Regulating the Lives of Women

Social Welfare Policy from Colonial Times to the Present

Mimi Abramovitz

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2025
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• eBook ISBN:
  9781040387498
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: Politics & International Relations

In the fourth edition of Regulating the Lives of Women: Social Welfare Policy from Colonial Times to the Present, Abramovitz traces how the welfare state regulated the lives of women from colonial times to the present.

Drawing on important feminist concepts—social reproduction, the gender division of labor, and patriarchy—Abramovitz successfully exposes the gendered and racialized myths and stereotypes built into welfare state programs. The book carefully explains the contextual conditions that contributed to the precursors of the modern welfare state, its rise and expansion after World War II, and the recent neoliberal effort to dismantle the cash assistance programs most likely to lift women out of poverty. This edition marks the most extensive overhaul to date. It revises the conceptual and background chapters, discusses cash assistance programs, and considers emerging ideas such as the role of economic crises in the development of the US welfare state. It also considers the future of the welfare state under the second Trump Presidency.

Regulating the Lives of Women is an essential resource for all students of social work, sociology, history, political science, public policy, and gender studies.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title
• Endorsements
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1 A Feminist Perspective on the Welfare State
• 2 The Colonial Family Ethic: The Development of Families, the Ideology of Women’s Roles, and the Labor of Women
• 3 Women and the Poor Laws in Colonial America
• 4 The Rise of the Industrial Family Ethic: “A Woman’s Place Is in the Home”
• 5 Women and Nineteenth-Century Relief
• 6 Poor Women and Progressivism: Protective Labor Law and Mothers’ Pensions
• 7 The Great Depression and the Emergence of the US Welfare State
• 8 The Social Security Retirement Program
• 9 The Unemployment Insurance Program
• 10 Aid to Families with Dependent Children: Single Mothers in the Twentieth Century
• 11 Conclusion: Managing Marginalized Populations
• Index