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Description
Ellen Reese, Backlash Against Welfare Mothers: Past and Present (Berkeley: University of California 2005)
ELLEN REESE, a sociologist who studies social movements, offers a compelling narrative of the creation of the powerful conservative anti-welfare political movement in the United States. She argues that the earliest manifestations of the anti-welfare backlash began right after World War II when low-wage employers, with support from conservative racists who opposed the post-war civil rights gains of blacks, lobbied to severely restrict payments under the New Deal Aid to Dependent Children program introduced in 1935. The anti-welfare movement gradually gathered momentum and a broader base of support, peaking perhaps in 1996 with the adoption of the very restrictive federal Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act [PRWORA]. Reese argues that "as the social safety net shrank, the depth of poverty increased sharply between 1996 and 2002." (5) This is familiar territory to those in Canada as well as the US who advocate for better policy for women. Reese's book makes two important contributions to the debate. The first is a detailed historical perspective on the welfare backlash of the 1940s and 1950s. The second is a solidly researched exploration of the development of a racist, sexist, ultra-conservative right-wing movement in the 1980s and 1990s. The connections she draws between the... |
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