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Essay / Research Paper Abstract
A 15 page review of Linda Gordon's book in which the writer analyzes how reformers view poor single mothers and welfare. Three of its chapters are about the views of the white women's social welfare network, the black women's social welfare network (excluded from the white women's groups mostly by raw segregation), and the white male social insurance reformer network. Gordon argues that contemporary welfare programs for single mothers were shaped by the ideas and the decisions that went into state aid programs created between 1910 and 1920, programs that were variously called mothers' pensions, widows' pensions and mothers' aid. Various sociopolitical points and arguments presented by Gordon are analytically presented. No other sources cited.
Page Count:
15 pages (~225 words per page)
File: D0_Wlefbook.rtf
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Unformatted sample text from the term paper:
of its chapters are about the views of the white womens social welfare network, the black womens social welfare network (excluded from the white womens groups mostly by raw segregation),
and the white male social insurance reformer network. I should note, too, that the book is not easy reading: the organizing principles within and across chapters are not clear and
the narrative line is rarely sustained, so that it takes a lot of work to discern the overall story. Still, Gordons reformer-centered perspective is an important original contribution and one
that offers provocative insights into the current welfare reform debate. Gordon argues that contemporary welfare programs for single mothers were shaped by the ideas and the
decisions that went into state aid programs created between 1910 and 1920, programs that were variously called mothers pensions, widows pensions and mothers aid. Aid to Dependent Children (adc), the
program for single mothers included in the Social Security Act of 1935 that grew into todays afdc, merely added federal funds to the mothers aid model. Unless we understand the
fundamental problem in the mothers aid model, we are condemned, as historians are fond of saying, to repeat our mistakes. So what was the problem? Those
professionals were at best ambivalent on the question of whether women, married or unmarried, should be full-time mothers or people with children who also work in the paid labor force
and participate in public life outside the home. What they wrote into state legislation, and enacted in the administration of state programs, was "the dominant family norm, the family-wage system
... that prescribes earning as the sole responsibility of husbands and unpaid domestic labor as the only proper long-term occupation for women." This vision of social
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