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Who Deserves Help? Who Must Provide?

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  • Linda Gordon

    (New York University)

Abstract

Human societies have always provided help for the needy, and this provision has frequently been calibrated according to notions of deservingness and obligation. These notions have been shaped by gendered double standards, including measures of sexual morality, personal demeanor, housekeeping, and self-sacrifice, that are applied to women but not to men. Most fundamental, the fact that women are the primary child raisers has given many of them, in modern societies, two jobs--working for wages and working without wages to raise children. The modern welfare system arose from campaigns to help mothers who try to perform these two jobs without male help. Focusing first on deserted women, then on widows, and more recently on never-married mothers, U.S. welfare policy in the twentieth century was self-defeating because it tried to provide for poor children while avoiding giving aid or encouragement to lone mothers.

Suggested Citation

  • Linda Gordon, 2001. "Who Deserves Help? Who Must Provide?," The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, , vol. 577(1), pages 12-25, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:anname:v:577:y:2001:i:1:p:12-25
    DOI: 10.1177/000271620157700102
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Dorothy W. Douglas, 1920. "The Cost of Living for Working Women: A Criticism of Current Theories," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 34(2), pages 225-259.
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