My Children Come First: Welfare-Reliant Women’s Post-TANF Views of Work-Family Trade-Offs and Marriage

Abstract

In this paper, we focus on how welfare-reliant mothers view work-family trade-offs in the age of welfare reform. We use data from in-depth, qualitative interviews with approximately 80 welfare-reliant mothers living in neighborhoods of concentrated poverty in Philadelphia and Cleveland. These interviews were conducted under the auspices of Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation's Project on Devolution and Urban Change, which seeks to understand the effects of devolution and welfare reform.