Teen Mothers--Citizens or Dependents? - Hardcover

Ruth Horowitz is professor of sociology at the University of Delaware.

This participant-observer study of Project GED--a one-year high-school equivalency and job readiness training program for teenage single mothers--by a University of Delaware sociology professor offers insights that should be considered in the debate over welfare reform. Horowitz finds that Project GED's staff members took two different approaches: "arbiters" stressed hierarchy and authority and insisted on a rigid separation between public and private worlds and on student obedience and conformity; and, "mediators" sought to build community, self-esteem, and independence and to enhance the students' capacity to understand and negotiate the demands of various social contexts. Horowitz explores the sources of the staffers' own sense of identity and the nuances of their attitudes toward the students' lives outside the program as well as the ways students responded to the two approaches. Teen Mothers: Citizens or Dependents? places Horowitz's results in the context of major theories about the role of welfare in the U.S. and offers a microlevel critique of the implicit assumptions and probable consequences of each theory's approach to welfare reform. Mary Carroll