What Mothers Want: Welfare Reform and Maternal Desire*

In this study I use participant observations, face-to-face interviews, and focus group interviews to examine how women on welfare read and negotiate culture-of-poverty discourse and the imagery that this discourse spawns. I spoke with two groups of young single mothers receiving welfare. The first group included young mothers between the ages of 18 and 23 who were attending high school in a community-based program that served women on welfare. The second group included mothers in their early to mid 20's who were attending either a local two-year college or research university. Education was a path of resistance for the women in this study. Young single mothers were motivated to obtain an education; they wanted a better life for their child. As students, women were situated in a status that allowed them to reject the attributes associated with dominant welfare imagery. Women forged identities against the grain of dominant images that depict all women on welfare as "lazy women" and "bad mothers." The students in this study made a claim to characteristics like hard work, motivation, and good parenting. Yet, students did not fully reject culture-of-poverty discourse. Their identities as students were situated in a form of oppositional thinking that set them against other women on welfare. Key words: welfare, single mothers, education, women, identity Introduction In the mid 1960s scholars and politicians spun Oscar Lewis' culture-of-poverty thesis into a dominant explanation of welfare "dependency." As a discourse that ebbs and flows with the social and political climate, the conservative atmosphere of the 1990s reignited culture-of-poverty thinking and gave shape to the welfare reform debate (Sidel, 2000). The language of reform construes welfare "dependency" as an issue of out-of-wedlock birth, which, in turn, is seen as a feature of "underclass" culture. Dominant imagery depicts single mothers on welfare as women who lack an "appropriate" orientation to the Protestant work ethic and to mainstream family values (Hill Collins, 2000; Kaplan, 1997; Sidel, 2000). Consequently, reform discourse emphasizes resocialization; it encourages the formation of programs that aim to inculcate an "appropriate" (read White, middle class, heterosexual) orientation to work and family. Progressive thinkers counter mainstream arguments by refocusing attention on the structural causes of single parenting and welfare "dependency" (Ambramovitz, 1996; Edin and Lein, 1997; Eitzen and Baca Zinn, 2000; Parvez, 2002; Kaplan, 1997; Seccombe, 1999; Sidel, 2000; Wilson, 1997). (Particular attention is paid to Black women since welfare discourse is a racialized discourse.) Scholars suggest that culture-of-poverty discourse is a political strategy--a discursive move--that obscures the effects of recent economic and political trends on low-income individuals and families. Economic restructuring, the shift of fiscal responsibility from the federal to the state and local level (the new federalism), and deep cuts to the social safety net has deeply impacted working class and poor communities (Edin and Lein, 1997; Eitzen and Baca Zinn, 2000; Kaplan, 1997; Sidel, 2000; Wilson 1996). Research findings show that low-income Black women value marriage as much as White women (Bulcroft and Bulcroft, 1993; McLaughlin and Lichter, 1997; Kaplan, 1997; Wilson, 1996). However, a shrinking pool of economically stable men makes marriage less likely, and the strain of living in poverty contributes to divorce and marital disruption among those who are married (Blau, Kahn, and Waldfogel, 2000; Eitzen and Baca Zinn, 2000, p. 62). In sum, studies find that the outcome of economic and political changes--expressed in peoples lives as poor educational and occupational opportunities, poverty wage jobs, anti-affirmative action policies, and continuing employment discrimination--are the strongest determinants of welfare "dependency" (Eitzen and Baca Zinn, 2000; Kaplan, 1997; Wilson, 1997). …