>Jenny:
>>This is a narrow definition of economic dependence. If I can 90%
>>pay my bills without another person in the household, that's not
>>good enough for the landlord.
>
Yoshie:
>Suppose that the woman shoulders 90% of household expenses and the
>man can contribute only 10% of them (as opposed to the man willing to
>contribute only 10% even though he can do more if he chooses to) --
>who is dependent on whom?
He'd contribute the missing 10% and support himself with the remainder of his typically larger paycheck. She'd keep the arrangement to keep from being out on the street. Women double up too, but don't have the benefit of a larger paycheck.
>. . . The issue that best reflects Berlant's argument . . . is the
>emphasis on state and federal efforts to encourage, through funding
>allocated for governmental programs and individual incentives, single
>welfare mothers to marry the fathers of their children. Consider that
>in West Virginia, a couple's welfare benefits are augmented if they
>wed, while the state has reduced the welfare benefits cohabitating
>non-married adults receive by 25 percent.
But that has to do with wanting to put the financial burden of raising children squarely on the underpaid shoulders of the working class as a whole, men included, more than it has to do with controlling working class women (although it does that, too). This is true even for these incentive schemes, as welfare is now temporary and much outlasted by child support and marriage property issues. As Kelley mentioned earlier, the feminist focus should be universal supports funded by corporate taxes, not on more thoroughly dunning working class guys.
Jenny Brown