Good Parents or Good Workers? draws upon new ethnographic studies and longitudinal interviews that are reporting on the daily lives of women and children under new welfare policy pressures. Contributors look at family policy in the context of daily demands and critique new social programs that are designed to strengthen families. The book is divided into three course-friendly sections that deal with the impact of welfare reform on caregiving, the lived experiences of low-income families, and family policy debates. Good Parents or Good Workers? is an important text on the impacts of welfare reform that will be essential reading in a variety of courses in education, sociology, and politics.

Praise

"This is an important text that fills a significant void in the welfare reform literature and could not be coming at a more opportune time...The major strength of the volume is in the rich, qualitative data, that allows readers to 'hear' the voices of impoverished parents; and the collected studies illustrate the complexity of their lives."--Robert Geen, Director, Child Welfare Research Program, The Urban Institute

About the Author(s)

By Jill Duerr Berrick and Bruce Fuller

Jill Duerr Berrick is Professor, School of Social Welfare, Faculty Leader, Child Welfare Research Center, and Co-Director, Center for Child and Youth Policy, University of California at Berkeley.

Bruce Fuller is Professor, School of Education, University of California at Berkeley. He co-directs Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE).