by Sharon Hays
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Product Description
Hailed as a great success, welfare reform resulted in a dramatic decline in the welfare rolls--from 4.4 million families in 1996 to 2 million in 2003. But what does this "success" look like to the welfare mothers and welfare caseworkers who experienced it? In Flat Broke With Children, Sharon Hays tells us the story of welfare reform from inside the welfare office and inside the lives of welfare mothers, describing the challenges that welfare recipients face in managing their work, their families, and the rules and regulations of welfare reform.
Welfare reform, experienced on the ground, is not a rosy picture. The majority of adult welfare clients are mothers--over 90 percent--and the time limits imposed by welfare reform throw millions of these mostly unmarried, desperate women into the labor market, where they must accept low wages, the most menial work, the poorest hours, with no benefits, and little flexibility. Hays provides a vivid portrait of their lives--debunking many of the stereotypes we have of welfare recipients--but she also steps back to explore what welfare reform reveals about the meaning of work and family life in our society. In particular, she argues that an inherent contradiction lies at the heart of welfare policy, which emphasizes traditional family values even as its ethic of "personal responsibility" requires women to work and leave their children in childcare or at home alone all day long.
Hays devoted three years to visiting welfare clients and two welfare offices, one in a medium-sized town in the Southeast, another in a large, metropolitan area in the West. Drawing on this hands-on research, Flat Broke With Children is the first book to explore the impact of welfare reform on motherhood, marriage, and work in women's lives, and the first book to offer us a portrait of how welfare reform plays out in thousands of local welfare offices and in millions of homes across the nation.
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Average Customer Review:
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
Every woman should read this book!!, 2007-01-02
I read this book over the Christmas holidays and it was definately a worthwhile read. This book puts a face on the issue of the poor in america, and helps to explain the feminization of poverty as well. Whether some of you belive it or not, this could happen to you. A definate must read for all women, and a great gift for the college bound.
9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
Every woman in America should read this book, 2006-02-09
I picked up this book to do a research paper on the topic of welfare reform. This book has been both enlightening and frightening in its information and the arguments put forth by the author. The research is amazingly thorough and well documented throughout the text. Hays points out many contradictions concerning the goals set forth by the Personal Responsibility Act.
The bottom line is that we are living in a society that is still grossly unequal in terms of sex, race, and class. I especially appreciated the realism that the ideals and provisions of welfare reform fall far below any sort of real hope of mobility in terms of the demands of an evolving global market place.
This book is not just about welfare reform; it is indicative of a society that we are becoming - one that undermines the care of our nation's children and welfare for struggling families and most especially the plight of single mothers.
12 of 27 people found the following review helpful:
Seth Frantzman is an idiot, 2004-11-11
This is the stupidest review I have read so far on this site. The person who wrote it has no idea what they are talking about. I seriously doubt they even considered reading the book. (I haven't but I've been poor and I've been on welfare.)
You should know something about a subject before you spout off.
11 of 117 people found the following review helpful:
 Ignoring reality, 2004-04-26
This book critiques welfare reform by giving the reader a teary eyed story about people who have no money and have lots of kids to raise. Yet this argument simply ignores the facts. First of all this book ignores personal responsibility. How bout people on welfare taking responsibility for having unprotected sex and having ten kids without ever bothering to get married. How bout taking responsibility for not having a job. People that don't have jobs and can never find work are in that situation because they actually work to not find work. Most people that are unemployed love being unemployed and they love living off the government dole and being lazy. And this book simply ignores this fact. This book tries to make everyone feel so bad for people that are basically in a situation they themselves caused. Rather then trying to exhort these people to learn a new skill and not have as many kids instead this book blames the government because the government has dared to say `if you don't find a job in five years we might decrease your stipends'. Amazingly enough in countries that don't have welfare people manage to find work. If welfare ended tomorrow all these people would go get jobs, in fact it is welfare that pays them not to work and discourages them from having a honest job.(...)
17 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
"Reform" Sucks, 2003-06-07
This book will prove enlightening to anyone who is concerned with the consequences of "welfare reform." Flat Broke, while "putting a face on" reform, provides the analytical tools with which to understand the crux of the welfare dilemma. The dilemma is not unique to those women who must turn to public assistance, it is one faced by all those that live within American culture. Work and family. We all know the struggle - at least in some form. Hays does an excellent job illustrating how welfare recipients DO pursue mainstream ideals, DO foster mainstream American ideals. . . but are systematically denied the ability to live up to our cultural ideal of middle class. As always, those at the bottom bear the brunt of our cultural contradictions more than any other social group.
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