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KAREN SECCOMBE Portland State University DELORES JAMES University of Florida* KIMBERELY BATTLE WALTERS Azusa Pacific University* Welfare reform is in the forefront of the political and social agenda in the United States. This research examines the ways that women on interpret use. From in-depth interviews with 47 women who received cash assistance in 1995, we examined the theories behind their accounts of the stigmatizing of recipients and why they, and other women, use the system. Although the respondents tended to blame the social structure, the system itself or fate for their own economic circumstances and use, they often invoked popular and mainstream individualist and cultural victim-blaming theories to explain other women's reliance on the system. Many women believed popular constructions of the mother as lazy and unmotivated and evaluated their own situation as distinctly different from the norm. The hegemony of the individual perspective is a strong and stubborn barrier to dealing constructively with poverty and reform. I've had people who didn't know I was receiving assistance, and everything was just fine. But when people find out you're receiving assistance, it's like, why? Why did you get lazy all of the sudden? Leah, a 24-year-old mother Key Words: inequality, policy, poverty; TANE welfare. Approximately 39 million people are poor in the U.S., according to recent data from the U.S. Bureau of the Census (1997a). Within this large segment of the population are the approximately 3.5 million families, mostly mothers and their dependent children who receive cash assistance, which until recently was called Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC). President Bill Clinton signed monumental reform legislation, which became federal law on July 1, 1997. P.L.104-193 abolished the AFDC program and replaced it with a new program called Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF). Turning many of the details of law over to the states, it sets lifetime payments at a maximum of 5 years, and the majority of adult recipients are required to work after 2 years. Twentyfive percent of recipients in each state must be working by the end of 1997. By the year 2002, 50% must be employed. Other changes under this reform include child-care assistance, at least 1 year of transitional Medicaid, the identification of the children's biological fathers, and the requirement that unmarried recipients who are minors must live at home and stay in school in order to receive benefits. AFDC and are virtually synonymous with the word in the minds of most people. In the larger sense of the word, could also encompass schools, parks, police and fire protection, as the term, welfare state, popular in most of Western Europe, implies. However, in the U.S. generally brings to mind the cash assistance programs of AFDC and TANF, and therefore, welfare, AFDC, and TANF are used interchangeably here for ease of discussion. Although was originally created to serve primarily White widows and their children, welfare's recipient base has shifted over the years to mostly divorced and never-married women with children. Many people think that cash programs provide benefits to a large number of never-married, young, African American women and their children, a stereotype that has undoubtedly contributed to the growing sentiment against (Pivan Quadagno, 1994). Yet, African Americans constitute only 36% of recipients (U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on Ways and Means, 1996). AFDC is criticized as an extravagant and costly program that is spiraling out of control and is responsible for a sizable component of our federal deficit, but it approximates only 1% of federal spending (Congressional Digest, 1995; U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on Ways and Means, 1996). …
Seccombe et al. (Sun,) studied this question.