"Both Hands Tied" studies the working poor in the United States, focusing in particular on the relation between welfare and low-wage earnings among working mothers. Grounded in the experience of thirty-three women living in Milwaukee and Racine, Wisconsin, it tells the story of their struggle to balance child care and wage-earning in poorly paying and often state-funded jobs with inflexible schedules – and the moments when these jobs failed them and they turned to the state for additional aid.
Jane L. Collins and Victoria Mayer here examine the situations of these women in light of the 1996 national Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act and other like-minded reforms – laws that ended the entitlement to welfare for those in need and provided an incentive for them to return to work. Arguing that this reform came at a time of gendered change in the labor force and profound shifts in the responsibilities of family, firms, and the state, "Both Hands Tied" provides a stark but poignant portrait of how welfare reform afflicted poor, single-parent families, ultimately eroding the participants' economic rights and affecting their ability to care for themselves and their children.
About the Author
Jane L. Collins is the Evjue Bascom Professor of Community and Environmental Sociology and Gender and Women's Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the author of "Threads: Gender, Labor and Power in the Global Apparel Industry", among other titles.
Victoria Mayer is assistant professor of sociology at Colby College.
Reviews
American Sociological Association: ASA-Labor and Labor Movements Best Book Award – Won
National Women's Studies Association: Sarah Whaley Prize – Won
"This is a definitive book. Collins and Mayer connect the hard experiences of particular women buffeted by changes in U. S. welfare policy with a broad and illuminating account of the economic and political forces that have transformed welfare in the United States. Read this book to understand what welfare reform is really about" – Frances Fox Piven, City University of New York (CUNY)
"The media just loves the work/family dilemmas of Ivy League lawyers and bankers, but in such discussions, the voices of poor women are rarely heard. 'Both Hands Tied' breaks that silence, allowing former TANF recipients to explain, in their own eloquent words, why, contrary to the assertions of mainstream scholars and journalists, welfare reform has been such a profound failure. Read this outstanding book if you can tolerate a bracing corrective to conventional complacency" – Liza Featherstone, The Nation
"The originality of 'Both Hands Tied' lies not just in its rich case study interview materials – in poor women's voices and the trajectories of their work and home lives – but in its careful tying of those materials to shifting national, state, and local economic policies. The authors offer truly engaging reading that extends its scholarship across a wide array of disciplines and speaks to the human costs of federal welfare legislation. 'Both Hands Tied' is an important contribution to the field and makes bold new interventions to discussions surrounding the rise of neoliberalism and neoconservatism, the family wage bargain, and our societal blindness to the essential work of social reproduction" – Micaela Di Leonardo, Northwestern University
"'Both Hands Tied' is critical social science at its best. I know of no book that is more successful in drawing the lived experiences of the poor into dialogue with the structural and political forces that are shaping their lives. What does it mean to be a worker, a citizen, and a parent in the lower reaches of American society today? How has the turn to paternalist welfare provision, rooted in work enforcement and behavioral regulation, affected poor women's struggles to achieve better lives for themselves and their children? By combining powerful narratives and incisive social analysis, the authors provide answers to these questions that are as troubling as they are persuasive. Brimming with insight and beautifully written, 'Both Hands Tied' is an important piece of scholarship that pulls back the curtain to reveal a national disgrace" – Joe Soss, University of Minnesota
