The Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program subordinates recipients to a series of requirements, sanctions, and stacked incentives aimed at rectifying their personal choices and family practices. In exchange for welfare, TANF recipients must surrender or compromise their vocational freedom, sexual privacy, and reproductive choice, as well as the right to make intimate decisions about how to be and raise a family. As TANF's foremost objective is to restore the patriarchal family, numerous provisions promote marriage and paternal headship while frustrating childbearing and child-raising rights outside of marriage. Implementation decisions and a new wave of welfare reform underscore the centrality of marriage in welfare policy. The current thrust of welfare policy en courages poor mothers to be dependent on men, punishes them for independence, and withholds the material recognition necessary to sustain independence.
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