Soc Polit. 2011;18(1):24-51. doi: 10.1093/sp/jxr003.
The United States' 1996 welfare reforms are often interpreted as a historical break in transitioning from supporting motherhood to commodifiying women's labor. However, this cannot account for welfare reform's emphasis upon heterosexual marriage and fatherhood promotion. The paper traces continuities and shifts in over a century of familial regulation through American welfare policy, specifying the place of marriage promotion within welfare policy. Up until 1996, families were key sites of intervention through which the American welfare state was erected, especially through single women as mothers - not wives. However, as of the 1960s, concern with African American men's "failed" familial commitments turned policymakers toward concern over marriage promotion for women and men. While marriage "disincentives" for aid recipients were lifted in the 1960s, the 1996 reforms structured a new form of nuclear family governance actively promoting marriage rooted in, but distinct from, the previous. Given the historical absence of welfare policies available to poor men, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families' (TANF) marriage promotion policies have positioned poor women as nodes connecting the state to poor men, simultaneously structuring poor women as breadwinners, mothers, and wives. Recent welfare reform has also started to target poor men directly, especially in fatherhood and marriage promotion initiatives. The article highlights how, in addition to workfare policies, marriage promotion is a neoliberal policy shifting risk to the shoulders of the poor, aiming to produce "strong families" for the purposes of social security.
美国 1996 年的福利改革通常被解读为从支持母性向商品化女性劳动力转变的历史转折点。然而，这并不能说明福利改革对异性婚姻和父权制的强调。本文通过美国福利政策追溯了一个多世纪以来家庭监管的连续性和转变，具体说明了婚姻促进在福利政策中的地位。直到 1996 年，家庭一直是美国福利国家建立的干预重点，尤其是单身母亲——而不是妻子。然而，自 20 世纪 60 年代以来，人们开始关注非裔美国男性“失败”的家庭承诺，这促使政策制定者转而关注女性和男性的婚姻促进。虽然援助接受者的婚姻“激励”在 20 世纪 60 年代被取消，但 1996 年的改革构建了一种新的核心家庭治理形式，积极促进基于但不同于以前的婚姻。鉴于贫困男性缺乏福利政策，《有工作的家庭援助法案》（TANF）的婚姻促进政策将贫困女性定位为将国家与贫困男性联系起来的节点，同时将贫困女性构建为养家糊口者、母亲和妻子。最近的福利改革也开始直接针对贫困男性，特别是在促进父亲和婚姻的倡议方面。本文强调了除了工作福利政策之外，婚姻促进也是一种新自由主义政策，将风险转移到穷人的肩上，旨在为社会保障目的培养“强大的家庭”。
