Poor White Women Research Articles

Mobilizing Motherhood: Race, Class, and the Uses of Maternalism in the Welfare Rights Movement

Welfare Rights was a movement of poor women and their supporters who were fighting for the right to basic income support for mothers receiving public assistance. In this essay I will argue that the Welfare Rights Movement provides an example of an intersectional social movement that was somewhat successful in using motherhood as a mobilizing feature. Through a historical case study I explore how middle-class and poor women participated in this movement in Detroit. I present the different experiences and perceptions of motherhood that informed the types of maternalism that emerged and that were subsequendy used in this movement. I argue that the specific experiences of the women intersected with their race and class, forming different uses of maternalism that subsequently galvanized their activism in differing ways. During the 1960s in Detroit, poor African American mothers who were receiving welfare became the key establishes of the Welfare Rights Movement in the city, employing what I refer to as experiential They derived this approach from their experiences in navigating the welfare system and resisting the stigma and the race- and class-based discrimination that was a part of their daily lives. However, they were supported by the many Friends of Welfare Rights groups, primarily made up of white middle-class women in the surrounding suburbs, who employed sentimental maternalism and organized on the issue of welfare rights. Middle-class ideology and values drove the use of maternalism for the Friends and formed, as defined by Molly Ladd- Taylor (1993), sentimental maternalism. LaddTaylor identified this form of maternalism through her exploration of the National Congress of Mothers and Parent-Teacher Associations, founded in 1897. She describes this form of maternalism as emphasizing the need for mothers to stay at home with their children and by the reformers' view of their role as protecting women and children who did not have male support (110-13). Maternalist movements began in earnest in different countries in the early nineteenth century. This was an age when women reformers began to organize around society's moral obligations to women and children. These early maternalists structured their social concerns within the context of their difference from men and shifted a moral vision to political action with their attempts at social reform for women and children (Koven and Michel 1993). In her discussion of African American club women and maternalist reformers in the early twentieth century, Eileen Boris (1993) illustrates that although class differences separated these women from the poorer black women they were advocating for, a shared racial status was central to their work. Although the middle-class African American women whom Boris examined shared many of the values and ideology of white maternalists of the time, they understood the racism that was inherent in perceptions of black motherhood versus white motherhood and thus were more successful in their cross-class work (213-45). Early welfare policy was also developed through the activism of white middle-class maternalists during the Progressive Era who advocated for mother's pensions that would allow poor white women and children to be cared for in the event that the mother became widowed or was deserted (Gordon 1994). Linda Gordon and other scholars have argued that from the very beginning welfare policy was framed within racist and classist assumptions and stereotypes, with the early intentions of maternalist reformers being to provide for deserving (white) mothers while structuring the policy so that it provided a minimum amount of support, as well as enough sanctions and stigma, so that poor African American families would not become overly dependent on the state (Gordon 1994;Abramovitz 1996a; Neubeck and Cazenave 2001). Riva Polatnick's (1966) later study of women's liberation groups from the 1960s provides some insight into the intersection of race and motherhood. …

Hank Wangford (aka Sam Hutt)

“Hank Wangford? He made me fall in love with Country music 20 years ago.” “Hank Wangford? He used to be my gynaecologist—he's a really great guy.” Given the reactions of the first two people I told of my plan to interview this physician-musician, I had high expectations for meeting him. And he didn't disappoint. As we walked to C&R Modern Oriental Cuisine we'd barely got past niceties about London's weather before he pitched into a critique of Tammy Wynette's classic ballad Stand By Your Man. “It's Tammy talking to poor white women with four or five kids, living in a trailer, with no way to leave their man. It's her saying ‘I know where you are and where you're from’. She is giving them and their lives a little dignity.” Dignity is a theme that crops up a lot during our lunch. When I mention this, he shrugs, “Well, it's everything isn't it? I mean, it's the most important thing in life.” The serious streak in Sam Hutt might surprise those who know him only through his hard-living, American-accented, Country-singing alter-ego, Hank Wangford. Writer and performer (with The Lost Cowboys) of such classic tunes as Never Wear Mascara When You Love a Married Man, Wangford was born out of a meeting with Gram Parsons in 1970. How did Hutt, then a newly qualified doctor, meet ex-Byrds wild-child Parsons? “Oh, because I'd treated Keith Richards' baby”, he says, as if this explained everything. Hutt's preclinical years were spent at Cambridge, where he loved the teaching but hated the elitism. On qualifying, he became a “doctor to the stars”—The Who, Pink Floyd, and The Rolling Stones were on his list, but he became uncomfortable with the starry life. A year as a locum in the prairies of Saskatchewan, Canada, brought him down to earth and cemented his love of Country. “I realised that it was great music—powerful, edgy, nasty, not bland, sweet, or frilly.” On returning to the UK, he did a course in family planning at the Margaret Pyke Centre in London. 33 years later, he is still there, practising sexual health care. “In sexual health care we get much longer with patients than do general practitioners, because of the non-hierarchical way we work using nurse practitioners, which is fantastic. And the clinical situation is very special. I can sit with someone and she'll tell me things she hasn't told anyone else. I feel honoured and humble”, he says, grimacing at his own seriousness. Still touring and recording albums at age 65 years, I ask if he contemplates retiring. “Dr Hutt has to retire at 70, but as for Hank, well, I saw Willie Nelson playing the other day, and he's 72. When you're on stage and you hit it right, it is wonderful. It keeps you young.” Going on the evidence in front of me, I'd say he's right.

Courting men: mothers, magistrates and welfare in the australian colonies

Abstract Scholarship on women and philanthropy in nineteenth-century Australia has often focused on the relationship between poor women and private philanthropic associations. This article, however, explores the way poor white women in the colony of Victoria turned to the state for support in times of extreme poverty. Despite the colonial government's preference for private charity, ‘good’ mothers, in the 1850s and 1860s, could gain both the personal sympathy of the magistrate and financial assistance in a variety of forms. But poor white mothers found that the colonial magistrate had both the capacity to help and promote them in their struggle to raise their children or to place them under a very different regime of judgement, surveillance or interference in their tasks of motherhood and daily life. This article explores the ambiguous relationship between poor women and the state under such conditions.

Courting men: mothers, magistrates and welfare in the Australian colonies

Scholarship on women and philanthropy in nineteenth-century Australia has often focused on the relationship between poor women and private philanthropic associations. This article, however, explores the way poor white women in the colony of Victoria turned to the state for support in times of extreme poverty. Despite the colonial government's preference for private charity, ‘good’ mothers, in the 1850s and 1860s, could gain both the personal sympathy of the magistrate and financial assistance in a variety of forms. But poor white mothers found that the colonial magistrate had both the capacity to help and promote them in their struggle to raise their children or to place them under a very different regime of judgement, surveillance or interference in their tasks of motherhood and daily life. This article explores the ambiguous relationship between poor women and the state under such conditions.

“Race,” Space, and Power: The Survival Strategies of Working Poor Women

Feminist geographers have documented that the spatial entrapment of many women negatively affects their economic opportunities. The experiences of many African-American women, however, suggest that the spatial-entrapment thesis requires refinement. I argue that the spatial-entrapment thesis is based on a problematic conceptualization of the links between space and power in people's daily lives, one that equates immobility with powerlessness and mobility with power. The thesis not only theorizes power as unidirectional (i.e., more power, more mobility), it also masks important differences among women by undertheorizing mobility and immobility relative to social relations other than gender, such as “race.” I argue that, depending on the constellation of power relations, the spatial boundedness of women's lives is a potential resource for, as well as a constraint on, their economic security. The utility of this reconceptualization of the links between space and power for examining the opportunities for and barriers to women's economic security is demonstrated through an analysis of the role of place-based personal networks in the survival strategies of working poor African-American and white women with children in Worcester, Massachusetts. I first evaluate these women's experiences in terms of the spatial-entrapment thesis. Then I examine whether women's use of spatial rootedness in the construction of their survival strategies can be enabling as well as constraining. The results confirm that the spatial boundedness of women's daily lives and their survival strategies are mutually constituted; that is, place-based personal networks are an important component of survival strategies, and can be both enabling and constraining, depending on how racism structures women's experiences.

“I've Slept in Clothes Long Enough”: Excavating the Sounds of Domestic Violence Among Women in the White Working Class

Here we listen to and analyze the voices of poor and working-class white women in Buffalo and Jersey City as they chronicle histories related to domestic violence. Although it was initially quite easy to distinguish between women living in what others have called “hard living” and “settled living” domestic scenes, we found that the amount of violence in these homes did not differ appreciably. Rather almost all of the poor and working-class white women and their families were negotiating lives disrupted by an inhospitable economy, and almost all of the women interviewed were also surviving within scenes of domestic violence that spanned generations. The distinction between the “settled lives” women and the “hard living” women may only be determined by whether or not the woman has exited from her violent home. School-related programs designed to promote discussion of these issues are considered.

Helping Poor Mothers and Children

This issue of JAMA contains 2 reports of randomized clinical trials showing that a nurse home-visit program has bettered the situations of disadvantaged mothers and their children. The trials are remarkable for demonstrating that the program improved not just poor mothers' infant care, but an array of health and social outcomes, as long as 15 years following childbirth. Olds et al 1 report that their program in Elmira, NY, reduced poor white women's subsequent pregnancies, child abuse and neglect, use of welfare, substance abuse problems, and crime and increased their labor force participation. Kitzman et al 2 report that the Elmira experiment, replicated in Memphis, Tenn, reduced poor black women's hypertension and subsequent pregnancies, improved home rearing environments for their children, and reduced the children's injuries. Such impressive findings from rigorous experiments suggest that a nationwide policy favoring nurse home visits based on models that have been tested and found

Poverty and the Marital Behavior of Young Women

DIANE K. McLAuGHLiN The Pennsylvania State University DANIEL.L T. LICHTER The Pennsylvania State University* Marriage provides one route out of poverty and long-term reliance on welfare, yet little is known about the factors that encourage or impede marriage among poor, young women. We use data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth to examine first marriage transitions for poor young women and young women who are not poor. We find that the latter are more likely to marry than poor women, but poor women who have jobs are more likely to marry than those who do not have jobs. Poor Black women have the same probability of marriage as poor White women, after controlling for differences in economic independence, mate availability, and family culture and living arrangements. The receipt of welfare was not associated with marriage propensity for either poor women or women who are not poor. Lower mate availability and higher average welfare payments in a local area depressed the probability of marriage among poor women but had no influence on the probability of marriage among women who are not poor. Key Words: Afr American women, marriage, poverty, welfare. The rise in extramarital living arrangements and unmarried childbearing has contributed to increases in poverty among women and children. This pattern coincides with the erosion of public support of welfare for poor, single-parent families and raises new questions about the possible unintended consequences of existing welfare programs. Recently passed welfare reform legislation limits the lifetime receipt of welfare and requires poor women to find other means of economic support. Two options are employment and marriage. Recent research suggests that there are many more poor women who will be searching for jobs than there are available jobs (Jensen & Chitose, 1996) and that women who leave welfare for employment are more likely to return to welfare than women who leave welfare for marriage (Harris, 1996). Marriage may be an important way out of chronic poverty and long-term reliance on welfare. Unfortunately, recent studies provide only a limited understanding of the marital experiences of poor women, and even less is known about how economic factors, such as welfare benefits and employment, influence poor women's decisions to marry (Moffitt, 1992). This research addresses that void. Theoretical models of young women's transitions to marriage provide insights into the marriage process (Lichter, McLaughlin, Kephart, & Landry, 1992; Oppenheimer, 1988; South, 1993) but do not provide explicit hypotheses regarding the likelihood that poor women marry, compared with women who are not poor. Theories of economic independence, the local marriage markets, and cultural theories of marriage timing do not provide a clear picture of poor women's propensity to marry. Economic independence theories suggest that as women's education and earnings increase they will be less reliant on marriage for economic support and that women with greater economic independence will delay marriage. The availability of possible spouses and how that influences marriage timing are the basis for marriage market explanations of marital timing. Areas where there is a greater availability of unmarried men, especially men with high levels of education or good jobs, should encourage women's marriage. Finally, cultural explanations of marriage suggest that family background, attitudes toward women's roles, and beliefs about marriage influence women's decisions to marry. These theories provide mixed evidence of whether poor women are more or less likely to marry than women who are not poor. We examine these theories explicitly to evaluate their applicability to poor women's marital behavior. We empirically assess poor women's relative probability of marriage, and we test which theoretical explanations of marriage timing are best suited to poor women's marriage decisions and the marriage decisions of women who are not poor. …

Fighting for Child Health: Race, Birth Control, and the State in the Jim Crow South

In the mid-twentieth century, North Carolina's public medical services were the envy of public health practitioners nationwide. A centerpiece of the state's program was the nation's first state-run birth control program, established in 1937. The program offered pre- and postnatal care as well as access to contraceptives to indigent women. Feminists, civil rights advocates, and historians have contentiously debated the motivations of both proponents and recipients of birth control in the Southern context. Some have held that birth control programs were motivated by racism and a defense of class distinctions. Others have argued that the vulnerable position of black and poor white patients resulted in their exploitation as research subjects. Analyses of these public health efforts assume that the birth control program worked to the detriment of black and poor white interests. A closer examination of North Carolina's birth control program reveals, however, that black health and social work professionals as well as black and poor white clients welcomed the services, participated in them, and helped shape the contraceptive programs offered by the state. Although the programs were often steeped in race and class prejudices, both black and poor white women took advantage of the contraceptive services and quickly responded like educated consumers, making decisions about the continued use of birth control according to their satisfaction with the services provided. Clients and black health care professionals had their own interest in the services, often unanticipated by public health and welfare officials.

Neither Fruitful Nor Multiplying

Neither Fruitful Nor Multipyling Anne M. Boylan (bio) Elaine Tyler May. Barren in the Promised Land: Childless Americans and the Pursuit of Happiness. New York: Basic Books, 1995. xii + 318 pp. Appendix, notes, and index. $24.00. Elaine Tyler May’s new book is certainly timely. We live in an era when childlessness, whether voluntary or involuntary, is a regular subject for public comment. In January 1996 alone, for example, the New York Times ran a four-day series describing “The Fertility Market,” an op-ed piece defending voluntary childlessness, several letters responding to that piece (including one from a proud mother of fourteen children who counted among her achievements the possibility of spawning a thousand descendants), and a magazine column in which a man rendered sterile by treatments for leukemia described with wit and wistfulness a visit to his “future children”: stored sperm. All this in addition to the regular advertisements offering sterilization through vasectomy or laparoscopy, or selling parenthood by means of donor eggs or sperm. A nuanced, balanced, and accessible history of the topic has long been needed, and May’s book fills the void nicely. Much of May’s story is coterminous with the twentieth century. As she points out in her brief overview of earlier eras, for most of their history, Americans assumed that infertility was untreatable and believed that it always wore a female visage. The “barren” woman was a staple of lore and literature; in men, potency was equated with fertility. George Washington, for example, attributed the infertility of his marriage to some defect in Martha, even though she had borne four children during her first marriage. Remedial efforts leaned heavily toward prayer, resignation, or both; May finds scant evidence of folk practices designed to prevent or cure barrenness. Social customs that encouraged various forms of child-sharing, from indenture and apprenticeship to fosterage and informal adoption, permitted all adults to participate in the rearing of children. At the same time, voluntary childlessness among the married remained virtually unknown until the nineteenth century, when a few utopian groups (such as the Shakers and the Oneida community) consciously experimented with reproductive control. “Large-scale [End Page 316] reproductive engineering” (p. 36) is a very recent phenomenon in the United States. By focusing on “reproductive engineering” rather than simply “barrenness” or “infertility,” May is able to encompass a range of historical phenomena, including forced sterilization and compulsory parenthood. Her argument is significant and compelling: efforts to control fertility and to treat infertility are powerfully shaped by the political and social ideologies that surround parenthood. Because many twentieth-century Americans “believe that parenthood is a status that can be chosen but must also be deserved,” May notes, questions about who “deserves” to experience this “major marker of adulthood” (p. 9) spark public discussion and shape public policy. But because those discussions are conducted in coded symbolic language—think of current debates over “welfare reform”—the underlying contradictions are usually obscured. May brings the book’s themes together with special effectiveness in two chapters covering the early-twentieth-century eugenics movement and its inverse, “negative eugenics” (p. 125). Fearing “race suicide” if the marriage and birth rates among American-born whites continued to fall as they were falling at the turn of the century, advocates of eugenics attempted to promote “Better Babies and Fitter Families” through careful breeding of “human stock” (p. 64). The logical next step—forced sterilization—was a small one. Although it was but one of the “political, institutional, medical and legislative measures that encouraged some Americans to become parents but prevented others from doing so” (p. 62), the impact of forced sterilization fell heavily upon African American and Native American women, and on poor white women labeled “feebleminded.” Middle-class white wives encountered such policies very differently: expected to accept their destinies as mothers, they found themselves damned for selfishness if they bore no children, subjected to new medical techniques if they were involuntarily childless, and, ironically, denied elective sterilization if they sought it. The catalogue of horror stories in these chapters is chilling: the civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer “hospitalized for the removal of a small uterine tumor [in 1961, and...