The construction of maternal identity among Israeli mothers who are welfare clients

Dominant social, cultural, and professional discourses view motherhood as the core of a woman's identity. Thus, the identity of women who do not meet the general expectations of motherhood might be negatively affected. Specifically, mothers who are welfare clients may violate the prevailing norms concerning the maternal role. This qualitative study explores how Israeli mothers who are welfare clients construct their maternal identity. Studies of mothers who are clients of welfare services suggest that they feel blamed for being “bad” or “unfit” mothers. However, women occasionally negotiate or challenge the negative perceptions that are forced on them by hegemonic discourses of motherhood. We postulate that such women experience a troubled maternal identity that they negotiate through interactions with others. Accordingly, this study set to explore how Israeli mothers who are welfare clients negotiate their maternal identity in the context of motherhood and welfare discourses. Fourteen participants were interviewed, and the findings illustrate the vulnerability of the mothers and their strategies to construct a positive maternal identity. We discuss the findings in light of the concept of troubled identity.     

Negotiating motherhood: women with troubled upbringings and their self‐conceptions as mothers

This paper examines how women who experienced severe adjustment problems during adolescence, and who had troubled childhoods in families with high levels of conflict, construct their self‐conceptions as mothers. Applying data from a 30‐year‐long follow‐up study, this paper examines how participants with troubled upbringings experience social norms of motherhood. Two overall themes emerged along with their associated subcategories, and these are identified as significant findings. The first theme is the stigmatizing gaze, exemplifying how the intervention of the child welfare service is recognized as essential to the women's self‐conception; its three subcategories are prejudiced motherhood, predestined motherhood and self‐critical motherhood. The second theme is significant relationships, exemplifying the mothers' personal bonds and contributing greatly to their self‐conception; its three subcategories are the other half, next of kin and disturbed relations. The findings reveal that the way these women view themselves as mothers cannot be separated from the way that others view them, and in addition, they must negotiate their positions as mothers through the normative discourses of motherhood. The findings apply to both theoretical and practical social work, addressing the need for an understanding of motherhood within the field of child welfare.     

Discursive Struggles Within Social Welfare: Restaging Teen Motherhood

This paper is an attempt at exploring the contemporary neo-liberalcontexts in which social and community services operate andthe opportunities for undertaking struggles around rights andentitlements to social welfare within this context. It discussesthe centrality of single motherhood for the redefinition ofthe relationships of shared well-being among citizens and proposesthe frameworks of discourse analysis and identity constructionas central in contemporary debates. The paper examines the discoursesof an agency servicing teen mothers and explicates some strategiesthrough which these discourses perform an entitled teen motherhood.Subverting the general identity assigned to these mothers bysociety, research and traditional social services, the discoursesof this agency open a space in which poor young women are enactedas young parents, entitled to supports, respite and a voicein society. The discursive strategies have been successful inattracting resources for the mothers involved with the agency,though questions remain regarding the possibilities of theirwidespread application within other social welfare environments.A few concluding thoughts explore the new social welfare environmentand call for a renewed understanding of the contexts of practiceand the possibilities of subversion.     

Cross-Cultural Validation of the Child Abuse Potential Inventory in Finland: Preliminary Findings of the Study Among Parents Expecting a Baby

ABSTRACT

In order to decrease physical child abuse, measures to recognize parents' abuse potential are needed. In this article, cross-cultural validation of the Child Abuse Potential (CAP) Inventory, an American measure was used to screen child abuse potential in families. Data were collected in 2012 from Finnish families expecting a baby at maternity and child welfare clinics. The data come from 380 families, including 375 mothers and 303 spouses. The validation was conducted separately for mothers and spouses and was based on basic psychometric properties, such as reliability estimates, abuse scale construct validity, and the abuse scale factor structure. The internal consistency of the abuse scale was high among both the mothers and the spouses. There were some differences in abuse construct validity and the abuse scale factor structure compared to the original measure, which was written in English and tested in an American sample. Those differences were, however, similar to those found by other studies that used translated versions of the inventory. In summary, the CAP Inventory was found to be a valid screening tool for professionals to assess parents' child abuse potential in Finnish service settings, and therefore its implementation is recommended in maternity and child welfare clinics. The validation supports the cross-cultural use of the CAP Inventory and future research on the subject.     

Welfare through Work: An Audit of Occupational Social Provision at the Turn of the New Century

Occupational welfare has been a relatively neglected area in both theoretical and empirical studies of the welfare state despite its importance to overall levels of social provision. Surprisingly, there has not yet been a comprehensive examination of British occupational social provision, as opposed to non‐wage benefits more generally or specific provision such as pensions, housing or childcare. This neglect can be explained both by the perception that occupational welfare plays a relatively insignificant role in contemporary welfare states and by a general lack of clarity regarding its definition and scope, factors which have added to the difficulties surrounding its conceptualization and measurement. Despite the lack of attention it has received, however, recent pressures have propelled the issue higher up the social policy agenda, increasing the need for a clearer conception of what constitutes occupational social provision and a more comprehensive assessment of its contemporary significance. This paper seeks to shed some light on to these areas by drawing on comparative and UK data in order to carry out an audit of occupational social provision.     

Manufacturing ghost fathers: the paradox of father presence and absence in child welfare

Fathers exist in the lives of women and children involved with child welfare authorities, and yet, they are rarely seen by child welfare. This invisibility exists whether or not fathers are deemed as risks or as assets to their families. Using an analysis of fundamental child welfare policies and practices and relevant literature, the paper examines how 'ghost' fathers are manufactured, and how this phenomenon affects families and professionals in child welfare. An analysis of gender, class, race and culture of child welfare discourses shows how these fathers are seen as deviant, dangerous, irresponsible and irrelevant, and even further, how absence in child welfare is inextricably linked to blaming mothers. In failing to work with fathers, child welfare ignores potential risks and assets for both mothers and children.     

Importing Workfare: Policy Transfer of Social and Labour Market Policies from the USA to Britain under New Labour

Britain's New Labour government has put welfare reform at the top of its political agenda. It has followed a radical “workfare” agenda in relation to labour and social market policies and no longer aims to secure full employment mainly through direct job creation or Keynesian demand management. Instead, it promotes equal opportunity for all based on a contract between benefits claimants and the employment service. The New Deal is at the heart of British activation programmes for the unemployed. American policy paradigms have influenced the design of the New Deal. Policy transfer in activation policies from the USA to Britain is due to institutional similarities in British and American welfare states on the one hand, and to the comparable structure of their labour markets on the other hand. The influence of the European social model on British labour market policies thus remains limited.     

Protective legislation: The “third pillar” of the welfare state

Welfare states are built upon three central social policy pillars: (1) income programs, including an assortment of income maintenance and security benefits; (2) social services, comprising a diverse constellation of provisions, which furnish care such as health care and education, and “in kind” benefits; and (3) protective legislation, encompassing a dense web of proactive and preventative laws, rights, and entitlements, such as health and safety legislation, minimum wage laws, child protection acts, rent controls, and laws governing evictions and foreclosures. Despite its centrality to the welfare state and to our well‐being, this third pillar has received considerably less attention in comparative social policy research. The dominant welfare state typologies have focused almost exclusively upon income measures and, more recently, on social services, to construct their welfare state categories or “worlds” of welfare while largely neglecting this crucial third pillar. A greater focus on protective welfare legislation can help sharpen the distinctions among welfare states within and across the welfare worlds, which is particularly valuable in light of the ongoing erosion of the other two pillars over the past few decades.     

Are Scandinavians lazy or hard-working?

The popular image of work and working in Scandinavia is highly contradictory. One discourse stresses the strict work ethic of Scandinavian people and the participation of the whole population in wage labor. Another discourse says that welfare states have undermined the motivation of people in Scandinavian to work. This article explores the argumentation of both discourses and compares the industry of people in Finland, Norway and Sweden with the situation in other OECD countries. The picture that unfolds is contradictory: Scandinavia has a high labor market participation rate, but Norwegian people nonetheless work only comparatively few hours, Finnish people work long hours, while Swedish people fall somewhere in-between. Overall, the people of Scandinavia are certainly not the most hard-working in the world, but the amount of work does not seem to correlate directly with the national standard of living.     

Governance, Forced Migration and Welfare

This paper explores the welfare of forced migrants (i.e. refugees, asylum‐seekers, those with humanitarian leave to remain, and “failed asylum‐seekers/overstayers”) at three linked levels. First, it considers the governance of forced migrants at a supranational (in this case European Union) level. Second, particularly, but not exclusively in the context of the UK, it considers the extent to which the welfare rights of forced migrants in EU member states have been subject to a process of “hollowing out” or “dispersal”. Third, utilizing data from a recently completed qualitative research project, the paper outlines the complex local systems of governance that exist in relation to the housing and social security rights of forced migrants in the UK. The consequences of these networks are highlighted.     

Giving money to strangers: European welfare states and social trust

Jensen C, Svendsen GT. Giving money to strangers: European welfare states and social trust Int J Soc Welfare 2011: 20: 3–9 © 2009 The Author, Journal compilation © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd and the International Journal of Social Welfare. Why would you give money to strangers? That is the fundamental question posed by a new body of research into the relationship between social trust and willingness to accept high taxes and extensive welfare states. The literature argues that generalised trust causes and upholds universal welfare state institutions, an entirely plausible explanation of the Scandinavian social democratic welfare states. However, it cannot explain the presence of very large welfare states in Continental Europe, where the level of generalised trust is much lower than in Scandinavia. The article adds to the existing literature by arguing that the ‘bumblebee’ of conservative welfare states is characterised by particularistic trust and familiaristic welfare institutions, which are functional equivalents to the mechanisms found in Scandinavia. Future research into the trust–welfare state relationship should therefore focus on the trust profile of a country to understand how the welfare state provides its citizens with benefits.     

Weaving cohesive identities: New Zealand women talk as mothers and workers

Abstract

This exploratory study examines the discourses which construct women as mothers and workers and explores the strategies the women use to weave these sometimes contradictory identities together. Discourse analysis was used to explore the talk of two focus groups of first‐time mothers, all New Zealanders of European descent in stable heterosexual partnerships with babies aged less than six months. The women deployed an intensive mother discourse which privileged their maternal role and positioned the babies as needing parental care and mothers as the natural providers of that care. However, they also felt the pressure of successful woman and economic rationalist discourses in which paid work is essential to wellbeing and good citizenship while motherhood is devalued. The women's decisions about re‐entering the paid workforce were characterised by conflict and constraint. The analysis focuses on the strategies of resistance that the women used to warrant their life choices, including constructing motherhood as a job, and deploying an independent mother discourse which serves to facilitate their striving for the best of both worlds. Also explored are some of the structural barriers that serve to further limit women's choices.     

Economic well‐being of low‐income single‐mother families following welfare reform in the USA

This study explored changes in net disposable income for low‐income single‐mother families before and after the 1996 welfare reform in the USA. Although many studies on welfare reform have focused on employment or total family income as a way to measure low‐income single‐mother families’ economic well‐being, little is known about their net income after expenses related to entering the workforce. This study analyzed net disposable income after tax deductions and childcare costs to provide a more accurate understanding of income changes using data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation conducted by the US Census Bureau. The results revealed that while low‐income single mothers were working more after welfare reform, their net disposable income decreased during this time because their earnings were low and offset by an increase in childcare costs and a decline in means‐tested benefits, including Temporary Assistance for Needy Families benefits. Key Practitioner Message: ● To understand effects of the 1996 welfare reform on low‐income families’ economic well‐being; ● To understand comprehensive income sources and work related expenses of low‐income families; ● To provide policy suggestions for comprehensive childcare subsidies to support low‐income single mothers’ employment.     

Increasing Choice and Control for Older and Disabled People: A Critical Review of New Developments in England

This paper critically examines new policies currently being implemented in England aimed at increasing the choice and control that disabled and older people can exercise over the social care support and services they receive. The development of these policies, and their elaboration in three policy documents published during 2005, are summarized. The paper then discusses two issues underpinning these proposals: the role of quasi‐markets within publicly funded social care services; and the political and policy discourses of consumerism and choice within the welfare state. Despite powerful critiques of welfare consumerism, the paper argues that there are nevertheless very important reasons for taking choice seriously when considering how best to organize and deliver support and other services for disabled and older people. A policy discourse on consumerism, however, combined with the use of market mechanisms for implementing this, may be highly problematic as the means of creating opportunities for increased choice and, on its own, risks introducing new forms of disadvantage and social exclusion.     

The Third Way and Social Welfare: The Myth of Post-emotionalism

The “passive” welfare state was accused of promoting a dependency culture. “Active” welfare and the “what works?” approach of Britain's New Labour government is allegedly implicated in an age of post‐emotionalism, in which people are largely indifferent to the needs of others and committed primarily to their personal well‐being. This article, first, seeks to extend recent debates about agency and motivation in social policy and relate them to the notion of post‐emotionalism. Second, it draws on a recent empirical study of popular and welfare provider discourses, which suggests that popular opinion can accommodate an appreciation of human interdependency, while welfare providers remain committed to a public service ethos. None the less, Third Way thinking is associated with a narrowing of solidaristic responsibilities. The problem for the future of health, social care and state welfare policies lies not with the imagined consequences of post‐emotionalism, so much as with an ideological context that perpetuates a distorted ethic of responsibility.     

The State and its Welfare State: How do Welfare State Changes Affect the Make‐up of the Nation State?

With respect to changes in the welfare states of OECD countries, scholars most of the time are looking for common trends; that is, they look for similar movements in different states, such as welfare state retrenchment, recalibration, etc. As we show in this article, data on welfare state spending and financing do not, however, support such stark tendencies like retrenchment. We therefore suggest looking for corridor effects rather than level effects, i.e. analysing changes in the dispersion of welfare state regimes rather than shifts in the mean values. Our analysis suggests that convergence, i.e. decreasing diversity among states in spending, financing and regulation patterns, may have been the most important pattern of welfare state change in the last three decades – a pattern easily overlooked in past and current research. Convergence of welfare state regimes also affects our views on the modern nation state itself since the varieties of welfare capitalism in the twentieth century are themselves an expression of the sovereignty and autonomy of the nation state. If nation states are forced to surrender national particularities, to mellow their characteristic differences and to move incrementally towards a one‐size‐fits‐all common model via ‘shrinking corridors’, such a blurring of welfare regimes, such a beclouding of difference, should also be regarded as a significant change taking place in the centre of the Western nation state's make‐up.     

Adaptation to Labour Market Change in France and the UK: Convergent or Parallel Tracks?

France and the UK are markedly different welfare states, both in terms of regime type and in terms of the varying degree of state responsibility for reconciling work and family life. One recent theoretical strand suggests that welfare states will tend to grow more similar since they face broadly similar pressures. This paper discusses the policy responses in France and the UK to labour market pressures resulting from enhanced international competition, technological development and family change during the past decade. These responses are set in the context of European debates about the desirability of greater flexibility, up‐skilling and the activation of unemployed people, about the childcare needs of women workers and about the importance of paid work in reducing poverty and inequality. The analysis shows that trends to convergence are limited.     

Changing Welfare Regimes in East and Southeast Asia: Crisis, Change and Challenge

The Asia‐Pacific region is a latecomer to the development of the welfare state. However, in some countries, governments have implemented ambitious programmes to extend social security systems and to enlarge the institutional structure of their welfare states. Comparative study of the welfare systems in East and Southeast Asia is, however, underdeveloped and there still is a relative lack of accurate knowledge about welfare systems in the region. Since the Asian financial crisis, more attention has been paid to the social policies of the countries. This paper examines features of welfare regimes in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan and Thailand, and undertakes a systematic review of the development, levels and patterns of welfare regimes in the region. Two core questions are answered: can the existing welfare systems help mitigate the social impact of the financial and economic crisis? What are the needs, challenges and developmental perspectives that inform the future of welfare regimes in this region?     

Financial Incentives and Job‐search Training: Methods to Increase Labour Market Integration in Contemporary Welfare States?

In their efforts to increase labour market integration, contemporary welfare states emphasize the importance of financial incentives, active job‐searching and participation in labour market programmes. However, the effects of these policies have been minor and in some cases even inconsistent. The aim of this study was to examine whether and how financial incentives and job‐search training programmes increase re‐employment and the quality of re‐employment. A total of 1,015 unemployed persons participated in a Finnish follow‐up study with a randomized experimental design. Although no overall impact of job‐search training on re‐employment emerged, a positive effect was found for those groups of the unemployed who had a financial incentive to participate in the programme. Nevertheless, among unemployed workers with benefits at a minimum level there were no positive effects on the quality of re‐employment, and the impact decreased when unemployment was prolonged. Financial incentives and job‐search training appear to increase re‐employment among those of the unemployed who generally have better chances on the labour market, whereas these measures are not sufficient for the more disadvantaged groups of the unemployed.