Teen Mothers Citizens or Dependents?

by Horowitz, Ruth

• ISBN13: 9780226353784
• ISBN10: 0226353788
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1995-01-01
• Publisher: Univ of Chicago Pr

Summary

In a book that speaks clearly and forcefully to the heart of the welfare debate in the United States, Ruth Horowitz examines one of the most critical questions of welfare policy: how can a United States government program help teen mothers--one of the most needful groups of all welfare recipients--move from welfare dependency to employment, independence, and responsible citizenship? "Rich vignettes reveal the complexities of teenage mothers' lives, particularly the disjuncture between classroom and street identities, 'inside' and 'outside.' . . . Original and illuminating as well as timely."--Sharon Thompson, Women's Review of Books "Horowitz offers insights that should be considered in the debate over welfare reform. . . . Teen Mothers . . . places Horowitz's results in the context of major theories about the role of welfare in the U.S. and offers a microlevel critique of the implicit assumptions and probable consequences of each theory's approach to welfare reform."--Booklist

Author Biography

Ruth Horowitz is professor of sociology at the University of Delaware.

Table of Contents

Preface
Issues in Program Development
Getting to Know Project GED	p. 1
Contested Organizational Cultures: Helping and Authority	p. 23
Social Service Providers and Teen Mothers
Social Service Providers' Problems of Social Identity	p. 47
Social Distance as a Strategy of Compliance	p. 63
Classroom Failure without Redress	p. 90
Sex and Boyfriends: Your Dirty Laundry or Dramatic Dreams	p. 114
Motherhood: Authenticity and the Context of Suspicion	p. 146
Changing Welfare from Stigma to Scholarship: The Arbiters versus the Mediators	p. 179
Is Welfare Reform Possible?
Backstage Links to Public Empowerment	p. 209
The Embodied Reason of Welfare Reform	p. 231
References	p. 261
Index	p. 271
Table of Contents provided by Blackwell. All Rights Reserved.