Pitied but Not Entitled: Single Mothers and the History of Welfare.

At the beginning of this insightful piece of intellectual and social history, Linda Gordon notes that she stands on the shoulders of others who have worked on the administrative history of social welfare programs. In this regard, she is far too modest. Her book stands out as a strikingly original contribution to the historical literature on welfare policy.

Although the book owes a great deal to the work in women's history on such topics as the Children's Bureau or the dominion of social reform in the progressive era, it takes a far different approach. The women in this account are themselves caught up in historical forces and class circumstances. Gordon notes, for example, many of the women in the reform dominion lived within a "woman's community that must be considered unorthodox, perhaps even subversive, toward the normative family system," yet these same women "put into place a welfare program that reinforced a conventional, even outdated gender system and disrespected other women's preferences for such independence" (p. 67). She also has a deeper understanding of race than do most feminist commentators on the progressive era, noting that, "[t]he word 'race' was used ambiguously, sometimes referring to humans, sometimes to whites, sometimes to a nationality" (p. 47). In this manner she restores immigrants to their rightful place as the central objects of progressive reform while, at the same time, devoting considerable attention to black women's welfare thought.

At the core of the book is an effort to explain the reversal of the meaning of the term "welfare" between 1890 and 1935. It starts out having positive connotations and ends up meaning "grudging aid to the poor." This transformation drives this gendered history of the state's response to the needs of single mothers, a history that culminates in the Aid to Dependent Children (ADC) provisions in the Social Security Act of 1935.

The book does not function as a tight chronology of events; it is best read as a series of essays on a theme. Gordon begins with an analysis of welfare in the modern state. Using social welfare methodology that contrasts popular thought with demographic reality, Gordon reveals that the phenomenon of single motherhood caused considerable concern in the early years of this century, concern that ultimately led to the passage of widows' pensions for "deserving" mothers. These state "mothers' aid" laws became important policy models. The models were actively transported by welfare agitators, familiar figures such as Julia Lathrop and Grace Abbott, acting through familiar agencies, such as the Children's Bureau, to Washington and ultimately into the Social Security Act.

The heart of Gordon's argument comes in her discussion of social insurance and the sexual division of labor, which is key to her definition of the gendered approach to history. She argues that women, both black and white, were excluded from the New Deal deliberations over welfare. Instead, a social insurance model was incorporated into the Social Security Act. The social work vision, as shaped by the familiar figures and agencies, affected only the public assistance provisions of the Act, such as ADC. Hence, the Act established a lasting division (what the social scientists call a bifurcated welfare state) between social insurance and welfare. Gordon concludes in a deliberate form of overstatement that the Social Security Act helped to create today's underclass. It did so by defining entitlement strictly in terms of labor force participation in industries and commercial establishments populated largely by white men. Other claimants for aid had to struggle with inferior programs that were the product of a maternalistic vision that did not respond to either the preferences or needs of many single mothers. A more universal approach was possible in the New Deal, but the domination of the policy process by social insurance advocates (including Frances Perkins, who had many ties to such female-dominated organizations as the National Consumers League) foreclosed discussion.

As an intellectual history of the forces producing ADC, the book works well. Gordon writes with considerably less authority on events between 1935 and the present. In the period between 1935 and 1950, for example, social insurance was far from popular and welfare was far from stigmatized. It was events in the 1950s, every bit as much as those in the 1930s and the progressive era, that produced modern attitudes toward welfare. Nor does ADC, much of which goes to males as well as females if one considers that some unemployed men and many young children receive benefits, stand alone as a despised welfare program. Recent attacks on Supplemental Security Income, which Gordon mistakingly characterizes as folded into social security, show that people with disabilities on welfare also face considerable stigma and considerable skepticism from Congress. Nor, for that matter, does social security fail to reach women and blacks. On the contrary, it is the single most important source of government benefits for both of those groups.

So Gordon's brilliant intellectual commentary should substantially refocus the literature on welfare programs and policy that is such an important off-shoot of women's history. Her work on what might be described as the pre-history of ADC is particularly important. She does less well with the links between the Social Security Act and present conditions. That is where future writers might stand on her shoulders.

Ruth Brannon National Rehabilitation Hospital, Washington, D.C.