Flat Broke With Children: Women in the Age of Welfare Reform

Rating:
Summary: Incredibly insightful
Review: Hays does a remarkable job of revealing the cultural logic behind welfare reform. In the process, we do not "just" learn about welfare recipients and their values, we learn something about our own values. It becomes very clear in reading this book that we must resolve the tensions that all families (and especially women) feel when it comes to which comes first: work or family. Only then can we figure out what is fair and good to ask of welfare mothers.
I strongly recommend this book to anyone who seeks a better understanding of the paradoxes and contraditions in our laws regulating the family.

Rating:
Summary: Ignoring reality
Review: This book critiques welfare reform by giving the reader a teary eyed story about people who have no money and have lots of kids to raise. Yet this argument simply ignores the facts. First of all this book ignores personal responsibility. How bout people on welfare taking responsibility for having unprotected sex and having ten kids without ever bothering to get married. How bout taking responsibility for not having a job. People that don't have jobs and can never find work are in that situation because they actually work to not find work. Most people that are unemployed love being unemployed and they love living off the government dole and being lazy. And this book simply ignores this fact. This book tries to make everyone feel so bad for people that are basically in a situation they themselves caused. Rather then trying to exhort these people to learn a new skill and not have as many kids instead this book blames the government because the government has dared to say `if you don't find a job in five years we might decrease your stipends'. Amazingly enough in countries that don't have welfare people manage to find work. If welfare ended tomorrow all these people would go get jobs, in fact it is welfare that pays them not to work and discourages them from having a honest job.

(...)

Rating:
Summary: Ignoring reality
Review: This book critiques welfare reform by giving the reader a teary eyed story about people who have no money and have lots of kids to raise. Yet this argument simply ignores the facts. First of all this book ignores personal responsibility. How bout people on welfare taking responsibility for having unprotected sex and having ten kids without ever bothering to get married. How bout taking responsibility for not having a job. People that don't have jobs and can never find work are in that situation because they actually work to not find work. Most people that are unemployed love being unemployed and they love living off the government dole and being lazy. And this book simply ignores this fact. This book tries to make everyone feel so bad for people that are basically in a situation they themselves caused. Rather then trying to exhort these people to learn a new skill and not have as many kids instead this book blames the government because the government has dared to say 'if you don't find a job in five years we might decrease your stipends'. Amazingly enough in countries that don't have welfare people manage to find work. If welfare ended tomorrow all these people would go get jobs, in fact it is welfare that pays them not to work and discourages them from having a honest job.

(...)

Rating:
Summary: "Reform" Sucks
Review: This book will prove enlightening to anyone who is concerned with the consequences of "welfare reform." Flat Broke, while "putting a face on" reform, provides the analytical tools with which to understand the crux of the welfare dilemma. The dilemma is not unique to those women who must turn to public assistance, it is one faced by all those that live within American culture. Work and family. We all know the struggle - at least in some form.

Hays does an excellent job illustrating how welfare recipients DO pursue mainstream ideals, DO foster mainstream American ideals. . . but are systematically denied the ability to live up to our cultural ideal of middle class. As always, those at the bottom bear the brunt of our cultural contradictions more than any other social group.

Rating:
Summary: Seth Frantzman is an idiot
Review: This is the stupidest review I have read so far on this site. The person who wrote it has no idea what they are talking about. I seriously doubt they even considered reading the book. (I haven't but I've been poor and I've been on welfare.)

You should know something about a subject before you spout off.