Abstract
Cross-country studies on poverty show that in the United States, compared to other developed countries, single mothers currently have an extremely high risk of being poor—a risk that is about 35 percent. Many studies about poor single mothers in the United States have emphasized that policy-makers and prevailing societal ideology are likely to depict them as women that are irresponsible, since they had children in hard economic conditions (see, e.g., Furstenberg 2007). Social science literature is critical of this narrow viewpoint. Indeed, numerous studies have shown a multitude of similarities between poor and middle-class mothers in terms of aspirations, values, and orientations (e.g., Edin and Kefalas 2005).
In Reformed American Dreams: Welfare Mothers, Higher Education, and Activism, Sheila Katz, a scholar-activist, convincingly challenges stereotypes about women on welfare whom the conventional wisdom depicts as “morally deficient” (Verduzco-Baker 2015). By exploring the experiences and the pitfalls of single mothers on welfare pursuing higher education, the book represents a step forward in the study of this stigmatized social group.
Katz questions the ready-made identification of welfare mothers as “welfare queens” by providing a wide-angle lens on their desires and actions to improve their socio-economic and personal conditions. The author cogently illustrates that student mothers in need of social assistance strongly recognize higher education as a pathway to achieve better socio-economic conditions. Katz’s interviews show that, despite the reduction of their educational opportunities due to the reform of U.S. welfare in 1996, student welfare mothers strongly pursue higher education as a means of achieving personal realization. According to the author, this implies that student welfare mothers are not likely to adopt deviant behaviors within the family or society. On the contrary, Katz shows that welfare mothers, considering education as a mean for social mobility, are in line with middle-class ideals of the American Dream.
Methodologically, the author explores in depth the perspectives of 43 mothers in the welfare system in the San Francisco Bay Area who were attending programs at associate, bachelor, or master’s degree levels. She conducted qualitative interviews uncovering interviewees’ life stories. The originality of Katz’s methodological approach is twofold. First, the author develops a longitudinal ethnographic approach, organizing three rounds of data collection. After a first round in 2006, she conducted follow-up interviews in 2008 and 2011 (with a retention rate of about 78 percent). In this way, the study provides a life course perspective on lived experiences of welfare mothers in three phases of the recent business cycle—before, during and after the Great Recession.
Second, Katz was able to set up a deep and genuine dialogue with the interviewed mothers. They trustingly share with her their struggles to raise children, their fights with the welfare system to attend higher education, and their hopes “that they would be recognized not simply as a composite of clichés, but as whole persons” (p. 84). Additionally, the selection of women based on a key variable—their involvement (or not) in activism—is methodologically well thought out. Analyzing separately student mothers who have been engaged in an advocacy and activist organization of and for low-income parents (LIFETIME) and those who have not allows Katz to point out the differences between activist and nonactivist mothers in the survival narratives and in the meaning they give to the American Dream.
The analysis of mothers’ narratives reveals logic and strategies aiming at the accomplishment of their American Dream. One statement especially merits attention. Welfare mothers firmly claim that education means everything to them. Katz’s interviews highlight that student welfare mothers do not only identify higher education as a pathway toward easier access to economic resources (in line with the normative ideals of U.S. society), but also as an opportunity to improve their social and cultural capital, as well as their self-esteem. Thus, in line with the original conceptualization proposed by James Truslow Adams in the 1930s, they conceive an American Dream that is not only connoted by the aspiration to upward economic mobility—which during the Great Recession they reformulated as the aspiration to be out of debt and have a good job with benefits. Katz’s interviews reveal that welfare mothers’ meaning of the American Dream is not just individual-centered but also community-oriented. Their American Dream narratives embrace goals beyond economic success, such as “being involved in their community, embracing the struggle, and making an opportunity to reconceptualize society” (p. 170). The ability to capture the multidimensional nature of welfare mothers’ American Dream is a true contribution of the book.
Katz’s book is well-written and well-structured, with a good balance between theoretical considerations, policy suggestions, and narratives of women’s lived experience. It represents a fascinating and welcome resource for sociologists, activists, policy-oriented researchers, and gender scholars and students. The interview excerpts generate a sense of empathy and closeness with the lives and the fights of these women working hard to survive welfare system barriers to education. The interviews also reveal the primary factors that lead them to apply for welfare—an aspect that is partly overlooked in previous literature on welfare mothers. In this regard, the author identifies structural elements of vulnerability for women on welfare. Domestic violence, unexpected pregnancy, substance abuse, unemployment, and their intersection are revealed to embody the main pathways onto welfare.
Contained in Reformed American Dreams are ideas for the future reform of the U.S. welfare system. During conversations with welfare mothers and through their narratives, Katz collects several policy recommendations that women suggest and that the author elaborates. While nonactivist mothers’ suggestions were more locally focused (e.g., having more caseworkers), grassroots activist mothers suggested systemic changes of the U.S. welfare system. Katz reports that, in order to create an American Dream for all, these women emphasized considering as a priority the expansion of access to higher education for all Americans, “providing the financial and supportive assistance that students of various backgrounds need to complete their degrees” (p. 182), as well as the creation of a universal health care system—which appears so essential in the days of the COVID-19 pandemic. While strong, Reformed American Dreams would have benefited from more discussion on realistic funding options and financing resources that would make feasible a reform of the U.S. welfare system.
Recalling the title of this contribution (that plays with words of a popular song by Rage Against the Machine), the pillars on which the American Dream should be reformed are social networks, community, the achievement of financial stability, and the reconceptualization of society. This could lay the foundation for an American Dream for all.