normative
Welfare-Work Mandates Devalue Dependent Care
The insistence that welfare recipients must work for wages downgrades the value of women's dependent-care labor (caring for children and the ill within the household); historically, very poor women moved in and out of the waged workforce precisely because of such care responsibilities, and the original Puritan work ethic itself recognized dependent care as socially necessary work.
normativepending
Speaker
Elizabeth AndersonEvidence Quote
“before the welfare reform under President Clinton in 1990... very poor women... were in and out of the workforce... because they're taking care of children or ill and disabled people within their family... this obsession that poor women had to be working for wages grossly under-values the importance of dependent care work within the family.”
Created: 6/13/2026, 12:29:50 AM
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