Tyesha's Dilemmas: Anthropological Ruminations on the Consequences of Welfare Reform

Anthropology attempts to dig deeply into the daily lives of those on the receiving end of government policy to ask social structural questions: what resources families draw on in adapting to economic shocks and how successful that adaptation process really is; how the internal dynamics of a family intertwine with the demands and protections afforded by the wider kinship and friendship networks in which they are embedded; and cultural questions about the internal consistency (or lack thereof) in normative expectations; the relationship between values and behavior; and the patterned variations between race, ethnic, and class cultures in the subjective experience of poverty, exclusion, and economic self-sufficiency. It may be helpful, in answering these questions, to consider the situation inside one "welfare family" on the eve of the introduction of time limits. If we can understand the pressures building up in such a family, and then consider how they might be studied as time limits descend upon them, we can then stand back from this case and ask what anthropology could contribute to the study of children and families under welfare reform.