Welfare Mothers’ Reflections on Personal Responsibility

This article discusses personal responsibility, fulfilling one’s moral and social obligations as a purposeful and self‐reliant agent, from the viewpoint of 20 White welfare mothers completing a community college program. In their stories, the participants revealed that they behaved in responsible ways under difficult conditions. Their accounts demonstrated that the most responsible decision for a single mother in many cases may be welfare, rather than a paying job and unstable employment. The women described a new type of personal responsibility in the context of community college: setting and working toward long‐term goals rather than focusing purely on survival. Personal responsibility did not seem to reside in the individual, but was the result of the interaction between individual agency and context, an interpersonal responsibility.