On the one hand our welfare laws reflect a commitment to “family values” — for example, there are enticements for marriage and penalties for unwed childbearing. On the other hand, our welfare laws assume that the poor don’t have a good work ethic and so push single mothers out of the home and into any dead-end, low-paying job that they can find.
There are harsh penalties both for not doing enough to find a job and for losing a job for the “wrong” reasons — and those include having to take time off because your child is molested or abused by a caregiver. The end of their “dependence” on the state is celebrated, but who celebrates working mothers’ new-found dependence on Wal-Mart?
Thus two distinct and contradictory visions of work and family are created:
- “How, then, are we to interpret the message of welfare reform? Are marriage and family commitment the central concern? Or is the importance of individual self-sufficiency so great that the care of children can take a back seat to mothers’ paid work? Are we reasserting the portrait of a nurturing mom and a breadwinning husband, or are we pressing for a world full of breadwinners?”
Hays calls these two competing ideas the Work Plan and the Family Plan. In the Work Plan, the work requirements of the welfare laws exist to “rehabilitate” mothers, transforming them from “mere” stay-at-home moms into full-fledged members of the work force. In the Family Plan, the work requirements serve to punish mothers, teaching them a hard lesson about what happens to you when you fail to adhere to traditional social roles by divorcing and/or having children out of wedlock.
As a result of these and similar contradictions, Hays concludes that our nation’s welfare laws fail to offer a single, coherent solution to our nation’s problems and do little more than give the appearance of solving social problems and poverty. Welfare reform laws offered a little to people all across the ideological and political spectrum; in so doing, however, they serve no one at all.
What do our nation’s welfare laws tell us about our nation’s values?
- “Imagine a visitor from some far-off land trying to “read” these provisions for a vision of how American family life is appropriately ordered. The implicit message, so far, would simply state this: individual mothers are solely responsible for the health, education, and welfare of their children; all women without the financial resources, marketable skills, and stamina necessary to raise children alone should be assigned a life of celibacy. If these edicts were all we had to show as a representation of the family values we wish to champion, our nation and our families might well seem cruel, unjust, or at least grossly underdeveloped.”
Anyone concerned with poverty, class structure, political or cultural ideology, and welfare in American society should read Hays’ book. Her meshing of cultural critique with direct interviews makes her book more personal and lucid than many texts that purport to confront the problems of poverty. Hays introduces us to real women, real people, and the real face of welfare in America.
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