This article reports the findings of a study of single mothers who are mandated to participate in workfare programs. It examines how low-income single mothers become involved in paid work and how the structures of their personal lives and their strategies of parenthood in low-income urban environments shape their economic action. Interviews with workfare participants show how single mothers view their economic field of action and how they interpret economic opportunities and make decisions about work in the context of their obligations and commitments to their children and their close kin. This study extends sociological perspectives on the relationship between work and family life to the study of women on welfare and addresses the shortcomings of poverty policy studies that ignore the family and neighborhood contexts of welfare mothers' economic activity.
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