Welfare's End [Hardcover]

Gwendolyn Mink (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 1998

With her analysis of the thirty-year campaign to reform and ultimately to end welfare, Gwendolyn Mink levels a searing indictment of anti-welfare politicians' assault on poor mothers. She charges that the basic elements of the new welfare policy subordinate poor single mothers in a separate system of law. Mink points to the racial, class, and gender biases of both liberals and conservatives to explain the odd but sturdy consensus behind welfare reforms that force the poor single mother to relinquish basic rights and compel her to find economic security in work outside the home.

Mink explores how and why we should cure the unique inequality of poor single mothers by reorienting the emphasis of welfare policy away from regulating mothers to rewarding the work they do. Every mother is a working mother, the bumper sticker proclaims, but the work mothers do pays no wages. Mink argues that women's equality depends on economic support for caregivers' work.

Welfare's End challenges the ways in which policymakers define the problem they seek to cure. While legislators assume that something is wrong with poor single mothers, Mink insists that something is wrong with a system that invades their rights and negates their work. Showing how welfare reform harms women, Mink invites the design of policies to promote gender justice.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Charged with chasing middle-class women back into the home while chasing poor women out, American conservatives have recently come under attack for this perceived contradiction in their attitudes. In her solid history of the struggle over welfare, Mink, a professor of political science at UC-Santa Cruz and a longtime campaigner for welfare reform, takes aim at politicians who target poor women. Mink's essential point is that welfare is a guarantee of women's equality. It's vital, she says, not only for women's human rights but also for the strength of democracy to view welfare not as a subsidy for dependence (which it largely is not) or as an income substitution for the loss of a breadwinner (which it was first intended to be) but as an income owed to those who work inside the home by raising children. The campaign to make fathers support their children, which is a widely favored tactic, actually can have the effect of forcing the mother to be dependent on a man she may want nothing to do with. Thus the freedom to choose her own company is effectively taken from her. Mink's arguments counter the myths of welfare dependency and she is able to make a compelling case for positions that are far out of the mainstream of current politics. This is a well-reasoned and eye-opening book, and one hopes Mink's departure from the debate's current narrow focus will not lose her the audience she deserves. Anyone interested in these topics should be intrigued by the way she has shifted the grounds of the discussion.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews

At last--a serious counterthrust against the popular self-interested praise for welfare reform. Even if you hated the recently abolished welfare system, the glee with which the poor were demonized could be discomforting. There is something unseemly about observing the well-to-do chastising the impoverished and then preparing to reap the financial benefits. In response Mink (Political Science/Univ. of Calif., Santa Cruz) goes beyond questioning myths, exposing hypocrisy, and offering sympathy; she offers a positive argument for welfare as a fundamental right. In this society, mothers are unpaid workers. If they're also single and poor, they are workers uniquely at risk: While their occupation is essential and usually highly praised, if they pursue it seriously, they will find themselves in dire straits. Welfare originated in this country as a solution to this quandary, a recognition that women with children lacking a working husband or independent financial means need assistance if they are to function as mothers. In the prosperous 1990s, we have cast aside this commitment, and Mink argues that we have gone beyond heartlessness and denied poor, single mothers a necessary element of citizenship. Moreover, establishing parenting as a right and recognizing the need to support it would lessen gender inequality where it really counts: care-giving to children. In fact, of course, the odds of a popular upswell in this direction are dismal. Despite lip service given to traditional concerns and family values, welfare reform attracted approval not only from Republicans and opponents of women's issues, but also from more surprising constituencies, including some in the mainstream women's movement. As long as groups like the latter find, for example, challenging glass ceilings in the workplace for middle- and upper-class women more compelling than championing the cause of poor women in the home, Mink's courage will be commendable but probably not fruitful. Something to think about as the time limits on welfare support start kicking in. -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 180 pages
• Publisher: Cornell University Press (March 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0801433479
• ISBN-13: 978-0801433474
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.8 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,167,795 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars a thorough look at the real "welfare" system, May 18, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Welfare's End (Hardcover)

Mink addresses the topic in a small but powerful volume, analyzing the so-called welfare system as it truly is; an intentional labyrinthian trap, designed to keep vulnerable members of society, men, as well as women and children in a state of economic siege.

2 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Not a good case against welfare reform, June 4, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Welfare's End (Hardcover)

Seizing the polemic language of the welfare "reform"ers, Mink uses this same crude style in trying to oppose any type of reform. Was the welfare system in America not working too well? Yes. Was it in need of reform? Yes. Did the 1996 effort by Clinton and the Republicans help remove some of the problems? Yes. The welfare advocates do not recognize any of these facts. They simply point out the false stereotypes employed by the anti-welfare crowd and the problems of this law, which forces women to work rather than care for their kids. Mink, like many other self-styled feminists, does not care for the moral groundings of true feminism or of the original welfare legislation. Instead, she seems to advocate a libertine lifestyle wherein rights take precedence over responsibilities. This kind of polemical work only works when it falls back on statistics - the rest of the time it fails to make a convincing case against a terribly flawed "reform" policy that is simple to refute. Gary Bryner's "Politics and Public Morality" is a much better assessment of this legislation and much more highly recommended by this reader.