"The Single-Parent Family," Child Poverty, and Welfare Reform Available to Purchase

Although more than one-fifth of America's children are living in poverty, the current public and political dialogue is not focusing on underlying causes of poverty, but on reforming the welfare system and reducing welfare costs. In this context, "the single-parent family" has been identified as the problem and the target of reform. Fieldwork among low-income families in upstate New York provides data that challenge the politically popular paradigm of "the single-parent family," and questions the appropriateness of this focus in current welfare reform planning. Unstructured interviews, focus groups, and residential history questionnaires exposed dimensions of temporality, process, and values often ignored in studies of poor families. The research found important variation among low-income families with a single resident parent, and showed that the monolithic concept of "the single-parent family" is inadequate and misleading. These points were further explored in reconnaissance research conducted in high-poverty communities in nine other states. This dispersed-site study included ethnic/racial as well as regional diversity, but found similar inadequacies in the current conceptualization of single-parent families and in the marriage-based approach to welfare reform. Overall, this article argues that the single-parent family paradigm is inadequate as description, explanation, and basis for policy.