Friday, November 9, 2007

Welfare (and more!) Reading for next week

Next week's reading is a bit of a hodge-podge, but I think we'll be able to draw some intersecting lines, or at least we'll look towards Beth and Bailey to do it for us.

The Coontz chapters move us forward from the 1950s to the 1990s with an examination of the feminist movement, the resulting "culture wars" of the 1980s and 1990s, and the gay marriage issue.

The Gordon article ("Social Insurance and Public Assistance") takes us back to the origins of the welfare state; the Mink article ("The Lady and the Tramp (II)") fast-forwards to the so-called end of welfare in the mid-1990s.

The Kunzel article fits in between the Gordon and the Mink. It takes a more intricate look at the psychological analyses of marriage, race, and motherhood - connecting us with Romano's Race Mixing as well as with this week's welfare discussion.

2 comments:

Gillian said...

I really enjoyed reading the Mink article - I think it gave a fairly easy-to-understand account of the recent state of welfare and how these opinions came about. I was especially struck by her own experiences working with social issues and her insight into women politicians. The fact that Democratic Congresswomen were against welfare for single mothers was very surprising to me because I'd always thought of the Democratic party as the party that was more for social reforms and helping those who, for some reason or other, cannot help themselves. It was especially startling because they were women, too; I would have thought that there would have been some sympathy for the single mothers there.

It was also interesting to watch how society moved from expecting the women to stay at home and never leave on her own (especially middle-class women in the nineteenth century) to work, to expecting all women to be employed, an issue for poor single women who cannot afford the childcare for her to get a job. The changing standards, without changing other pressures society puts on women, has created a dilemma for poor single mothers that I can't see being solved before some of the socially enforced codes for women lessen.

Claire said...

I think that the part I found most interesting was Kunzel article about Neurosis. In my psychology class we were talking about the implications of Freudian ideas in the public sphere. I thought that the shift to make middle-class women neurotic when the had illegitimate children was fascinating.

I agree with Gillian that the Mink article was very easy to read and understand. Her argument about the failure of welfare because it tries to replace the male breadwinner instead of supporting women and children ties in well with the other readings. The Gordon and the Coontz readings give a good historical basis for this development. How would welfare work if it was supporting women and children? All the authors offer the same critique that welfare is wholly inadequate, but there is no consensus about how to carry out a change effecively.