Policy Issue: Social Welfare

                In reading Gwendolyn Mink’s chapter, “Aren’t Poor Single Mothers Women?  Feminists, Welfare Reform, and Welfare Justice” from Whose Welfare?, Mink makes some truly valid points about the invasiveness of welfare reforms.  This invasion of women’s rights is the subject that I felt was truly important due to the fact that welfare is meant to better one’s wellbeing, not subtract from it.  Mink states,

            The Personal Responsibility Act makes government responsible for how poor mothers lead their lives.  Under the act, government tells poor single mothers with whom to associate, under what conditions to have and raise children, and what kind of work is appropriate.  These instructions invade poor single mothers’ freedom of association and freedom of vocation.  They curtail their fundamental rights to sexual privacy and to make parenting decisions about their own children.  (173)

Although I am quite weary of accepting or rejecting certain factors of welfare, it is highly evident how welfare reforms may harm women in the process of helping them.  So is welfare a woman’s issue?  In my mind, there is no doubt about it.  If any woman’s rights are at stake, all women’s rights are at stake.  Mink provides examples that are highly persuading. 

            Child support rules require nonmarital mothers to associate with biological fathers, and in doing so to stoke such fathers’ claims to parental rights.  […] But some mothers do not have support orders because the do not want them.  A mother may not want to identify her child’s father because she may fear abuse for herself or her child.  She may not want to seek child support because she has chosen to parent alone—or with someone else.  She may know her child’s father is poor and may fear exposing him to harsh penalties when he cannot pay what a court tells him he owes.  (179)

Regardless of the mother’s reasoning, there is almost always a reason for the mother and father to be separated.  Contrary to common belief, not all women are sluts who get pregnant after one night stands, or do not know who their baby’s father is.  Some women make the rational choice to live apart from the child’s father.  The government should respect women’s choice of disassociation with a child’s father.