Contact: Pam Monroe at (225) 578-1731 or pmonroe at lsu.edu
NATIONAL COUNCIL ON FAMILY RELATIONS
September 10, 2001
Study Debunks Stereotype about Welfare to Work Recipients
Public assistance recipients are committed to work, although policy makers and the general public may not recognize their commitment, according to research conducted at the LSU AgCenter.
In addition, Dr. Pam Monroe, a member of the faculty of the LSU AgCenter's School of Human Ecology, and Vicky Tiller, a research associate in the School, report region is a key factor in rural poverty, which is concentrated in the South.
The study of women receiving Temporary Assistance to Needy Families -- formerly Aid to Families with Dependent Children -- appears in the August issue of the Journal of Marriage and Family. The article is entitled, "Commitment to Work among Welfare Reliant Women."
"Welfare and welfare recipients have long been viewed with ambivalence by their fellow U.S. citizens," Monroe says. "Most often, they are stigmatized severely."
"We are trying to debunk myths and stereotypes about welfare recipients, to show these people as the diverse group that they are, and to expand the definition of work to include the activities in which many of the women are engaged," she adds.
Working in seven rural Louisiana parishes with high poverty and welfare program participation rates, the researchers interviewed welfare recipients who were participating in GED training or job training designed to help them get off welfare.
All the interviewees were women.
Through private interviews, the researchers learned about the women's work histories. They also asked about job availability, informal work, survival strategies and helping networks, most of which included kin and seldom included men.
"Welfare recipients have been viewed as a homogeneous group," Monroe says. "They aren't homogeneous. Welfare recipients vary widely in terms of characteristics like education, work history, mental and emotional stability, sexual exclusivity, family size and willingness to work."
Dr. Alexis Walker, professor of human development at Oregon State University and editor of the journal in which the article appears says that Monroe and Tiller's research indicates that "women on public assistance are much like other women in many ways." The researchers report these women expressed a strong desire and intention to work. In fact, they say, the women "professed some remarkably traditional, mainstream values regarding work and providing for their families." Walker adds, "The authors demonstrate that women on public assistance leave paid work for the same reasons other employees do: pregnancy or the birth of a child, the seasonal nature of the work, the closing of a factory, and so on. They care about the same things other women care about: a job with reasonable hours and reasonable pay, access to high quality and affordable child care and transportation."
The Monroe and Tiller's research reveals that most of the women they interviewed are trying against all odds to improve their human capital. Many have been employed and want to work in the future, seeing employment as the key to a better life beyond the welfare system.
Monroe says many, maybe most, welfare recipients are actively engaged in what she calls self-provisioning activities.
"These are the many, varied methods and strategies the women use to provide for themselves, their children and their extended family, such as dependent elderly parents," she says.
"The women also are actively involved in the work of care -- care of children especially, but care of family and community members," Monroe adds. "The paper argues that stereotypes of laziness and unwillingness to work should not be applied to such hard-working women and that if these women were middle-class, suburban women, we would readily admit that this is 'work.'"
Monroe and Tiller continue to follow the women in their study, having recently completed a third round of interviews with funding support from the Southern Rural Development Center. Their latest work includes researchers at Clemson University in South Carolina who conducted a parallel study for comparison with the Louisiana study.
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Alexis Walker, Editor, Journal of Marriage and Family, Oregon State University, 541-737-1083, 541-737-1076 (fax), walkera at orst.edu Writer: Rick Bogren at (225) 578-5839 or rbogren at agctr.lsu.edu
The National Council on Family Relations (NCFR) located in Minneapolis, MN, the oldest multidisciplinary family organization in the United States, is a non-profit organization of more than 4,000 professionals who work in the multi-faceted areas of the family field. It is the only professional organization focused solely on family research, policy, and practice. NCFR is highly regarded as an authority for information on a broad range of family concerns, such as cross-cultural families, family health, family therapy, working families, step families, parenting, family stress, gender roles, divorce, family violence, adolescent issues, the elderly, child development, and life cycle changes.
The entire article and press release are available on the National Council on Family Relations website: http://www.ncfr.com/about_us/j_press_releases.asp
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