Values of the legislation The Welfare Reform is hailed as being a great success probably because this legislation resulted in a very remarkable decrease in the number of welfare rolls. It’s estimated to have reduced the enrollment from 4.4 million when the legislation was instituted in 1996 to 2.1 million at the end of 2001. However, according to Hays, the success reports did not address the plight of mothers and caseworkers who actually experienced the legislation impact. In her book, Flat Broke, With Children, she explains thorough a story the impact of the Welfare Reform by describing the challenges that the welfare recipient had to endure to manage their family issues, their work issues and deal with the laws set by the Welfare Reform. The legislation was based on “family values” as they were (Hays 3). Hays points out that a nation’s laws are a clear reflection of the nation’s values and this is what forms the central dogma of discussion in her book. The Welfare Reform Act which was passed during the Clinton administration helped reduce the welfare enrollment by over 50% but it pushed many families to the dead-end employment and not having not stable jobs. On the other hand, the Welfare Reform encouraged women to marry as emphasis on family values (Hays 3); they then got married to men who could not even support a family. This vividly shows that the government is communicating contradicting messages through its unbending bureaucracies pulling the women on welfare and even those with well-intended cases in opposing directions. From the stories given by Hays, it’s evident that the Welfare Reform did very little to address issues like sexual abuse, homelessness, poverty, disintegrated families and the extent to which women had to go through juggling through numerous part-time low-paying work, other than expressing themselves as victims. From the emphasis of family values, it is quite clear that the statute implies that the welfare beneficiaries are lazy and egocentric swindlers without work ethics of family values, this is not the case. To imply that the reason why the women cannot pay for their families’ needs was because they did not want to work, to get into marriage and bring up happy and healthy families was wrong and uncouth. These women are in essence burdened by real social problems like being uneducated and lacking supportive and financially stable partners plus the expensive yet unreliable childcare services. Work Plan and Family Plan According to Hays, the Welfare Reform is both cultural and social reflection of the society. She analyses what the welfare says about American values but the message communicated by the actual situation on the ground is confusing. The welfare laws emphasize commitment to family values like encouraging marriage and punishing childbearing out of wedlock yet they again imply that poor people lack work ethic and are lazy and hence push single mothers to do even odd jobs to fend for themselves. One can get pushed for not doing enough to find a job and also for losing one because of flimsy reasons some like taking off to attend to an abused child. Hays has named these two competing ides as workplace and family plan terming them and majo