Regulating the Reproduction and Mothering of Poor Women: The Controlling Image of the Welfare Mother in Television News Coverage of Welfare Reform

This analysis demonstrates that the controlling image of the welfare mother was ubiquitous in television news coverage of U.S. welfare reform from 1992–2007. This controlling image consists of racist stereotypes of women on public assistance as childlike, hyperfertile, lazy, and bad mothers. In the discourse on welfare reform, these stereotypes were deployed to support policies intended to control poor women's reproduction and mothering. The welfare mother image was central to framing the debate in terms of the responsibility of public assistance recipients rather than the structural constraints that lead to families to require public assistance.