“The Single-Parent Family,” Child Poverty, and Welfare Reform

Although more than one-fifth of America's children are living in poverty, current public and political dialogue is not focusing on underlying causes of poverty, but on reforming welfare system and reducing welfare costs. In this context, the single-parent family has been identified as problem and target of reform. Fieldwork among low-income families in upstate New York provides data that challenge politically popular paradigm of the single-parent family, and questions appropriateness of this focus in current welfare reform planning. Unstructured interviews, focus groups, and residential history questionnaires exposed dimensions of temporality, process, and values often ignored in studies of poor families. The research found important variation among low-income families with a single resident parent, and showed that monolithic concept of the single-parent family is inadequate and misleading. These points were further explored in reconnaissance research conducted in high-po...