"Governor Engler Wants Ladies to Work" Single Mothers, Work-First Welfare Policy and Post-Secondary Education in Michigan

• Published in: Journal of poverty Vol. 5; no. 3; pp. 17 - 38
• Main Author: Kahn, Peggy
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Binghamton, NY Taylor & Francis Group 2001; Haworth Press
• Subjects: Economic conditions; Educational Policy; Higher Education; Labor aspects; Low Income Groups; Michigan; Mothers; Policy Implementation; Poor; post-secondary education; poverty; Poverty relief; Public welfare; Single Mothers; Single parents; Social policy; Social problems and social policy. Social work; Sociology; United States; Welfare Policy; Welfare Reform; Women; Work relief; Workfare; United States Of America; Michigan; Job Placement; Poverty; Education; Unwed mother; Work; Family; Social Policy; Child care
• ISSN: 1087-5549; 1540-7608
• DOI: 10.1300/J134v05n03_02

This article explores how work-first policy-as embodied in the 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, Michigan's state TANF plan, and the routines and processes of Michigan's implementing agencies-affects the ability of low-income single mothers to pursue post-secondary education. Drawing upon a small-scale, qualitative, client-centered research project and an ongoing advocacy project, it argues that restrictive formal welfare education policy in Michigan is narrowed further by front-line agency workers in both the Family Independence Agency and the Work First program, as agency staff reproduce rigid work-first messages, reproduce organizational cultures of suspicion towards clients, marginalize education and training provisions to simplify their workloads, respond to contracting imperatives, and improvise within deregulated administrative structures. Struggling to balance mandatory work requirements, education, and child care responsibilities in face of policy and implementation obstacles, some student mothers tenaciously but tenuously persist, while others withdraw, and many do not initiate the post-secondary education to which they aspire.