"Flat Broke With Children"--A Review

Paper Summary:

This review of "Flat Broke With Children: Women in the Age of Welfare Reform" by Sharon Hayes describes this work as a cry for change in the ways that America views poverty, motherhood, welfare and work. In particular, the review describes how Hayes sees welfare as a controversial topic because it seems to go against core American values. The review considers current welfare reform, and how it ultimately harms mothers and children. Although Hayes favors welfare reform, she believes it must include job training for employment that provides a good salary and that process of weaning someone from welfare must be gradual. The review concludes that there must also be a national acknowledgment of the need for some collective concern for the common good and the future of the nation's children who are the silent victims of so-called welfare reform.

From the Paper:

"Also, the fact that so many single women with children are on welfare in the United States further contradicts the nation's self-perception as a nation of strong 'family values' where the nuclear family is the norm. The United States wishes to see itself as a compassionate nation that loves children, but to support children and single mothers with welfare with what are seen as 'free handouts' makes many people angry, even if they have little sense of the people receiving such social support. Theoretically, according to the national myth, such single, needy mothers and children should not exist--the father should be the breadwinner."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Hays, Sharon. Flat Broke With Children: Women in the Age of Welfare Reform.
• New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.

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