balancing expectations for employability and family responsibilities while on social assistance:...

Balancing Expectations for Employability and Family Responsibilities While on SocialAssistance: Low-Income Mothers' Experiences in Three Canadian ProvincesAuthor(s): Amber GazsoSource: Family Relations, Vol. 56, No. 5 (Dec., 2007), pp. 454-466Published by: National Council on Family RelationsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4541688 .

Accessed: 14/06/2014 05:26

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

National Council on Family Relations is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access toFamily Relations.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 91.229.229.111 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 05:26:55 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=ncfr

http://www.jstor.org/stable/4541688?origin=JSTOR-pdf

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp


Family Relations, 56 (December 2007), 454-466. Blackwell Publishing. Copyright 2007 by the National Council on Family Relations.

Balancing Expectations for Employability and Family Responsibilities While on Social Assistance: Low-Income

Mothers' Experiences in Three Canadian Provinces*

Amber Gazso**

Abstract: Drawing upon a discourse analysis of public-use policy documents and qualitative interview data, this

paper explores how mothers on social assistance in three Canadian provinces balance actual or expected policy expectations of their employability (e.g., participation in welfare-to-work programming) with their caregiving responsibilities. The results suggest that mothers' experiences of a time crunch, overload, and interference varied

depending on their employability status and that they often experienced work-family conflict in ways similar to that

experienced by working mothers not on assistance. The policy implications of these findings are discussed.

Key Words: caregiving, mothers, social assistance, welfare-to-work, work-family conflict.

Since the early 1980s, the economic doctrine and

political ideology of neoliberalism has garnered political and popular support for economic restruc-

turing and redefining the Canadian welfare state in all facets of social policy (Hartman, 2005), includ-

ing provincial social assistance programs. The

increasing globalization of competitive markets, as well as national and provincial concerns over rising deficits or debts, or both, and growing social assistance caseloads, are factors understood to demand a neoliberal response of restructuring to minimize state interference and prioritize market individualism, including its corresponding values of self-reliance, competition, and self-sufficiency (Bakker, 1996; Brodie, 1996; O'Connor, Orloff, & Shaver, 1999; Shaver, 2001). Much like in the other Western in- dustrialized societies of the United States, Australia, and Britain (O'Connor et al.), the rise of a neoliberal discourse in Canada has meant that social assistance

receipt is increasingly framed as a market relationship and programs are infiltrated by welfare-to-work

initiatives such as education and employment training programs designed to reintegrate benefit recipients back into the market as soon as possible.

This market-oriented relationship as a basis of benefit receipt has eclipsed and undermined tradi- tional social citizenship orientations. Although expectations that benefits are temporary and that recipients must seek employment have always been embedded within Canadian social assistance policy (Lightman & Riches, 2000), this residual program originally provided individuals with a limited ver- sion of social citizenship rights (Scott, 1999)-to a "modicum of economic welfare and security"-to alleviate some of their experiences of inequality in a capitalist society (Marshall 1963, p. 74). For example, individuals' rights to assistance when in need, along with the right to be free from mandatory participation in work incentive programs were protected under the 1966 Canada Assistance Plan (CAP). With the replacement of CAP with the Canada Health and Social Transfer (CHST) in

*The author would like to thank the mothers who shared their experiences about living on social assistance in Canada. The author also wishes to thank the Editor and

anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments and suggestions, and gratefully acknowledges the research support received in the form of Dissertation Fellowships from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and the University of Alberta.

**Amber Gazso is Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology, Center for Research on Work and Society, 276 York Lane, 4700 Keele Street, York University, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M3J IP3 ([email protected]).



Balancing Expectations * Gazso 455

1995, the right to adequate assistance has disap- peared in Canada. Instead, individuals' social rights are increasingly commodified in ways suggested by Esping-Anderson's (1990) classification of Canada as a liberal welfare state. Individuals' "entitlement to benefits is directly related to their capacity to sell their labour power in the market places" (Lightman & Riches, p. 180) and their "employability" efforts

(e.g., mandatory participation in welfare-to-work programs) are a condition of benefit receipt (Breitkreuz, 2005; Dwyer, 2004b; Gazso, 2006a; O'Connor et al., 1999; Walter, 2002; Weigt, 2006).

Indeed, increasingly restrictive and punitive policy constraints are ratcheted upward to enforce individuals' employability so that they quickly emulate values of neoliberalism and become independent, flexible, and skill-oriented individuals capable of

participation in the labor market. This ratcheting upward of expectations of employability is not only unique to Canada alone but also acutely manifest in time limits on benefit receipt in the United States (Gazso, 2006a) and the "creeping conditionality" evident in the restructuring of social assistance policy in the United kingdom (Dwyer, 2004a, p. 265). In the case of single mothers in the western Cana- dian provinces of British Columbia, Alberta, and Saskatchewan, this increase of expectations means that mothers' employability efforts are valued above and beyond caregiving for young children as a basis of benefit receipt (Brodie, 1996; Evans, 1995).

A growing body of literature examines the implications of this neoliberal restructuring of social assistance policy for mothers' family lives. For example, scholars have shown how leaving social assistance for employment does not automatically equate with mothers' economic stability (McMullin, Davies, & Cassidy, 2002; Weigt, 2006) unless important additional supports exist, such as temporary financial assistance provided during the transition to full employment (Ford, Gyarmati, Foley, Tattrie, & Jimenz, 2003). Others have questioned how mothers can be expected to find work in a state of poverty; total assistance incomes (including national child benefits, other provincial benefits, and the Goods and Services Tax credit) in 2003 were not enough to pull lone parent families with one child or two parent families with two children above the low-income cutoff in all three provinces (National Council of Welfare, 2004). One overlooked way that low-income mothers in the western Canadian

provinces are affected by the ratcheting upward of

employability expectations is their increasingly precarious balancing of work and family caring demands. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to

explore the work-family conflict of low-income mothers on assistance with particular attention to these issues relative to how they balanced actual or

expected policy expectations of their employability (e.g., participation in welfare-to-work programming) with their caregiving responsibilities. The distinction between the two subgroups of mothers on assistance was deemed important in order to explore how their experiences of work-family conflict varied and to critically consider the policy implications of these variations.

Theorizing the balancing of work and family: when conflict erupts. Sociological explorations of

work-family balance predominantly focus on how

parents in heterosexual families negotiate and man-

age the demands of their paid work and domestic labor responsibilities. Although mothers have increased their labor market participation since the 1960s onward, they still retain primary responsibility for domestic labor and child rearing comparative to fathers (Gazso-Windle & McMullin, 2003). Mothers then experience a time crunch that involves

balancing the demands of their paid work with a "second shift" in the home (Hochschild, 1989). Not all mothers, however, can successfully balance this second shift nor can they balance their competing roles in the paid workforce and the family.

Work-family conflict is a concept that captures parents' inability to juggle competing time demands and roles (Duxbury, Higgins, & Lee, 1994; Hill, 2005). Aside from a second shift, interrole conflict for mothers is also suggested by two other phenom- ena: overload and interference. Mothers in paid work experience "overload" when they become physically, mentally, and emotionally unable to meet conflicting time demands (Duxbury et al.). "Interference" refers to how mothers' family care responsibilities hinder their work performance (i.e., tardiness, absenteeism) or how their work experiences can negatively affect their performance of family care (Crouter, 1984; Duxbury et al.; Skrypnek & Fast, 1996), reflecting what Hill refers to as the bidirectional nature of work-family conflict. Mothers' experiences of overload and interference, in turn, are related to their experiences of work-related or family-related stress or psychological distress (Rosenberg, 1995).

Emerging in recent literature is the awareness that low-income mothers on or exiting assistance



456 Family Relations * Volume 56, Number 5 * December 2007

through paid work also experience difficulty juggling work and family.

The work/family demands faced by a soccer mom and by women on or leaving welfare are not all that different-except that the welfare (or, more likely, the former-welfare) mother doesn't have the soccer mom's resources for

juggling work and family, and probably has a lot less flexibility at work as well (Albelda, 2001, p. 120).

Balancing work and family, then, is difficult under most circumstances but likely more challeng- ing for low-income mothers on social assistance who must achieve balance under severe resource and time constraints (Roy, Tubbs, & Burton, 2004; Urban & Olson, 2005).

Low-income mothers experience the stress of feeling forced to choose between meeting work demands and children's care needs. If mothers engage in meeting employability expectations as per policy requirements, their caregiving for young children may be compromised. For mothers on assistance who engage in paid work to facilitate their exit from assistance, low wages do not translate into many options for care. Most often, mothers who work for low wages have to adjust their caregiving expectations in undesirable ways, such as placing their children within inadequate daycare facilities, in the questionable care of family members or choosing to stay in unhealthy relationships because of economic benefits (Riger & Krieglstein, 2000; Weigt, 2006). The quality of the time mothers spend with their children is also weakened by their participation in low-wage work (Edin & Lein, 1997; Lichter & Jayakody, 2002; Weigt). Conversely, when mothers value caregiving for their children as their foremost responsibility, they may compromise their efforts to participate in paid work or other welfare-to-work programming. Mothers' primary responsibility for domestic work can affect their potential wages by restricting the amount they can participate in paid work or the location of where they can work (Noonan, 2001; Roy et al., 2004). Baker and Tippin's (2002) qualitative study of lone mothers on social benefits in New Zealand showed that when mothers approached potential employers, the employer's perceptions of conflicts or tensions (e.g., the perceived inability of lone mothers to work long

hours) meant that they were rarely interpreted as ideal employees. Other U.S. studies confirm that

perceived and actual work-family conflicts are a major reason that parents who exit welfare for work are unable to keep their jobs or experience unstable employment (Corcoran, Danzinger, Kalil, & Seefeldt, 2000; Heymann & Earle, 1998). Not

surprisingly, Mason (2003) found that Canadian low-income mothers were more likely to remain attached to the labor force if they had mothers, sis- ters, or other individuals able to meet emergency childcare needs, and if they worked in family- friendly environments.

For mothers on assistance who are participating in paid work or welfare-to-work programs, or both, as well as mothers who are temporarily exempt from these expectations, other barriers to mothers finding and keeping "good" jobs also suggest that work-

family conflict is inevitable. The most consistently cited barriers include, in varying degrees of impact: lack of ancillary supports (e.g., transportation, child care); low education levels and limited employment skills or histories; time constraints; mental and physical health and substance abuse problems; domestic violence; and inability to move for employment (e.g., rural/urban migration; Albelda, 2001; Corcoran et al., 2000; Danzinger, Heflin, Corcoran, Oltmans, &

Wang, 2002; Heymann & Earle, 1998; Lichter &

Jayakody, 2002; McMullin et al., 2002; Roy et al., 2004). As many scholars conclude, moving mothers off of assistance into low-wage work does not always translate into the meeting of children's needs or financial stability when the costs associated with work exceed wages, especially those costs associated with child care (Edin & Lein, 1997; Seguino & Butler, 1998; Walter, 2002).

The above review reveals how work-family conflict is experienced by working mothers regardless of whether or not they are on public assistance. The conflict is generally experienced in the forms of a time crunch/second shift, overload, and interference. The literature also suggests that monolithic portrayals of low-income mothers "on assistance" may obscure important variations of work-family conflict depending on whether the mother is balancing their actual versus their expected participation in welfare-to-work programs with their caregiving responsibilities. The distinction may be important for several reasons. In the western provinces of Canada, welfare-to-work programs are not identical to some U.S.-style workfare programs (Peck, 2001)




where receipt of benefits is directly contingent on

paid work participation. A mother may be "expected to work" or be deemed "employable" but can meet this expectation by seeking paid work, engaging in

paid work, or by attending education or training programs, or both. If the forms of conflict mothers

experience differ on the basis of their employability status (i.e., employable vs. nonemployable) or how

they meet employability expectations, this would

suggest that changes to policy delivery and adminis- tration should be entertained so that accommoda- tions can be made for mothers' varying work and

family demands and their exit from social assistance can be better facilitated.

Method

The data referred to in this paper is the product of a mixed-methodology comparative study of how social assistance reform from 1993 - 2004 involved a transformation of parents' entitlement relationships in the western provinces of British Columbia, Alberta, and Saskatchewan. The mixed methodology linked to two of the research questions of the study: (a) How do dominant political/ideological assumptions about market relations and family care relations

shape the creation of employability expectations for low-income mothers in policy?; (b) How might low- income mothers' processes of balancing these em-

ployability expectations with their family caregiving demands vary as a result of whether they are actually engaged or expected to engage in welfare-to-work

programming? One assumption made in our research design was

that prior to discovering how mothers balance their employability expectations with their caregiving responsibilities, it was first necessary to determine what these expectations entail. A discourse analysis of public-use policy documentation for each ministry concerned with social assistance, to deconstruct "ways of understanding" (White, 2004), was conducted to answer the first research question. This analysis was loosely informed by some principles of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) (Blommaert & Bulcaen, 2000; Fairclough, 1995). For example, one principle of CDA is to show how language that constitutes discourse is socially, economically, his- torically, and politically situated and constructed. In turn, CDA understands the discourse itself as socially constitutive-individuals' understanding and

interpretation of their realities are shaped by discourses (Blommaert & Bulcaen). Another principle of CDA is to elucidate how ideologies are reproduced and represented in discourses (Purvis & Hunt, 1993).

A two-stage process made up the discourse analysis incorporating these CDA principles. First, the annual report and any corresponding and available

public-use documentation (e.g., pamphlets or bro- chures on income support; in-house government papers) were reviewed for the years 1993 - 2004 for the provincial ministry concerned with social assistance. In this initial step, special attention was given to developing an understanding of the political, social, economic, and historical underpinnings of the emerging prioritization of mothers' employability in the policy discourse. Emphasis was placed upon noting the objectives and timing of change, the specific reform strategies that were used to bring about change, the reasons given for such change, as well as corresponding transformations in department mandates and visions. In addition, the analysis was driven by exploring how the policy discourse

suggested ideological assumptions surrounding the market, state, and competition, such that the perceived problems surrounding social assistance in each

province (e.g., increased dependency or caseloads) were connected to the need to adopt specific neoliberal restructuring strategies. Second, the policy discourse of each ministry was then read comparatively across provinces to thematically group-shared ideological assumptions and restructuring strategies in order to then illustrate how the discourse socially constitutes

expectations of mothers' employability. The resulting thematic groupings are presented in this paper as policy dimensions shared in the three provinces.

In order to explore how mothers balance policy expectations of their employability with their caregiving responsibilities, qualitative interviews were conducted with 41 mothers who voluntary con- sented to participate in the study, which received Ethics Board approval from the author's university. Single mothers or mothers in two parent unions were approached for interviews through a process of purposive sampling at the central food bank in a major city in each province. The majority of the mothers interviewed were single parents (69%) with an average of two children and had been on assistance for over 1 year. Across the provinces, mothers' ages ranged from 29 to 33 years. Whereas 32% of mothers self-reported that they were Aboriginal or Mttis, the majority reported a White Canadian or




European cultural heritage (approximately 66%). Similar to findings of other scholars (Dooley, 1993, 1999), most of the mothers (56%) had only some

high school or a complete high school education. Of the 41 mothers, 49% (seven British Columbian, five Alberta, and eight Saskatchewan mothers) were

"expected to work" or "employable" and so were somehow involved in education and employment training programs. The remaining 21 mothers (51%) were exempt from seeking work ("nonemployable") because of the age of their youngest child or because of mental and physical health reasons.

With respect to sampling limitations, the sample is biased toward a particular subgroup of low- income mothers: the mothers who volunteered were on assistance and not able to meet food security needs. Although the use of purposive sampling as a strategy does not allow for generalizability of these

findings to other low-income mothers in each province, other provinces, and outside of Canada, the

explanation of the methodology of this study does allow for others to judge its trustworthiness and consider the transferability of the findings presented to other contexts (Morse, Barrett, Mayan, Olson, &

Spiers, 2002). Conversational and collaborative-style inter-

views were conducted by the author and were facilitated through the use of a semistructured interview

guide. This guide contained several open-ended questions organized around mothers' thoughts about how policy creates an emphasis on employability and their balancing of their family care

responsibilities with their actual or expected participation in welfare-to-work programming. Audio- recorded interviews ranged from 30 min to 1.5 hr and gift certificates were given to the mothers to thank and compensate them for their time spent being interviewed.

The qualitative software program NVivo was used to conduct a thematic analysis of the interview transcripts. This analysis began with topic coding as a first step, which required reflecting on all the different ways mothers communicated about topics within the interview guide and sectioning off por- tions of text into codes (Morse & Richards, 2002), topic coding parallels, and Glaser and Strauss's (1967) open coding. The next step of the analysis was to engage in analytic coding, which required moving beyond simply assigning codes to the data and seeing variations within and across codes and theoretically interpreting them as themes. As

researchers' understanding of particular literatures does sensitize them in their coding (Strauss & Corbin, 1998), it was through the analytic coding that it became apparent that the experiences of mothers on assistance seemed similar to those docu- mented for working mothers not on assistance. Thus, codes were grouped thematically according to the dominant forms of work-family conflict delin- eated in the broader literature: time crunch/second shift, overload, and inference. It will become evident that the use of these themes does not mean that the

idiosyncrasies or uniqueness of the work-family conflict coded for mothers on assistance is lost. At all times, the anonymity and confidentiality of mothers' experiences are preserved through the use of pseudonyms.

Creating the employability of mothers. Discourse

analysis of public-use documents for each provincial ministry reveals that from the 1990s onward, neoliberal ideological assumptions and restructuring strate-

gies used to create and regulate expectations of mothers' employability coalesce into four policy dimensions, which are intricately interconnected.

The restriction dimension refers to the restructur-

ing strategies of restricting benefit amounts and access to assistance. These strategies were and are used to reduce dependency and income support spending (e.g., caseloads peaked in all provinces in the early 1990s; Finnie, Irvine, & Sceviour, 2005) and must also be viewed in light of the ability to introduce more contingent entitlement relationships to income support as a result of the CHST. As such, these strategies are underpinned by the neoliberal

assumption that individuals are better off working than living on assistance; reduced benefits will act as an incentive to enter the workforce. Compared to all three provinces, Alberta was the first province to restrict the benefit amounts of its Support for Inde-

pendence (SFI) program in 1993, reducing them up to 13% for parents with one child. Other reforms involved placing restrictions on assets and eliminat- ing some benefits entirely (e.g., transportation benefits; Alberta Family and Social Services, 1993; Klein & Montgomery, 2001). The program remained largely unchanged until 2004 when SFI was replaced with the Alberta Works program; total social assistance benefit rates were not improved and eligibility access was more explicitly linked to attendance in welfare-to- work programming (Government of Alberta, 2004).

Under both waves of reform in British Columbia (i.e., 1995, 2002), benefit amounts were reduced




and other ancillary supports restricted, transformed, or eliminated (British Columbia Ministry of Human Resources, 2002; Gorlick & Brethour, 1998). With the 2002 British Columbia Employment and Assistance Act, monthly benefit rates were cut by $43 (all monetary funds cited in Canadian dollars) for lone mothers with one child and by $90 for parents with two children. Earnings exemptions were eliminated (Klein & Long, 2003); British Columbia mothers cannot earn any income each month without it being deducted dollar for dollar from their monthly benefits. In comparison to British Columbia and Alberta, benefit amounts were reduced in Saskatche- wan in much earlier waves of reform in the 1980s; amounts remained unchanged over the 1993 - 2004

period (Warnock, 2004). Of the three provinces, British Columbia stands

out as the province most advanced in the use of restriction of access to income support. At present, potential recipients must be financially independent for at least 2 years in order to qualify for assistance and engage in a 3-week job search before being informed if they are eligible for benefits (British Columbia Ministry of Employment and Income Assistance, 2005; Klein & Long, 2003). There is no

obligatory job search prior to being deemed eligible in the other two provinces, although a general trend of diverting potential recipients away from income

support has been observed (Boessenkool, 1997). Enforcement constitutes a second policy dimension

involved in the creation of employability expectations for mothers. Here, strategies are based on the assumption that mothers' employability must be enforced or they will remain as (potentially undeserving) dependents of the state. In all three provinces, once mothers are designated as employable, they must complete employment plans; their job searches or attendance at education and employment training programs are mandatory and legally binding. This designation of being employable is largely made on the basis of the age of their youngest child. Whereas mothers' care for young children until they reached school age was a basis of entitlement in the past (Scott, 1999), mothers are now only exempt from being employable if their children are under age three in British Columbia or under 6 months of age in Alberta (British Columbia Ministry of Human Resources, 2004; Evans, 1996). There is no age limit in Saskatchewan; mothers are deemed employable, regardless of their children's ages, at the discretion of caseworkers (Tweed, 2004). With regard to the enforcement and restriction dimensions, British

Columbia policy also stands out because employment planning is further enforced through time limits that, like those in the United States, additionally restrict access to support. Once their youngest child turns 3 years of age, mothers have 2 years to find work. If they are unsuccessful, their benefits may be reduced (by $100 for lone mother families and up to $200 for two

parent families) or they may be struck from the case- load (British Columbia Ministry of Human Resources, 2004).

The third dimension in the creation of expectations of mothers' employability is de-/regendering. A

"gender-neutral worker-citizen" model of benefit

recipients informs social assistance policy in the three provinces and is predicated on the neoliberal

assumption that women should and do participate in employment activities similar to men (Scott, 1999). Although this assumption does appropriately correspond with liberal feminist desires for women's

equal opportunity and pay in paid labor, there are

negative effects of the strategies introduced to corre-

spond with it. When the age of a mother's youngest child is used to restrict access to social assistance, this

requires degendering her basis to claim assistance as a full-time caregiver of young children (Brodie, 1996). Whereas, when mothers are pushed into the labor force attachment on the presumption that

"any job is a good job" (Elton, Sieppert, Azmier, & Roach, 1997), their lower pay and job insecurity, or

experiences of gender inequality in the workplace, is

regendered. And, paradoxically, at the same time that provinces can appear concerned with creating women's equal opportunities in paid work, lone mothers are also regendered as dependents when subject to continual monitoring to ensure they comply with policy regulations and are deserving of support (Brodie, 1996, 1997; Little & Morrison, 1999).

Although there are more lone mothers on assistance than lone fathers in the three provinces, the

negative effects of these processes of de-/regendering are linked to other structures of the family. For example, if mothers have a male spouse they reside with, their care work can be deemed "appropriate," and their spouse can be pushed into paid work on the presumption of his breadwinning privilege. Lone fathers' caregiving is often only temporarily recog- nized and they are pushed even harder and faster off of assistance. Thus, gender appropriate family roles can be regendered through social assistance policy despite its appearance of gender neutrality (Gazso, 2006b).




The final dimension, surveillance, links to all of the above dimensions. As insinuated above, surveillance refers to the assumption that mothers' potentially incorrect choice of caregiving must be restricted and degendered and their employability enforced and monitored by regulations and rules. In the three provinces, surveillance occurs through mothers' mandatory report of all activities and movements each month in order to receive income support in the following month, as well as their assumed voluntary consent to random eligibility and fraud audits. If

reports are not consistently made and mothers who are deemed employable are not making an effort to find work or participate in education and employment training programming, their benefits can be canceled, reduced, or suspended.

To summarize, the creation of mothers' employability expectations occurs through four policy dimensions shared across the three provinces that contain specific restructuring strategies informed by neoliberal assumptions. In order to create independent, self-reliant, and skill-oriented individuals capable of navigating through the likely unforgiving labor market, social assistance policy perceives mothers (especially lone mothers) as unhindered by caregiving and prioritizes their paid work potential. Indeed, by the year 2000, the annual reports of all three provinces point to markers of success in the

making of mothers' receipt of benefits contingent on their employability efforts: reductions in dependency (or caseloads; Lightman, Mitchell, & Herd, 2005; Sceviour & Finnie, 2004) and, thus, increased

opportunities for each province to experiment in the free market global economy. In the next section, the often overlooked and more hidden and negative costs of these ideological assumptions and restructuring strategies are revealed.

Findings

The Work-Family Conflict of Mothers on Social Assistance

Qualitative interviews illustrate how mothers balance employability expectations with their caregiving responsibilities, thereby making it possible to draw theoretical linkages between the results of the discourse analysis and the qualitative data. Table 1 provides a summary of these linkages and shows that for employable mothers, the juggling of all four policy dimensions designed to create their employability with their caregiving responsibilities informs

Table 1. Mothers' Work-Family Conflict by Policy Dimen- sion and Employability Status

Policy Employable Nonemployable Dimension Mothers Mothers (exempt)

Restriction Time crunch, Time crunch, overload, overload, interference interference

Enforcement Time crunch, Interference overload, interference

De-/regendering Time crunch, Interference overload, interference

Surveillance Time crunch, Interference overload, interference

their perceptions and experiences of a time crunch, overload, and interference. Interviews with nonem-

ployable mothers suggest that for all but the restriction policy dimension, they most often experience the expected (or future) enforcement, de-/regendering, and surveillance of their employability as inter-

fering with their family responsibilities. As the restriction policy dimension involves low-

ering benefit amounts, it is not surprising that single employable and nonemployable mothers spoke in some way about how difficult it was to manage daily living on a social assistance budget, especially when it comes to their desires to provide the best care possible for their children. In particular, employable mothers must balance the policy enforcement of their attendance at welfare-to-work programs with

multiple activities and obligations during a day. Contrary to some stereotypical assumptions, these

single mothers are more likely to experience a time crunch than "having nothing but time" on their hands (see Table 1). Alberta and Saskatchewan mothers are allowed to earn a maximum of so many dollars per month before their benefits are reduced dollar for dollar. The following quote from Miranda shows how much mental and physical effort is required to time manage attendance at work and education programs, make just the right amount of income, and also manage costs of outside care.

Uh, I get up, get the kids ready for school. They go to breakfast club at their school and then I go to school. So, I'm there until usually




'til about three ... I go pick up the kids and make supper and homework. And bed for

everybody . . . I'm always balancing. It's like there's a little extra here, and I'm losing a little here . . . And I have to watch I don't get behind. I am allowed $200 a month for

income, so if I get a little from my sewing, yeah, I'll do a little bit of mending here and there or whatever. So, I just have to be really careful ... It's time or money. I'm always bal-

ancing one or the other.

Miranda, lone mother, two children (Alberta)

For the majority of all employable mothers, their

experience of a time crunch, as linked to the restriction and enforcement dimensions of policy, was also

intricately interconnected with their experiences of

feeling overloaded (see Table 1). Mothers exempt from job searches and welfare-

to-work programming do not have the same kind of "second shift" comparable to employable mothers. Instead, coupled with their experiences of restricted economic resources that do not always permit them to afford breaks from care (e.g., through daycare services), nonemployable mothers experience feeling overwhelmed and overloaded by the full-time con-

stancy of their house and care work. As sociological research has shown, all day housework and family caregiving are not menial tasks. Instead, it is work that is constant and often physically and mentally draining. According to Justine, a single mother of two children from Alberta, she may not be expected to engage in paid work but: "The housework [itself] is just all day long." Similarly, for Kendra in British Columbia, the work involved with three boys (ages 2, 3, and 8 years) as a single parent means: "It's always multi-tasking, always busy. Washing, clean-

ing, feeding the children, and uh, doing other things like grocery shopping. So it is pretty well, I'm always busy and overloaded. Always."

Recall that in the work-family conflict literature, interference refers to how family care responsibilities hinder work performance or vice versa. Interviews with employable mothers demonstrate that their past or current experience as caregivers, combined with their low education and skill levels, can negatively interfere with policy enforcement of their employability (see Table 1). Karen is blunt in the following quote-the resumes she learned to write

in a program she attended to meet the conditions of her employment plan did not cancel out how the years she spent in caregiving compromise her capacity to gain a good job.

They make you wonderful, beautiful resumes. I

got three different types of resumes that they have made me ... I don't have the skills. They don't give you the skills to put on your resume.

People want skilled people who have diplomas and degrees. You can't send somebody out who hasn't worked in ten years. Which I mean, I haven't. I haven't worked in ten years and

you're expecting me, well, to go out and get a job now. Doing what? I don't have any skills. I've raised children for the last ten years.

Karen, lone mother, 4year old daughter (British Columbia)

Karen's perceptions of conflict also linked to the

policy dimensions of de-/regendering and surveillance. Later in the interview she implied that the

gender-neutral model of policy was contradicted by the very gendered nature of her caregiving responsibilities as a single mother for a young child.

Like in other research, the qualitative interviews with employable mothers also confirmed that lack of suitable transportation is a specific type of interference that contradicts job searches conditioned through the enforcement and surveillance policy dimensions (see also Baker & Tippin, 2002; Heymann & Earle, 1998; Table 1). As a single mother of four from British Columbia, Lisa had to sometimes bring her children with her on a job search because of lack of day care: "What they wanted me to do is just go out and throw resumes out there, all over the place. Well, with kids and everything, and not the experience, you know

you can only do so many resumes in that period of where you can, you know, get to transportation-wise." As part of a two-parent common law family, Nadine had successfully fulfilled the requirements of her employment plan and had found paid work in Alberta. However, she was only entitled to bus fare for the first week of her new job, which became problem- atic because she would not receive her first pay until the end of the month.

I hadn't got my cheque yet so I asked them, you know, can I get a bus pass to go to work?




And they told me no because I was working so I could only get the first one. And I was like, I haven't got a cheque. I had to find my own way . . . yeah, I borrowed money off of my father in law. They make it almost hard to do it [work].

Nadine, common law relationship, 2 children (Alberta)

Compared to employable mothers, the interference experienced by nonemployable mothers was also related to the policy dimensions of enforcement, de-/ regendering, and surveillance, but differed in that nonemployable mothers revealed how their expected employability compromises and interferes with their caregiving choices (see Table 1). For example, interference for nonemployable mothers stems from how they are acutely aware that policy will constrain and eventually enforce them to make employment oriented choices but, in doing so, will take away or degender their right to choose care for their young children. Diane, a single Albertan mother of a 7- month-old daughter, explains: "I don't want to rush into anything. I don't want to put her in daycare right away. And then losing touch with that [caregiving] and missing everything. That's what I don't want to do." Indeed, following Karen's assessment of the problems with gender-neutral policy, the majority of all mothers-regardless of their employability and marital status-perceived that the de-/regendering of their caregiving and surveillance of their behavior did interfere with their desires to have individual agency surrounding caregiving choices.

In all three provinces, nonemployable mothers also perceived that if and when they did find work, the largest factors that would interfere with achiev- ing a successful balance between work and family life would be lack of affordable, quality child care, suitable hours of work, and the abundance of "bad" jobs readily available to women in a gender-stratified labor market.

You can't get full time [jobs] . . . Everywhere is

part time, so there's no benefit. So, you have to work say two jobs part time, and you're still not getting benefits. So, then what happens, then you're out there working all the time just to make enough money and then what happens to family? Family's gone.

Elizabeth, common-law relationship, one child

(British Columbia)

There's a long, long waiting list to get him into

any day care. I have to put him in a friend's house, which I don't have a problem putting him a friend's house. But quite frankly, it's better for him to be in an organized day care rather than

just at somebody's house watching TV all day.

Jessica, lone mother, three children (Saskatchewan)

Discussion

To return to the research questions of the current

study, the policy dimensions oriented to creating mothers' employability did affect their balancing of work and family demands. And, the processes of this

balancing did somewhat vary depending on whether mothers were engaged in seeking work, participating in welfare-to-work programming, or imagining the

meeting of future employability expectations. Spe- cifically, work-family conflict that materialized was linked to mothers' balancing of actual or expected expectations of their employability. Because social assistance policy has been restructured to create mothers' employability through four dimensions, it is not surprising that employable mothers, particu- larly single employable mothers, feel the constraints of these dimensions to a greater degree and, thus, experience a time crunch, overload, and interference as a result. By the nature of their being exempt from

meeting employability expectations, the policy dimensions of enforcement, de/re-gendering, and surveillance did not create perceptions of a time crunch or overload for nonemployable mothers to the same extent that the restriction dimension did (see Table 1). Nonetheless, in their imagining of their meeting of future employability expectations, nonemployable mothers did believe their caregiving choices were compromised; policy constraints and other structural barriers (e.g., the labor market) did interfere with their current and future goals for balancing work and family demands.

Although direct comparisons between these mothers on assistance with working mothers not on assistance are not possible because of study design, the interview findings presented can be contextualized within the broader literature on




work-family conflict. Interviews with employable mothers demonstrate that they experience a time crunch associated with the many competing demands of young children and everyday obligations, a crunch that is intensified if they also attend welfare-to- work programming-much like the "second shift" (Hochschild, 1989; Roy et al., 2004) or "time juggling" (Hodgson, Dienhart & Daly, 2001) experiences of mothers in paid work. The qualitative interviews with nonemployable mothers demonstrate that restricted benefits can prompt them to feel overloaded or overburdened by caregiving pressures-much like

working mothers not on assistance (Duxbury et al., 1994). Finally, employable mothers on assistance seem to experience interference similar to working mothers not on assistance when family care responsibilities hinder their employability efforts or vice versa.

Theoretically, an argument could be made that the main difference between these mothers' experiences of work-family conflict is that mothers on assistance are balancing work and family while living within, or according to, the structural dimensions of social assistance policy. Indeed, over three decades

ago, Piven and Cloward (1971) maintained that one of the primary functions of U.S. relief policies was to reinforce work norms. Scholars have also argued that in other Western societies, social policy regu- lates family lives (Baker, 2007); low-income mothers are subject to regulation of family forms and behav- iors, as well as moral scrutiny of their "deserving" status (Baker & Tippin, 2002; Little & Morrison, 1999; Roy et al.). For mothers on assistance, work- family conflict stems from the policy dimensions that construct and regulate expectations of their employability. Restriction of benefit amounts means that employable and nonemployable mothers must con- ceptualize how to balance competing time demands in an economically disadvantaged position, whereas restriction of access means that they are aware of the precariousness of living under a policy gaze-their eligibility can be renegotiated and overturned for a variety of reasons (e.g., age of their youngest child; not meeting policy expectations). The enforcement of employability expectations is a source of mothers' stress and when accompanied by re-/degendering, constrains and monitors mothers' agentic choices regarding workforce participation or caregiving, choices that one could argue can be made more freely by some middle/upper class working mothers.

And yet, perhaps the theoretical focus should not be on difference but rather the problems arising from

the similarity of mothers' experiences. Mothers' experiences of a time crunch, overload, or interference are not necessarily a function of being on or off of assistance but rather linked to broader normative ideological assumptions about gender and caregiving. Regardless of whether one is in receipt of government transfers for income support or not, distinctly gendered expectations remain surrounding the provision of care. Simultaneously and increasingly, mothers'

equal opportunity and participation in the paid labor force is understood to contribute to any contemporary family's economic well-being. Much of mothers' experiences of work-family conflict, whether they are a sin-

gle parent or part of a heterosexual union, must be understood as connected to the challenges of trying to reconcile changing but often contradictory gendered expectations in what are still separate, at least ideologi- cally, spheres of work and family.

Uncovering the Policy Implications

In Canada, social assistance has transformed into "active" policy to reconnect mothers to the labor market as soon as possible and to correct for perceived dependency problems and, thus, ensure provincial economies can compete nationally and

globally. As situated internationally, these objectives are fitting with the neoliberal discourse that has infiltrated the restructuring of income support policies in other Western societies and emphasizes employability above and beyond other facets of everyday family life. This paper has revealed that one often overlooked way that mothers are affected by the ratcheting upward of employability expectations is their increasingly precarious balancing of work and family caregiving demands. Government officials, policymakers, and caseworkers need to fully recognize how policy dimensions oriented to the creation of mothers' employability may not achieve this objective for all mothers because of the simple fact that they exacer- bate mothers' experiences of work-family conflict and can thereby inhibit rather than facilitate their exit from assistance. Moreover, the fact that interviews demonstrated how mothers' balancing varied depending on their employability status, balancing that in many ways seemed equivalent to the experiences of working mothers not on assistance, further cements the need for recognition of an imbalance between policy expectations and mothers' everyday realities.

Given these findings, several practical policy changes are recommended in the western provinces.




For employable and nonemployable mothers, benefit amounts must be raised to provide them with economic resources to reduce their time demands. For

example, shelter rates should be raised so that mothers could afford housing in safe neighborhoods with suitable paid work opportunities. In addition, subsidies for child care should be made more plenti- ful and quality child care resources made more available so that mothers might engage in more fruitful

job searches or attend welfare-to-work programming, or both. In determining the level of enforcement and

suitability of types of programming for mothers, caseworkers should use a more open definition of work and seriously consider mothers' existing skills in

unpaid work, at managing time demands and juggling multiple obligations. Specific to employable mothers, benefits that were once eliminated, such as

provisions for affordable transportation (e.g., a free or discounted transit pass) or earnings exemptions (as in British Columbia) should be reinstated to ease the transition into welfare-to-work programming or from assistance into the workforce. Finally, specific to non-

employable mothers, when they are no longer exempt from participating in welfare-to-work programs and must engage in employment plans, caseworkers should take into account their current experiences of conflict and their often very accurate perceptions of future conflicts. Caseworkers should value mothers' own understandings of their daily lives and, as a result, develop cooperative, realistic, and practical transition

plans for mothers to eventually enter the workforce. Three other interrelated and more abstract

implications of the research findings, for Canada and other Western states' restructuring of income

support policy, are also noteworthy. Specifically, as situated in the international context, the work-

family conflict of mothers on assistance challenges policymakers, government officials, and scholars alike:

1. To acknowledge and confront the privatization and familization of mothers' care work created through restructuring of income support policy. Failing to recognize the work-

family conflict of mothers on assistance can translate into Western states' continued privatization and familization of carework. When the employability and market

competition potential of citizens is emphasized and a gender-neutral citizen worker model informs concep- tualization of gender relations in paid work and to the state and policy restructuring, rarely are additional policy arrangements made for assisting social reproduction and care work (Bezanson & Luxton, 2006; O'Connor

et al., 1999). As McKie, Bowlby and Gregory (2001) note about "active" policies that prioritize paid work in Britain, it is predominantly women that struggle to balance family life and employment. Thus, without

recognition of work-family conflict and provisions and

supports for caregiving, liberal Western states can assume families will continue to rely on private-and feminine-arrangements for meeting caregiving demands (Bezanson, 2006; McDaniel, 2002).

2. To end the distinctly different and classist expectations of mothering and caregiving for low-income mothers versus higher income mothers that are buttressed by income support policies. In income support policy across the liberal welfare states of Canada, United States, Australia, and to a lesser extent in Britain, the

employability of low-income mothers "trumps" their caring responsibilities. However, this policy phenomenon is contradicted by other societal discourses that stress mothers' investment in children

(e.g., early child development) and mothering as a gendered talent (Cowdry & Knudson-Martin, 2005). These discourses are directed at not just mid-

dle/upper class working mothers but infiltrate dis- cussions of low-income mothers' "deservedness."

Thus, mothers on assistance experience a double bind of being accountable to two competing dis-

courses, a discourse of mothering versus a discourse of work enforcement. The effects of these discourses are compounded by the assumption that mothers failure to navigate both suggest their own failings rather than problems with policies or job availability, or both (Baker & Tippin, 2002; McMullin et al., 2002; Weigt, 2006). Different expectations of moth-

ering and working, implicitly linked to race/ethnicity and class, perpetuate exclusionary divisions between rich and poor mothers and allow states to ignore the

unique realities of low-income mothers, including the tensions association with their work-family con-

flict, ultimately perpetuating the stigmatization and

pejorative denouncement of their caregiving needs.

3. To move beyond studies of income support policy as only an employment and income issue concerning "dependency" and spending. From an economic perspective, all the policy dimensions in the creation of mothers'

employability meet the goal of "active" social assistance policy. However, if studies of social assistance focus overmuch on employment and whether mothers achieve entry into the labor market, the impact of reform on family lives, such as care activities, and the distinct social and cultural realities of families can be

overlooked (Albelda, 2001; Williams, 2004). Scholarly




feminist discourses in the liberal welfare states have all consistently critiqued the lack of state attention to women's unpaid labor and more recently recommended the recognition of care as another relation that intersects with the state, market, and family (and voluntary sector) institutional relations of Western states (see Daly & Lewis, 2000; McKie et al., 2001). If this unpaid caring labor of mothers remains invisi- ble, regardless of their income and its source, government officials, and policymakers can continue to endorse individualistic as opposed to structural defi- nitions of poverty and therefore remain concerned with the "economics" of welfare. In doing so, they can continue to perpetuate the privatization and familization of care work, maintaining social divisions among mothering expectations for lower and

higher income mothers in the process.

Conclusion

This paper makes two important contributions to the existing literatures on the effects of neoliberal

policy change on low-income mothers and work-

family conflict. First, expectations of employability are shown to be enforced to such an extent that mothers on assistance are experiencing similar tensions when balancing their actual or expected employability efforts with their caregiving responsibilities. Second, the findings presented strongly support an emerging consensus within the work-family conflict literature-issues of balancing work and

family are not limited to mothers in paid work alone but can be experienced by all mothers engaged in paid work or related activity (e.g., welfare-to-work programming), regardless of their martial status, race/ethnicity, and level of income and its source. Thus, mothers on assistance attending or not attending welfare-to-work programming and working mothers not on assistance can share, at varying times and in differing forms, experiences of a time crunch, overload, and interference-or work-family conflict.

References

Albelda, R. (2001). Welfare-to-work, farewell to families? US welfare reform and work/family debates. Feminist Economics, 7(1), 119-135.

Alberta Family and Social Services. (1993). Annual report, 1992/93. Edmon- ton: Government of Alberta.

Baker, M. (2007). Choices and constraints in family life. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Baker, M., & Tippin, D. (2002). When flexibility meets rigidity: Sole mothers' experiences in the transition from welfare to work. Journal of Sociology, 38, 345-360.

Bakker, I. C. (1996). Introduction: The gendered foundations of restructuring in Canada. In I. C. Bakker (Ed.), Rethinking restructuring (pp. 2-25). Toronto, Ontario, Canada: University of Toronto Press.

Bezanson, K. (2006). Gender, the state, and social reproduction: Household insecurity in neo-liberal times. Toronto, Ontario, Canada: University of Toronto Press.

Bezanson, K., & Luxton, M. (2006). Introduction: Social reproduction and feminist political economy. In K. Bezanson & M. Luxton (Eds.), Social reproduction: Feminist political economy challenges neo-liberalism (pp. 3-10). Montreal, Quebec, Canada: McGill-Queen's University Press.

Blommaert, J., & Bulcaen, C. (2000). Critical discourse analysis. Annual Review ofAnthropology, 29, 447-466.

Boessenkool, K. J. (1997). Back to work: Learning from the Alberta welfare experiment (Vol. 90). Toronto, Ontario, Canada: C. D. Howe Institute Commentary.

Breitkreuz, R. (2005). Engendering citizenship? A critical-feminist analysis of Canadian welfare-to-work policies and the employment experiences of lone mothers. Journal ofSociology and Social Welfare, 32, 147-165.

British Columbia Ministry of Employment and Income Assistance. (2005). BC employment and assistance manual. Retrieved July 14, 2005, from http://www.mhr.gov.bc.ca/publicat/VOL1/index.htm

British Columbia Ministry of Human Resources. (2002). Employment and assistance act. Retrieved February 6, 2004, from http://www.mhr. gov.bc.ca/PUBLICAT/VOL1/pdf/3-2pol.pdf

British Columbia Ministry of Human Resources. (2004). Factsheet: Time limits update. Retrieved February 6, 2004, from http://www.mhr.gov. bc.ca/factsheets/2004/timelimits.htm

Brodie, J. (1996). Restructuring and the new citizenship. In I. C. Bakker (Ed.), Rethinking restructuring (pp. 126-140). Toronto, Ontario, Canada: University of Toronto Press.

Brodie, J. (1997). Meso-discourses, state forms and the gendering of liberal-democratic citizenship. Citizenship Studies, 1, 223-241.

Corcoran, M., Danzinger, S. K., Kalil, A., & Seefeldt, K. S. (2000). How welfare reform is affecting women's work. American Sociological Review, 26, 241-269.

Cowdry, R. S., & Knudson-Martin, C. (2005). The construction of motherhood: Tasks, relational connection, and gender equality. Family Rela- tions, 54, 335-345.

Crouter, A. C. (1984). Spillover from family to work: The neglected side of the work-family interface. Human Relations, 37, 425-441.

Daly, M., & Lewis, J. (2000). The concept of social care and the analysis of contemporary welfare states. British Journal ofSociology, 51, 281-298.

Danzinger, S., Heflin, C. M., Corcoran, M. E., Oltmans, E., & Wang, H.-C. (2002). Does it pay to move from welfare to work? Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, 21, 671-692.

Dooley, M. (1999). The evolution of welfare participation among Canadian lone mothers, 1973-1991. Canadian Journal ofEconomics, 32, 589-612.

Dooley, M. D. (1993). Recent changes in the economic welfare of lone mother families in Canada: The roles of market work, earnings and transfers. In B. Galaway (Ed.), Single parent families: Perspectives on

son Educational Publishing. Duxbury, L., Higgins, C., & Lee, C. (1994). Work-family conflict: A com-

parison by gender, family type, and perceived control. Journal ofFamily Issues, 15, 449-466.

Dwyer, P. (2004a). Understanding social citizenship: Themes and perspectives for policy and practice. Bristol, England, United Kingdom: The Policy Press.

Dwyer, P. (2004b). Creeping conditionality in the UK: From welfare rights to conditional entitlements. Canadian Journal ofSociology, 29, 265-287.

Edin, K., & Lein, L. (1997). Making ends meet: How single mothers survive welfare and low-wage work. New York: Russel Sage Foundation.

Elton, D. K., Sieppert, J. D., Azmier, J., & Roach, R. (1997). Assessing the impact of welfare reform on former recipients, 1993-1996. Calgary, Alberta, Canada: Canada West Foundation.

Esping-Andersen, G. (1990). The three worlds of welfare capitalism. Cam- bridge, MA: Polity Press.




Evans, P. (1995). Linking welfare to jobs: Workfare, Canadian style. In P. Evans, L. A. Jacobs, A. Noel, & E. B. Reynolds (Eds.), Workfare: Does it work? Is itfair? (pp. 75-104). Montreal, Quebec, Canada: The Institute for Research on Public Policy.

Evans, P. (1996). Single mothers and Ontario's welfare policy: Restructur- ing the debate. In J. Brodie (Ed.), Women and Canadian public policy (pp. 151-171). Toronto, Canada: Harcourt Brace.

Fairclough, N. (1995). Critical discourse analysis: The critical study of language. London: Longman.

Finnie, R., Irvine, I., & Sceviour, R. (2005). Summary of social assistance use in Canada: National and provincial trends in incidence, entry and exit. Retrieved August 16, 2005, from http://www.statcan.ca/cgi-bin/ downpub/listpub.cgi?catno= 11F0019MIE2005246

Ford, R., Gyarmati, D., Foley, K., Tattrie, D., & Jimenz, L. (2003). Can work incentives pay for themselves? Final report on the self-sufficiency pro- jectfor welfare applicants. Ottawa, Canada: Human Resources Develop- ment Canada.

Gazso, A. (2006a). Creating social cohesion? The paradoxes posed by BC welfare reform. Canadian Review ofSocial Policy, 57, 46-70.

Gazso, A. (2006b). Gendering the responsible risk taker: Social assistance reform and parents' citizenship, market, and family care relations in three western provinces. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Department of Sociology, University of Alberta, Edmonton.

Gazso-Windle, A., & McMullin, J. A. (2003). Doing domestic labour: Strategising in a gendered domain. Canadian Journal of Sociology, 28, 341-366.

Glaser, B. G., & Strauss, A. L. (1967). The discovery of grounded theory: Strategies for qualitative research. Chicago, IL: Aldine.

Gorlick, C. A., & Brethour, G. (1998). Welfare-to-work programs: A national inventory. Ottawa, Canada: Canadian Council on Social Development.

Government of Alberta. (2004). Alberta works focuses on training people for employment. Retrieved July 10, 2004, from http://www.gov.ab.ca/ acn/200403/1618.html

Hartman, Y. (2005). In bed with the enemy: Some ideas on the connections between neoliberalism and the welfare state. Current Sociology, 53, 57- 73.

Heymann, J., & Earle, A. (1998). The work-family balance: What hurdles are parents leaving welfare likely to confront? Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, 17, 313-321.

Hill, J. E. (2005). Work-family facilitation and conflict, working fathers and mothers, work-family stressors and support. Journal of Family Issues, 26, 793-819.

Hochschild, A. R. (1989). The second shifi: Working parents and the revolu- tion at home. New York: Viking.

Hodgson, J., Dienhart, A., & Daly, K. (2001). Time juggling: Single mothers' experiences of time-press following divorce. Journal of Divorce and Remarriage, 35, 1-28.

Klein, S., & Long, A. (2003). A bad time to be poor: An analysis of British Columbia's new welfare policies. Vancouver, Canada: Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.

Klein, S., & Montgomery, B. (2001). Depressing wages: Why welfare cuts hurt both the welfare and the working poor. Vancouver, Canada: Cana- dian Centre for Policy Alternatives.

Lichter, D. T., & Jayakody, R. (2002). Welfare reform: How do we mea- sure success? American Sociological Review, 28, 117-141.

Lightman, E. S., Mitchell, A., & Herd, D. (2005). Welfare to what? After workfare in Toronto. International Social Security Review, 58(4), 95-106.

Lightman, E. S., & Riches, G. (2000). From modest rights to commodifi- cation in Canada's welfare state. European Journal of Social Work, 3(2), 179-200.

Little, M. H., & Morrison, I. (1999). "The pecker detectors are back":

Regulation of the family form in Ontario welfare policy. Journal of Canadian Studies, 34(2), 110-137.

Marshall, T. H. (1963). Sociology at the crossroads: And other essays. London: Heinemann.

Mason, R. (2003). Listening to lone mothers: Paid work, family life, and childcare in Canada. Journal of Children and Poverty, 9, 41-54.

McDaniel, S. (2002). Women's changing relations to the state and citizen-

ship: Caring and intergenerational relations in globalizing western

democracies. Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology, 39, 125-150.

McKie, L., Bowlby, S., & Gregory, S. (2001). Gender, caring and employment in Britain. Journal ofSocial Policy, 30, 233-258.

McMullin, J. A., Davies, L., & Cassidy, G. (2002). Welfare reform in Ontario: Tough times in mothers' lives. Canadian Public Policy, 28, 297-314.

Morse, J. M., Barrett, M., Mayan, M., Olson, K., & Spiers, J. (2002). Verification strategies for establishing reliability and validity in qualitative research. International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 1(2), 1-19.

Morse, J. M., & Richards, L. (2002). Read mefirst for a user's guide to qualitative methods. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

National Council of Welfare. (2004). Welfare incomes 2003 report. Retrieved June 4, 2005, from http://www.ncwcnbes.net/htmdocument/ principales/onlinepub_e.htm

Noonan, M. C. (2001). The impact of domestic work on men's and women's wages. Journal ofMarriage and the Family, 63, 1134-1145.

O'Connor, J. S., Orloff, A. S., & Shaver, S. (1999). States, markets, families: Gender, liberalism and social policy in Australia, Canada, Great Britain and the United States. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.

Peck, J. (2001). Workfare states. New York: Guilford Press. Piven, F. F., & Cloward, R. A. (1971). Regulating the poor: The functions of

public welfare. New York: Vintage Books. Purvis, T., & Hunt, A. (1993). Discourse, ideology, discourse, ideology,

discourse, ideology. British Journal ofSociology, 44, 473-499. Riger, S., & Krieglstein, M. (2000). The impact of welfare reform on men's

violence against women. American Journal of Community Psychology, 28, 631-647.

Rosenberg, H. (1995). Motherwork, stress, and depression: The costs of privatized social reproduction. In E. D. Nelson & B. W. Robinson (Eds.), Gender in the 1990s: Images, realities, and issues (pp. 311-329). Toronto: Nelson Canada.

Roy, K. M., Tubbs, C. Y., & Burton, L. M. (2004). Don't have no time: Daily rhythms and the organization of time for low-income families. Family Relations, 53, 168-178.

Sceviour, R., & Finnie, R. (2004). Social assistance use: Trends in incidence, entry and exit rates. Canadian Economic Observer, (No. 11-010), 3, 1-3-13.

Scott, K. (1999). The dilemma of liberal citizenship: Women and social assistance reform in the 1990s. In P. Armstrong & M. P. Connelly (Eds.), Feminism, political economy and the state: Contested terrain (pp. 205-235). Toronto, Ontario, Canada: Canadian Scholars' Press.

Seguino, S., & Butler, S. S. (1998). To work or not to work: Is that the right question? Review ofSocial Economy, 56(2), 190-219.

Shaver, S. (2001). Australian welfare reform: From citizenship to social engineering. Australian Journal ofSocial Issues, 36, 277-293.

Skrypnek, B. J., & Fast, J. E. (1996). Work and family policy in Canada: Family needs, collective solutions. Journal of Family Issues, 17, 793- 812.

Strauss, A., & Corbin, J. (1998). Basics of qualitative research: Techniques and procedures for developing grounded theory (2nd ed.). Thousand Oakes, CA: Sage.

Tweed, G. (2007). "Personal communication with Associate Executive Director, Operations and Delivery Support, Employment and Income Assistance." Saskatchewan.

Urban, J. A., & Olson, P. N. (2005). A comprehensive model for low- income mothers. Journal of Family and Economic Issues, 26, 101-122.

Walter, M. (2002). Working their way out of poverty? Sole motherhood, work, welfare and material well-being. Journal ofSociology, 38, 361-380.

Warnock, J. W. (2004). Saskatchewan: The roots of discontent and protest. Montreal, Canada: Black Rose Books.

Weigt, J. (2006). Compromises to carework: The social organization of mothers' experiences in the low-wage market after welfare reform. Social Problems, 53, 332-351.

White, R. (2004). Discourse analysis and social constructionism. Nurse Researcher, 12(2), 7-16.

Williams, C. (2004). Policy responses for groups at risk of long-term poverty. Paper presented at the Queen's International Institute on Social Policy, Kingston, August.



balancing expectations for employability and family responsibilities while on social assistance:...

Documents