Week 4
ending welfare as we know it
Key Questions
How is welfare used to regulate gender and sexuality? What are the ways in which it’s used to enforce work?
What are the priorities of TANF? What is the purpose of its focus on marriage, work, and pregnancy?
How are TANF funds spent? What does this reveal about the role of TANF in forced labor and family values?
Required Materials:
Felicia Kornbluh and Gwendolyn Mink, Ensuring Poverty: Welfare Reform in Feminist Perspective, “Legislating the Personal Responsibility of Poor Mothers”
The Uncertain Hour, “What’s Love (Styles) Got to Do With It?”
Jessica Glenza, “At Least 10 States Divert Federal Welfare Funding to Anti-Abortion Clinics”
Eli Hager, “A Mother Needed Welfare. Instead, the State Used Welfare Funds to Take Her Son.”
Supplementary Materials:
The Uncertain Hour, “‘Pregnant? We Can Help.’”
Krissy Clark, “The Disconnected”
Emily Crockett, “States Are Using Welfare Money to Fund Anti-Abortion Propaganda”
Mary Tuma, “Public Funding Is Pouring Into Texas’ Anti-Abortion Pregnancy Centers While Abortion Access Hangs In the Balance”
Jordan Weissman, “The Failure of Welfare Reform”
Angela Onwuachi-Willig, “The Return of the Ring: Welfare Reform’s Marriage Cure as the Revival of Post-Bellum Control”
Eva Bertram, The Workfare State: Public Assistance Politics From the New Deal to the New Democrats, “
Elisa Minoff, “The Racist Roots of Work Requirements”
Gwendloyn Mink, Welfare’s End, “How We Got Welfare Reform: A Legislative History”
Gwendloyn Mink, Welfare’s End, “Why Should Poor Single Mothers Have to Work Outside the Home? Work Requirements and the Negation of Mothers''
Laura Briggs, How All Politics Became Reproductive Politics: From Welfare Reform to Foreclosure to Trump, “Welfare Reform: The Vicious Campaign to Reform 1 Percent of the Budget”
Jennifer Mittelstadt, From Welfare to Workfare: The Unintended Consequences of Liberal Reform, 1945-1965, “A New ‘Spirit’ in Welfare”
Priya Kandaswamy, Domestic Contradictions: Race and Gendered Citizenship from Reconstruction to Welfare Reform, “Marriage and the Making of Gendered Citizenship”
Priya Kandaswamy, Domestic Contradictions: Race and Gendered Citizenship from Reconstruction to Welfare Reform, “Domestic Labor and the Politics of Reform”
Priya Kandaswamy, Domestic Contradictions: Race and Gendered Citizenship from Reconstruction to Welfare Reform, “The Chains of Welfare”
exercise
Find your state-specific fact sheet on TANF spending using this tool. How does your state allocate its TANF funding? How much goes toward basic assistance (i.e., cash transfers)? Compare your state’s TANF spending to TANF spending in other states. What does this reveal about how TANF funding is utilized nationally?
Next, use the map below to look at how TANF is used to fund anti-abortion programs. Which states run A2A programs? How many of these states divert TANF funds to A2A programs?