Handbook is an essential introduction to the subject of Gender and Social Policy. Bringing together original contributions and research from leading researchers it covers the theoretical perspectives of the field, the central policy terrain of gender inequalities of income, employment and care, and family policy. Examining gender and social policy at both the regional and national level, the Handbook is an excellent resource for advanced students and scholars of sociology, political science, women’s studies, policy studies as well as practitioners seeking to understand how gender shapes the contours of social policy and politics.

Author : James A. Tyner
Publisher : U of Nebraska Press
ISBN 13 : 0803253389
Total Pages : 269 pages
Book Rating : 4.84/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Violence in Capitalism written by James A. Tyner and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2016-01-01 with total page 269 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A geographic reckoning with violence through case studies of how violence affects the dispossessed, women, children, workers, and the environment"--

Author : Gwendolyn Mink
Publisher : Cornell University Press
ISBN 13 : 1501728865
Total Pages : 213 pages
Book Rating : 4.60/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Wages of Motherhood written by Gwendolyn Mink and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2018-08-06 with total page 213 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Entering the vigorous debate about the nature of the American welfare state, The Wages of Motherhood illuminates ways in which a "maternalist" social policy emerged from the crucible of gender and racial politics between the world wars. Gwendolyn Mink here examines the cultural dynamics of maternalist social policy, which have often been overlooked by institutional and class analyses of the welfare state. Mink maintains that the movement for welfare provisions, while resulting in important gains, reinforced existing patterns of gender and racial inequality. She explores how AngloAmerican women reformers, as they gained increasing political recognition, promoted an ideology of domesticity that became the core of maternalist social policy. Focusing on reformers such as Jane Addams, Grace Abbott, Katherine Lenroot, and Frances Perkins, Mink shows how they helped shape a social policy premised on moral character and cultural conformity rather than universal entitlement. According to Mink, commitments to a gendered and racialized ideology of virtuous citizenship led women's reform organizations in the United States to support welfare policies that were designed to uplift and regulate motherhood and thus to reform the cultural character of citizens. The upshot was a welfare agenda that linked maternity with dependency, poverty with cultural weakness, and need with moral failing. Relegating poor women and racial minorities to dependent status, maternalist policy had the effect of stengthening ideological and institutional forms of subordination. In Mink's view, the legacy of this benevolent—and invidious—policy contimies to inflect thinking about welfare reform today.

Author : LaGuana Gray
Publisher : LSU Press
ISBN 13 : 0807157694
Total Pages : 288 pages
Book Rating : 4.95/5 ( download)

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Download or read book We Just Keep Running the Line written by LaGuana Gray and published by LSU Press. This book was released on 2014-11-05 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The poultry processing industry in El Dorado, Arkansas, was an economic powerhouse in the latter half of the twentieth century. It was the largest employer in the interconnected region of South Arkansas and North Louisiana surrounding El Dorado, and the fates of many related companies and farms depended on its continued financial success. We Just Keep Running the Line is the story of the rise of the poultry processing industry in El Dorado and the labor force -- composed primarily of black women -- upon which it came to rely. At a time when agricultural jobs were in decline and Louisiana stood at the forefront of rising anti-welfare sentiment, much of the work available in the area went to men, driving women into less attractive, labor-intensive jobs. LaGuana Gray argues that the justification for placing African American women in the lowest-paying and most dangerous of these jobs, like poultry processing, derives from longstanding mischaracterizations of black women by those in power. In evaluating the perception of black women as "less" than white women -- less feminine, less moral, less deserving of social assistance, and less invested in their families' and communities' well-being -- Gray illuminates the often-exploitative nature of southern labor, the growth of the agribusiness model of food production, and the role of women of color in such food industries. Using collected oral histories to allow marginalized women of color to tell their own stories and to contest and reshape narratives commonly used against them, We Just Keep Running the Line explores the physical and psychological toll this work took on black women, analyzing their survival strategies and their fight to retain their humanity in an exploitative industry.