Promoting work and marriage were primary aims of the 1996 welfare reform bill, yet implementation of these dual goals has not been analyzed comparatively. In analyzing our respective ethnographic data from government-funded work and marriage classes, we identified similarities in the programs’ focus on teaching the cognitive and emotional skills presumed to comprise what we call the good neoliberal citizen. Drawing on the programs’ curricula and our class observations, we reveal how both pillars of welfare reform sought to promote individual responsibility and economic self-sufficiency among poor parents by teaching skill-based strategies for regulating participants’ thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. We argue that by framing economic mobility as the result of learned capacities for skillful self-regulation and proper planning in the realms of work and family, welfare programs’ attempts to create good neoliberal citizens obscure the structural factors that sustain poverty and the need for welfare.
AbramovitzMimi. 2006. “Welfare Reform in the United States: Gender, Race and Class Matter.” Critical Social Policy26(2):336–64.
2.
Administration for Children and Families. 2017. “Healthy Marriage & Responsible Fatherhood.” Washington, DC: Department of Health and Human Services. Retrieved May1, 2017 (https://www.acf.hhs.gov/ofa/programs/healthy-marriage).
3.
BertrandMarianneMullainathanSendhil. 2004. “Are Emily and Greg More Employable than Lakisha and Jamal? A Field Experiment on Labor Market Discrimination.” American Economic Review94(4):991–1013.
4.
BourdieuPierre. [1979] 1984. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
5.
BroughtonChad. 2003. “Reforming Poor Women: The Cultural Politics and Practices of Welfare Reform.” Qualitative Sociology26(1):35–51.
BurawoyMichael. 1998. “The Extended Case Method.” Sociological Theory16(1):4–33.
8.
CharmazKathy. 2006. Constructing Grounded Theory: A Practical Guide through Qualitative Analysis. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
9.
CollinsJane L.MayerVictoria. 2010. Both Hands Tied: Welfare Reform and the Race to the Bottom in the Low-wage Labor Market. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
10.
CorrellShelley J.BenardStephanPaikIn. 2007. “Getting a Job: Is There a Motherhood Penalty?” American Journal of Sociology112(5):1297–1338.
11.
DeanMitchell. 1999. Governmentality: Power and Rule in Modern Society. London, England: Sage.
12.
DugganLisa. 2003. The Twilight of Equality: Neoliberalism, Cultural Politics, and the Attack on Democracy. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.
13.
FoucaultMichel. 2004/2008. The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1978–1979. Edited by SenellartMichel. Translated by BurchellGraham. New York: Picador.
14.
GershonIllanaAlexyAllison. 2011. “Introduction: The Ethics of Disconnection in a Neoliberal Age.” Anthropological Quarterly84(4):799–808.
15.
GoffmanIrving. 1959. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. New York: Anchor Books.
16.
HaysSharon. 2003. Flat Broke with Children: Women in the Age of Welfare Reform. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.
17.
HeathMelanie. 2012. One Marriage under God: The Campaign to Promote Marriage in America. New York: New York University Press.
18.
HochschildArlie Russell. [1983] 2012. The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
19.
HughesJason. 2005. “Bringing Emotion to Work: Emotional Intelligence, Employee Resistance and the Reinvention of Character.” Work, Employment and Society19(3):603–25.
20.
IllouzEva. 2007. Cold Intimacies: The Making of Emotional Capitalism. Malden, MA: Polity Press.
21.
KortewegAnna C.2003. “Welfare Reform and the Subject of the Working Mother: ‘Get a Job, a Better Job, Then a Career.’”Theory and Society32:445–80.
22.
LemkeThomas. 2001. “‘The Birth of Bio-politics’: Michel Foucault’s Lecture at the Collège de France on Neo-liberal Governmentality.” Economy and Society30(2):190–207.
23.
McGuiganJim. 2014. “The Neoliberal Self.” Culture Unbound6:223–40.
24.
MilesMatthewHubermanA. Michael. 1994. Qualitative Data Analysis. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
25.
MinkGwendolyn. 1998. Welfare’s End. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
26.
MossPhilipTillyChris. 2003. Stories Employers Tell: Race, Skill, and Hiring in America. New York: Russell Sage.
27.
PagerDevahWesternBruceBonikowskiBart. 2009. “Discrimination in a Low-wage Labor Market: A Field Experiment.” American Sociological Review74(5):777–99.
28.
RandlesJennifer. 2013. “Repackaging the ‘Package Deal’: Promoting Marriage for Low- Income Families by Targeting Paternal Identity and Reframing Marital Masculinity.” Gender & Society27(6): 864-888.
29.
RandlesJennifer. 2014. “Partnering and Parenting in Poverty: A Qualitative Analysis of a Relationship Skills Program for Low-Income, Unmarried Families.” Journal of Policy Analysis and Management33(2): 385-412.
30.
RandlesJennifer. 2017. Proposing Prosperity: Marriage Education Policy and Inequality in America. New York: Columbia University Press.
31.
ReeseEllen. 2005. Backlash against Welfare Mothers: Past and Present. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
32.
RobertsDorothy. 1999. “Welfare’s Ban on Poor Motherhood.” Pp. 152–67 in Whose Welfare? edited by MinkGwendolyn. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
33.
RoseNikolas. 1990. Governing the Soul: The Shaping of the Private Self. New York: Routledge.
34.
SmithAnne Marie. 2007. Welfare Reform and Sexual Regulation. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
35.
SossJoeFordingRichard C.SchramSanford. 2011. Disciplining the Poor: Neoliberal Paternalism and the Persistent Power of Race. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
36.
StraussAnselmCorbinJuliet. 1998. Basics of Qualitative Research: Techniques and Procedures for Developing Grounded Theory. London, England: Sage.
37.
UrciuoliBonnie. 2008. “Skills and Selves in the New Workplace.” American Ethnologist35(2):211–28.
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. 2000. “Characteristics and Financial Circumstances of TANF Recipients, Fiscal Year 1999.” Washington, DC: Administration for Children and Families. Retrieved June23, 2016 (https://www.acf.hhs.gov/ofa/resource/character/fy99/analysishtm).
40.
WhiteheadJaye Cee. 2012. The Nuptial Deal: Same-sex Marriage and Neo-liberal Governance. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
WoodwardKerry. 2013. Pimping the Welfare System: Empowering Participants with Economic, Social, and Cultural Capital. Lanham, MD: Lexington.
43.
WoodwardKerry. 2014a. “‘Pimping the System’: How Economic, Social, and Cultural Capital Are Deployed in a Welfare Program.” Journal of Contemporary Ethnography42 (1) (February): 3–27.
44.
WoodwardKerry. 2014b. “School or Therapy: Two Approaches to Empowering Welfare-Reliant Women.” The Journal of Poverty18: 399–426.
45.
WrennMary V.2015. “Agency and Neoliberalism.” Cambridge Journal of Economics39:1231–43.
