Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1 From Paternafare to Marriage Promotion: Sexual Regulation and Welfare Reform
- 2 Biopower and Sexual Regulation
- 3 Post-Foucauldian Sexual Regulation Theory
- 4 The Ideological Construction of Paternafare
- 5 Paternafare Law Today
- 6 Welfare Reform, Reproductive Heterosexuality, and Marriage
- 7 The Normative Assessment of Paternafare: An Ideal-Type Analysis
- 8 Feminist Visions
- Appendix I Gender, Race, and the TANF Population
- Appendix II Family Structure and Poverty
- Appendix III Child Support Enforcement Allocations in a Neoliberal Fiscal Environment
- Appendix IV The “Swarming” of Paternafare
- Appendix V The Disconnection between Poverty and TANF Assistance
- Appendix VI Race, Ethnicity, and the Family Cap
- Index
Appendix II - Family Structure and Poverty
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1 From Paternafare to Marriage Promotion: Sexual Regulation and Welfare Reform
- 2 Biopower and Sexual Regulation
- 3 Post-Foucauldian Sexual Regulation Theory
- 4 The Ideological Construction of Paternafare
- 5 Paternafare Law Today
- 6 Welfare Reform, Reproductive Heterosexuality, and Marriage
- 7 The Normative Assessment of Paternafare: An Ideal-Type Analysis
- 8 Feminist Visions
- Appendix I Gender, Race, and the TANF Population
- Appendix II Family Structure and Poverty
- Appendix III Child Support Enforcement Allocations in a Neoliberal Fiscal Environment
- Appendix IV The “Swarming” of Paternafare
- Appendix V The Disconnection between Poverty and TANF Assistance
- Appendix VI Race, Ethnicity, and the Family Cap
- Index
Summary
The promotion of the marital heterosexual family structure by the State as a solution to poverty ought to be regarded, on its face, as a thoroughly obnoxious form of social engineering and religious proselytizing. It is also not clear that this strategy could really bring about a substantial decrease in the poverty rate. When we consider family structure, gender, and race simultaneously, it seems entirely possible that all three variables are interacting in a significant manner where poverty is concerned. It is true that children who are living in American families that are headed by a couple are much less likely to live in poverty than their counterparts who are being raised by a single parent. In 1999 the poverty rate for all families was 13.8 percent, while only 6.3 percent of the families headed by a couple were poor (see Table ii.i). All things being equal, two incomes are better than one in a neoliberal socioeconomic environment in which the disadvantaged citizen is being increasingly obliged to look to his or her wage-earning capacity and familial ties to get by. It makes sense that families with two adults who – theoretically at least – hold jobs that pay living wages and share childrearing and bread-winning duties have more resources at their disposal than the families headed by a single parent.
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- Welfare Reform and Sexual Regulation , pp. 265 - 270Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2007