American Dream: Three Women, Ten Kids, and a Nation's Drive to End Welfare [Hardcover]

Jason Deparle (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 9, 2004

Bill Clinton vowed to “end welfare as we know it” in his first run for president in 1992. Four years later, Congress translated a catchy slogan into a law that sent nine million women and children streaming from the rolls. Did it work? In his definitive book on this unprecedented upheaval in social policy, New York Times reporter and two- time Pulitzer Prize finalist Jason DeParle follows three women in one extended family to a set of surprising answers.

Cutting between the corridors of Washington and the meanest streets of Milwaukee, DeParle tracks the story from the White House to the local crack house. After twelve years on welfare, Angie, a truculent mother of three, finds a job and a 401(k)— and a boyfriend who tries to shoot her. Her cousin Jewell, glamorous even in sweatpants, adores the children she struggles to support. Opal combines an antic wit with an appetite for cocaine while the welfare agency that is supposed to help her squanders its millions. Drawing on more than a decade of reporting, DeParle traces their story back six generations to a common ancestor—a Mississippi slave—and adds politicians, case workers, reformers, and rogues to an epic exploration of America’s struggle with poverty and dependency.

Probing the law’s unlikely successes—and haunting failures—American Dream provides a startling expose´ in this election year.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

More than a decade after presidential candidate Bill Clinton floated the idea of ending "welfare as we know it," the changes to the system have become so accepted and entrenched that it is difficult to remember the heated controversy surrounding the issue of reform. Jason DeParle, a social policy reporter for The New York Times, forcefully brings the subject to life in American Dream, a moving and informed examination of the challenges, complexities, successes, and failures involved in fixing our nation's ailing welfare system. Tracing the lives of three women and their children as legislative changes are pushed through Washington and the state of Wisconsin, DeParle puts an extraordinarily human face on a subject that is too often prone to ideological oversimplification. As DeParle adeptly shows, their story "of adversity variously overcome, compounded, or merely endured ... embodies the story of welfare writ large."

The three compelling women at the heart of DeParle's narrative are vastly different temperamentally, yet they share the abstract qualities of strength and endurance, as well as extended family ties. DeParle paints their portraits with respect and sensitivity, and he provides a marvelous family history that reveals how "the story of welfare" is painfully "tangled in the story of race." Our glimpse at these difficult lives and the forces that profoundly shape them inspire an equal measure of hope and disappointment, and a large measure of outrage. As these remarkably resilient women struggle to raise their families, corruption is exposed in the very offices charged with implementing the newly adopted reforms. DeParle accepts that removing nine million women and children from the welfare rolls represents enormous progress. However, he simultaneously recognizes that we are dismally failing to confront a consequence of welfare reform: a new class of working poor. --Silvana Tropea

From Publishers Weekly

While campaigning for president in 1992, Bill Clinton vowed to "end welfare as we know it"; four years later, the much publicized slogan evolved into a law that sent nine million women and children off the rolls. New York Times reporter DeParle takes an eye-opening look at the controversial law through the lives of three black women affected by it, all part of the same extended family, and at the shapers of the policy. He moves back and forth between the women's tough Milwaukee neighborhoods and the strategy sessions and speeches of Clinton, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, former Wisconsin Gov. Tommy Thompson and others. But the best parts of the book are its slices of life: DeParle accompanies the women on trips to the dentist, on visits to loved ones in jail, to job-training workshops and on travels to Mississippi. He offers few solutions for breaking the cycle of poverty and dependency in America, but DeParle's large-scale conclusion is that moving poor women into the workforce contributed to declines in crime, teen pregnancy and crack use.
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Product Details

• Hardcover: 432 pages
• Publisher: Viking Adult (September 9, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0670892750
• ISBN-13: 978-0670892754
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.3 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (24 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #230,098 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

43 of 47 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Well-Written and Frustrating Look at Welfare Reform, January 2, 2005

By 

Andrew Olmsted (Colorado Springs, CO USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: American Dream: Three Women, Ten Kids, and a Nation's Drive to End Welfare (Hardcover)

American Dream chronicles the effects of the welfare reform bill on three women in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Deparle has done an excellent job of pulling together a history of black poverty and welfare, knocking down a number of shibboleths en route to his conclusion. No matter which side of the argument you find yourself, Deparle's research will probably undermine certain things you thought were true, and force you to rethink how to approach the brutally difficult problem of poverty in America.

American Drean is at turns inspiring, frustrating, and unsatisfying. The hard work and occasional successes of Deparle's subjects cannot fail to remind the reader of the amazing ability of humans to overcome obstacles placed in their path. The dismal job done by welfare, whether pre- or post-reform to actually help people will infuriate the reader, as even people who believe that government has no business trying to support the poor would like to see such programs that exist do well, and to see the poor given every opportunity to improve their lot. Ultimately, American Dream cannot help but be unsatisfying to the reader, because Deparle offers no false ending to his story: these women continue to struggle even today (George Will recently mentioned one of them in an op-ed piece), and their struggle will undoubtedly be with them to the end of their lives.

Deparle deserves credit for neither sugarcoating the problem nor penning a jeremiad. His story simply presents a collection of successes and failures, painted against the backdrop of welfare and welfare reform. American Dream notes the massive obstacles the poor face in attempting to break out of poverty, obstacles those of us in the middle class often have no familiarity with. Yet Deparle does not counsel hopelessness, nor does he forget to note what successes his subjects have.

Ultimately, however, the reader will be hard-pressed to finish American Dream without feeling the dull ache of wonder: America is supposed to be the land of opportunity, yet true success seems to reside just outside the reach of all too many people. Is there any way to reopen those doors? Deparle wisely leaves that to his readers. His contribution has been to bring a better understanding of the problems faced by America's poor to light, and for that Deparle deserves great credit. American Dream is by no means an upbeat work, but it is a very valuable one.

26 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars American Dream: A Triumph, October 27, 2004

By 

Theresa Miller (Pittsburgh, PA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: American Dream: Three Women, Ten Kids, and a Nation's Drive to End Welfare (Hardcover)

In American Dream DeParle provides us with a historical overview of welfare policy from the signing of the Social Security Act in 1935 to the Signing of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996. Against this backdrop he interweaves the personal narratives of three single mom's who are trying to make their way on, through and off of welfare, while juggling the complexities of the social and political economy of welfare, work-fare (workfirst) and the warfare of the streets.

Trying to assess if we have, in fact, "ended welfare as we know it," DeParle boldly challenges the nation to push beyond its stereotypic one-dimensional view of welfare moms as largely African American, lazy, angry, single mothers eager to manipulate and get over on the system. Instead, DeParle does something really astounding...he tells us the truth-no filters, no screens, no smoke and mirrors, just the truth-a real picture of real women who are strong, and determined, and yes, angry, and also creative and frightened and proud and resilient. Women working really hard at trying to make sense of their own personal truth, their life experiences on welfare, and figuring out how to survive it. It's not necessarily a pretty picture, but it's a real picture, and it's an honest picture. And, for those who grew up in poverty and on welfare, it provides an opportunity to redeem their past with a sense of dignity and integrity. This is a must read for anyone interested in government, politics, welfare policy and the truth about life in the subculture of poverty in America.

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars stellar!, December 24, 2005

By 

Reader - See all my reviews

This review is from: American Dream: Three Women, Ten Kids, and a Nation's Drive to End Welfare (Mass Market Paperback)

I assigned "American Dream" in a senior seminar I taught in the fall 2005 semester on Children's Health, Education & Welfare. My students went out of their way to convey to me how much they loved this book. I did too. Books on welfare reform tend to fall into either the numbing statistical variety (very academic) or emotional and anecdotal variety. DeParle's book is that rare one that combines both varieties with exceptional writing. Few academics write as well as DeParle and few journalists know as much as he does about welfare reform. For my money, this is one of the very best books on public policy, generally, and welfare reform, specifically. There are also 2 excellent PBS Newshour segments available online that profile both DeParle and the lives of the people he chronicles. Together with the book, the PBS segments make for a great week or two of teaching welfare reform.