I remember the welfare reform of 1998 very clearly. Many single Black and Latino mothers were being sent into the workforce to receive their welfare benefits.  At the time my daughter was two years old, I couldn’t get childcare for my daughter there were so many children being placed on a waiting list. Mothers were frantically looking for childcare providers fearing they would lose their benefits if they were unable to find childcare. Thankfully my mother was able to care for my daughter so I could go to work. I was able to place my daughter on a waiting list, which took a year. This was a better option for me at the time, I felt comfortable leaving my daughter with my mom instead of a stranger. I worried about leaving my daughter with a stranger who wasn’t qualified to care for children or whether she would be safe. 

           Many children needed childcare during this time and there wasn’t enough daycare center or family daycare providers available. In my opinion, it didn’t feel safe for children in caregiver’s homes. Who was certifying these caregivers? Where homes checked for lead and safety concerns? Who was doing a background check on these caregivers? There were too many unanswered questions that didn’t make me feel safe to leave my daughter with strangers. I was a young mother at the time but had enough sense and my gut feeling wasn’t making me feel at ease. Taking care of children is not an easy task. The City of New York was paying these caregivers $3.63 an hour, far below the federal minimum wage (Black, 2020, p. 3). Caregivers weren’t provided with any benefits including union benefits. They had no one advocating for them being the City’s lowest-paid workers (Black, 2020, p. 3). Caregivers had to buy food, art supplies, toys, diapers, with their own money (Black, 2020, p. 3). 

           Time the City was reformed welfare during Mayor Giuliani’s administration. As a result, women and poor children were at the forefront and suffering the consequences.  This program was called welfare to work (Black, 2020, p. 3). According to Black (2020, p.3) “Put differently, as caring for one’s child is not recognized as “work” under welfare reform, meeting the childcare needs of poor mothers on welfare was an immediate condition of their production as labor power- that is, as workers ready and able to engage in workfare and paid employment”. 

           In fact, “as poor working families struggle to make ends meet in the absence of decent work and social supports, crisis tendencies in social production have escalated, including a crisis in childcare” (Black, 2020, p. 10).  So many families were being sent to work under this welfare reform program, decent work was absent. There weren’t enough childcare providers or daycare centers offering childcare. I remember only seeing Black and Hispanic mothers being sent to work for their benefits. The Hasidic mothers were able to keep their benefits without working for them and were able to stay at home caring for their children. Some parents were forced to leave their children with unknown childcare providers not offering the best care, but mothers had no choice and were put in a difficult position. 

           Mothers were pressured to find childcare and were put in difficult situations, they had no choice but to place their children in stranger’s homes not knowing whether it was safe or not. Mothers feared losing their benefits which were an important asset to their home that provided support for many families. Women working in occupations as childcare providers, home health aides have been devalued for years. They haven’t been paid fair wages and are not acknowledged as working a real job. These occupations offer no benefits or union benefits for their workers. This type of labor is mainly performed by women.  After more than a decade, oppression continues throughout the Black and Latino population especially women. 

           Furthermore, “as Abramowitz notes, the welfare state’s early programs “excluded African American and Latino families and over the years provided them with lower benefits, reinforced discriminatory labor market policies, disadvantaged single mothers, and implemented other forms of ‘welfare racism’ that deprived families of color of the resources needed to adequately care for their families” (Black, 2020, p. 31). During the welfare reform the number of women that were sent to work, shifted the workforce and gender bias. Breaking years of traditions of a women’s place is in the home caring for her children. Women were now entering the workforce and juggling the household and employment.  

           Equally important, Silvia Federici was a feminist who argued about the importance of a gendered and feminist perspective on ideas and practices of the commons. It involves all the things that go towards creating the conditions for living, this ranges from domestic work, child-rearing, and caring for the elderly or the sick. Women began to transform social relations not only by sharing and transcending their pain and isolation, producing knowledge, empowering themselves and their communities in the process.  “The best example of this “silent revolution” has been spread of urban farming and urban gardens, a global phenomenon pioneered in the 1970s by women in Africa who, forced to urbanize, in disobedience of city laws, began to cultivate vacant plots of public land, transforming the cities landscapes and blurring the division between city and country (Federici, 2019, p. 715).

           In addition, “Whereas capitalism has systematically deconcentrated workers and other potential rebel subjects in the reproduction process, new movements, mostly headed by women are emerging whose first step is to weave again together with the threads of social solidarity, not only on an ideal plane but through the organizing of the activities that are most crucial, on a day-to-day basis, for the reproduction of our lives” (Federici, 2019, p. 720). This article written by Federici gives me hope as a woman, women who come together as a community will progress. We have come a long way we have a female Vice-president in the White House which is such a big accomplishment for Kamala Harris and all of us women.

Reference:

Black, Simon (2020) Social Reproduction and the City: Welfare reform, childcare, and resistance to Neoliberal New York. Athens GA: University of Georgia Press. Introduction and Chapter 1.

Federici, S. (2019) Women, Reproduction, and the Commons. The South Atlantic Quarterly. October. 711-724.