Qualitative Sociology, Vol. 20, No, 2, 1997
Work/Family Policy Stratification: The
Examples of Family Support and Family Leave
Sherry Wexler
In the past decade the United States Congress has debated and passed
legislative policies concerned with women's work, both in the family and in
the labor force. The Family Support Act of 1988 and the Family and Medical
Leave Act of 1993 fall into this category of legislative policy. A comparative
study of Congressional testimony in each case reveals that these two pieces of
legislation are excellent examples of how federal policies—and the debates
which fashion these policies—maintain and promote a system of policy
stratification that perpetuates differences based on gender, race, class and
marital and occupational status.
KEY WORDS: family policy; family support; family leave; welfare reform.
OVERVIEW
During the past decade, issues concerning women's work—in the family and in the labor force-have been widely debated in the United States
Congress. In my study, I focus on two pieces of legislation carved out of
those debates: 1) the Family Support Act, passed by Congress in 1988 and
2) the Family and Medical Leave Act, initially passed by Congress in 1991,
but because of Presidential veto and Congressional inability to override that
veto, not enacted into law until January of 1993 under the new Clinton
Administration.
Paper presented at the American Sociological Association Annual Meeting Section on
Sociology of the Family: Families and the Policy Agenda Washington, DC, August 22,1995.
The material for this paper is drawn from forthcoming doctoral dissertation: To Work and to
Mother: The Politics of family Support and family Leave.
Direct correspondence to Sherry Wexler, Heller School, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA
02254-9110; e-mail: [email protected].
311
C 1997 Human Sciences Press, Inc.
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Wexler
Emanating from two very different "policy spheres," and targeting two
ostensibly very different groups of women, the Family Support Act, on the
one hand, sought to implement major changes to the Aid to Families with
Dependent Children program (AFDC), changes that included new work
requirements for recipients with young children (almost always mothers)
and new provisions to strengthen the enforcement of child support from
noncustodial parents (almost always fathers). On the other hand, the Family
and Medical Leave Act sought to require employers to provide workers
with unpaid, job-protected leave for medical disabilities (including pregnancy and childbirth) and for caregiving to newborn children and other
family members. (Like the Family Support Act, the Family and Medical
Leave Act is theoretically gender-neutral, but in both cases the laws have
heightened implications for women). The Family Support Act falls into the
rubric of "welfare reform" and is about social provision for poor, unemployed women and their children, most often single mothers, and over-represented numbers of women of color. The Family and Medical Leave Act
was constructed within the framework of labor law and, because it contains
various job-related exclusions and provides leave without income replacement, is targeted to cover those employed within the primary sector of the
labor market who are more likely to have access to financial and familial
resources. Families with these characteristics would tend to be white, middle-class and married.
Both of these laws have been touted as acts of widespread, sweeping
change. The Washington Post hailed the Family Support Act as "a landmark
overhaul of the welfare system" and The Los Angeles Times called it "the
most sweeping revision of the nation's principal welfare program...since it
was created in 1935 (Szanton 1991)." The Family and Medical Leave Act
received a great deal of fanfare as the first major bill signed into law by
newly-elected President Clinton. Following two previous vetoes by former
President Bush, the bill's enactment symbolized what appeared to be a dramatic shift in presidential policy. Both laws have been the subject of intense
public discussion, and recently, the subject of intense scholarly analysis.
The new scholarship related to the Family Support Act focuses on the
broader concept of what is popularly known as "welfare reform." Amidst
renewed public attack on AFDC recipients, recent studies focus on issues
of gender, race, and class—because the attack on AFDC recipients is essentially an attack on poor women, and especially African-American
women. Here I refer to the work of Kathryn Edin, Gwendolyn Mink, Nancy
Fraser, Linda Gordon, and Martha Fineman, among others.
On topics related to Family Leave, most of the recent work has been
in the field of legal scholarship, and law professors such as Wendy Williams
have not only written extensively on the subject, but have been instrumental
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313
in developing the framework from which the legislation was crafted. Others
such as Lise Vogel have added to a feminist critique of leave policies.
My own work builds on and expands these areas of scholarship, but
is unique in that it seeks to establish a link between what have been conceptualized as two different policy spheres and two separate avenues of
inquiry. Alternatively, I attempt to create a model that views the Family
Support Act and the Family Leave Act as two contemporary examples of
federal policies which shape the state's ongoing definition of work, family,
and caregiving, albeit in very different ways. Simply stated, both laws define
women's relationship to the family and to the labor market by allowing
some type of benefits. The similarity ends there, however, for while the
Family Support Act requires "nonworking" mothers to prepare for and enter the labor force, the Family and Medical Leave Act enables a particular
group of "working" mothers to take time from their jobs for family needs.
My chief concern is how do we explain these seemingly contradictory policies.
Are they related? If so what is the nature of that underlying relationship? These
are the questions I attempt to answer in my study of the virtually simultaneous
development of these two policies in the U.S. Congress of the mid-to-late 1980s.
For my study, I have chosen to examine data from hearings held by
the Congressional committees and subcommittees considering legislative
action that ultimately culminated in the drafting and subsequent passage
of the Family Support Act and the Family and Medical Leave Act. These
hearings were conducted mainly between the years 1985 and 1988, and in
both cases basically occurred in two sequences. During the first set of hearings, the general "problem" was identified and described with testimony
being given, in both oral and written form, by various parties within and
outside of government. Following these hearings, legislation was drafted,
and then a second set of hearings was held to elicit comments on the proposed "solution." Participating in both sets of hearings was a broad array
of individuals including Congressional members, representatives of the Executive branch, spokespersons of various interest groups, academics and
policy analysts, and citizens. The hearing documents include both transcripts of oral testimony delivered by invited witnesses, and written materials sent to the committees by parties not invited to testify in person.
Supplementary materials prepared by Congressional staff and government
agencies, as well as a variety of documents submitted by interested parties
in the form of memos, reports, published articles and various miscellaneous
items are included as part of the record. What exists then is a wealth of
data from which one can begin to sort out answers to basic questions concerning the development of these two pieces of legislation. Concurrent time
periods and similar procedures for holding hearings and collecting docu-
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ments of record provided the controls that facilitate a comparative case
study methodology.
FINDINGS
In seeking to explain the contrasting policy solutions of the Family
Support Act and the Family and Medical Leave Act, keeping in mind a
model in which both policies define women's relationship to the family and
to the labor market, I will focus on four major findings. The first relates
to how the two target populations—mothers—were depicted for purposes
of defining the relevant "problem." Once again, we find the historically
familiar theme of "good mothers" and "bad mothers." The second major
finding involves another dichotomy. In this case, there is evidence that a
two-tiered structure of social provision continues to permeate contemporary American policy development, but certain features of that structure
differ from the past. The third finding relates to the issue of policy spheres
and policy communities, and how and by whom what has been termed "discursive resources" were used.1 The fourth illuminates relationships within
various segments of each policy, as well as relationships between the two
policies. Taken together, these findings lead us to conclude that family policies
in the United States today—at least as evidenced by the Family Support Act
and the Family and Medical Leave Act—contribute to stratification by race
and class. Stratification with respect to gender continues but has become increasingly complex.
Let us begin with the first major finding the contrasting depictions of
mothers. Analysis of the data revealed that policy debates were largely focused on identifying two alternative normative constructs of motherhood.
These constructs, in turn, shaped the way in which the problems were defined and legislative solutions deemed "appropriate" to solving those problems were drafted. Essentially, two kinds of mothers were portrayed.
In the case of women receiving AFDC, their problem was most often
described as "dependency." The language of dependency was used in the
overwhelming bulk of the testimony, even among those parties sympathetic
to the needs of AFDC recipients, wanting to increase assistance to them,
and not in favor of instituting work requirements. The solutions to problems of dependency were usually geared toward the objective of "self-sufficiency"—self-sufficiency being defined as moving off of AFDC support
and into a job. Yet for many witnesses, dependency was a term loaded with
meaning, often of a pathological nature. In fact, a medical model was invoked on more than one occasion. For example, on May 5, 1987, thenGovernor Bill Clinton testified before the House Committee on Education
Work/Family Policy Stratification
315
and Labor, chaired by Representative Augustus F. Hawkins, Democrat of
California and one of the more liberal members of Congress with respect
to reform of the AFDC system, that the National Governors Association's
plan to reform the "welfare system" called for a work program that involved
a "discharge plan." Rehabilitation was a clearly-stated goal. The case management system was the method of choice. Recipients of AFDC and prospective participants in the training and work programs were referred to
most often as the caseload.
Assumptions that mothers on AFDC required monitoring and a certain degree of coercion in order to provide materially for their children
lay at the heart of the case management approach as evidenced by frequent
arguments by welfare administrators and many others that a contractual
agreement needed to be set between client and agency. Such a contract
would consist of the client, for her part, agreeing to a plan incorporating
training, work, and other out-of-home activities in exchange for agency
services such as finding jobs, child care, and transportation assistance.
Reforms to the AFDC program were widely promoted in the name
of helping poor children, and the roles of mothers in these cases were
linked more to the economic improvement of families than to their role
as nurturers. Stephen B. Heintz, Commissioner of the Connecticut Department of Income Maintenance and Chairman of the Matter of Commitment
Steering Committee of the American Public Welfare Association, a frequent witness before subcommittees of both Houses of Congress holding
hearings on reform of the AFDC program, testified on more than one occasion that individuals bear the primary responsibility for their own wellbeing and that of their families. Self-sufficiency, according to Mr. Heintz,
means a good job with a future for an adult, and for a child a nurturing
family and success in school. Ironically however, Mr. Heintz downplayed
the value of nurturing care in the home when that care was provided by
mothers receiving AFDC. He testified, for example, that "Children do not
benefit in the long run from having a single [italics added] parent at home
full tune, if they do not also learn about self-sufficiency and options available to them in the larger community."
The importance of good quality child care as a substitute for care by
mothers in training and work programs was a constant theme, but the particulars of what constitutes "good quality" were never clearly articulated.
Instead, the focus seemed to be on establishing that substitute mothercare—if good quality—would be a positive contribution to the overall care
of the child. For example, Deborah A. Phillips, at the time of testimony a
Fellow at the Bush Center in Child Development and Social Policy at Yale
University, in promoting the need for improved child care as part of welfare-to work programs, lauded the practice of substitute care, stating that
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"Child care has become an essential part of rearing children in contemporary society." And "...child care is a basic feature of effective welfare programs." She argued that full-time substitute care is what will be necessary
as "... part-time work at low wages is simply insufficient to raise a family
above the poverty level and thus falls short of the goals of welfare reform."
In making her case for investing in quality substitute care, she states that
"...high quality child care can help to prepare children, particularly low-income children [italics added], for effective and productive adult lives."
Advocacy of AFDC recipients as nurturers was taken up to a certain
extent by the religious community in terms mostly unheard of from the
professional or political community. For example, the Reverend Thomas J.
Harvey, Executive Director of Catholic Charities who argued against training and work requirements for mothers of children under six years of age,
professed that the enduring life-long value of nurturing provided by close
parenting of young children can be the most valuable investment we can
make. He also noted that many of the families receiving AFDC assistance
live in communities where "it is difficult to provide for nurturing and protection outside the home." These types of arguments were more the exception, however, than the rule.
In contrast, testimony in the case of the Family and Medical Leave
Act focused on the merits of at-home familial care, and the unique talents
that mothers (and fathers) provide as nurturers. In this instance, child development experts reported not on the benefits of quality substitute parental care, but on the importance of mother-child bonding. Edward Zigler,
like Deborah Phillips associated with the Yale Bush Center in Child Development, in this case testified that "...the family remains the primary base
for the well-being and development of children." The plight of women
working out of necessity and the challenges of the dual roles of caregiver
and parent were carefully portrayed. The particularized stories of newborns
and ill children unable to receive the assumed-to-be superior care of a doting mother unfolded during the course of testimony.
These differences in the depictions of two kinds of mothers leads to
my second point, which is that these contrasting images of mothers fit with
the notion that American social policy has been constructed as a two-tiered
system, and that a major division exists between benefits for those recognized as deserving versus benefits for those deemed undeserving. This dichotomy between nondeserving and deserving is very salient in the
discussions of the Family Support Act and the Family and Medical Leave
Act during Congressional hearings. For example, Senator Daniel Patrick
Moynihan, Chair of the Senate Subcommittee on Social Security and Family Policy, in almost all of his remarks introducing each set of hearings
preceding the passage of the Family Support bill, justified the need to re-
Work/Family Policy Stratification
317
form the current system by the fact that the extant program was unable to
command political support because of who it was serving. He declared that
the reasons for this lack of political support were "self-evident." "...a program designed for poor widows will not be supported in a world where
mothers are poor because they are unsupported by their divorced husbands
or because they are unwed." Very clearly, marital status was a key factor
in determining who was deserving of public support. Other attributes contributing to the characterization of AFDC recipients as nondeserving included a continual comparison between nonworkers and workers. Indeed,
the second reason that Moynihan consistently gave for the nonfeasibilily
of support for mothers not engaged in paid labor was the fact that other
mothers were thus engaged. The other mothers were, of course, those very
mothers being lauded as the deserving set, those engaged in the dual roles
of workers and caregivers, those deemed deserving of family leave.
Further evidence that the Family Support Act and the Family and
Medical Leave Act illuminate a two-tiered social policy system comes from
an analysis of how and by whom arguments relating to the proposed legislation were structured. While most of the discussion on the need to reform AFDC was set within a paradigm in which government, social
workers, and policy analysts sought to discover what action to take on behalf
of AFDC recipients—a top/down approach, arguments in support of the
Family and Medical Leave Act were consistently made within a framework
of workers' demand for certain basic rights, the impetus for change coming
from the workers themselves. The designation of a target population as
object—as in the case of the Family Support Act, or as subject—as in the
case of the Family and Medical Leave Act has broader implications for the
stratification of social policy. Of interest is that even those most sympathetic to the needs of poor nonwage-earning mothers testified in terms of
these women as other. In contrast, throughout the hearings on the Family
and Medical Leave legislation, those testifying, even when speaking as official spokesperson of an organization, usually told of their own personal
relationship as a parent to the Family and Medical Leave proposal. This
was the case even when they opposed the legislation (from a business standpoint).
The drafting of the Family Support Act remained within the bounds
of social work architecture: the personal attributes of the client dictated
the course of events and a key determinant of change was the individual
decision-making of the social worker or welfare administrator. In contrast,
the Family and Medical Leave proposal was a labor law, pure and simple.
As such, its provisions would be routinized and implemented completely
apart from any determination of personal characteristics of beneficiaries,
other than status regulations connected to jobs. Analysis of the differences
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between the Family Support Act and the Family and Medical Leave Act
bears a similarity with the comparison between workers' compensation laws
and mothers' pensions made by Barbara Nelson in which she provided evidence of a two-channel welfare state based on gender (Nelson 1990).
My third point is that the policy spheres or policy communities involved with testifying for or against each of these pieces of legislation were
very different from each other. Those participating in the hearings leading
to the Family Support Act included representatives of the federal government and state governments. The National Governors Association, for example was heavily involved in drafting and then supporting most of the
provisions of the Family Support Act. Also actively participating were representatives of state welfare organizations, county representatives, and the
social work establishment in general. Organizations involved with poverty
issues testified, mostly those focused on the needs of poor children—for
example, the Children's Defense Fund and various church-affiliated groups.
The viewpoint of women was represented chiefly by coalitions formed specifically to focus on the issue of welfare reform. For example, oral testimony
was given at several hearings by the National Coalition on Women, Work,
and Welfare representing some thirty national groups such as the National
Commission on Working Women, Wider Opportunities for Women, the
Displaced Homemakers Network, the Women and Poverty Project, the
Women's Equity Action League, the National Women's Law Center, and
the National Board of the YWCA. By organizing around the concept of
"welfare reform," these groups chose to "fit" their political advocacy within
the existing "welfare" policy sphere rather than challenging its boundaries.
Also testifying were policy analysts offering their expertise on work-related
issues, as well as researchers who had evaluated earlier welfare-to-work
programs. There was virtually no testimony from AFDC recipients themselves.
In contrast, during the Family and Medical Leave hearings, there were
numerous witnesses drawn from the ranks of the "ordinary" citizenry, delivering testimony on their own personal experiences. Other noteworthy
characteristics included the fact that there were, in general, many more
women testifying, and many women's advocacy groups represented. For example, Eleanor Smeal, President of the National Organization for Women
(NOW) testified, stating that [she] "...wanted to establish the strong, strong
support from the women's organizations of our country in behalf of this
legislation. The Nation Organization for Women has 150,000 members. We
arc one of the largest feminist organizations in the world. We support this
act strongly, and it is one of our major priorities." Feminist testimony of
this type was virtually absent from the Family Support Act hearings. Also
prominent in giving testimony were leaders from the feminist legal com-
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319
munity, such as law professor Wendy Williams who had played an instrumental role in modeling the Family and Medical Leave Act as follow-up
legislation to the Pregnancy Discrimination Act and was a proponent of a
gender-neutral strategy with the objective of promoting sexual equality.
Also testifying were representatives of the Women's Legal Defense Fund
and the Women's Bar Association. There was a great deal of testimony by
child development experts on the importance of infant bonding and the
danger of substituting parental care when children are very young. Interestingly, even though, the Family and Medical Leave Act was advocated
as labor legislation, there was a significant amount of discussion on parental
nurturing far more so than in the Family Support Act hearings where such
discourse was virtually nonexistent. Also of note was the testimony of witnesses who had studied leave policies in other industrialized nations, such
as Sheila Kamerman and Alfred Kahn, professors at Columbia University.
They and others discussed how the United States compared so unfavorably
with other nations in matters of family leave policies. In the case of the
Family Support Act, there was no mention of policies in other nations.
The fourth point I want to make regarding findings is that within the
final drafts of each policy-and these were strongly affected by the structure
of arguments presented during the Congressional hearings—are the markings of stratification with respect to gender, class, and race.
Take for example, stratification by gender. Although I have here focused on the treatment of women with respect to work and caregiving, a
major provision of the Family Support Act was the strengthening of child
support enforcement affecting noncustodial parents, usually fathers. In reviewing the testimony dealing with the child support enhancement provisions, it was interesting to see that the discussion focused almost entirely
on the technical and administrative aspects of the program, and almost
never on the need to "rehabilitate" fathers. In other words, the discussion
was on the rules themselves and not on the content of the fathers' characters. A "social work" model remained reserved for the section on the
new JOBS program, the work requirements largely affecting women.
With respect to stratification by class, and ultimately race: the Family
and Medical Leave Act, by its failure to provide for wage replacement during leave, and its exclusion from coverage of those employees who work
for medium and small companies (those employing fewer than SO workers),
as well as exclusions of workers at temporary, seasonal, or part-time jobs,
creates a policy which effectively stratifies by class and race, as well as by
gender and marital status. (Less skilled workers, women and members of
minorities are less likely to be members of the primary labor sector meeting
these work characteristics, and single women lack the resources of spousal
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support that might enable them to take advantage of unpaid leave more
easily.)
I conclude that, taken together, the Family Support Act and the Family
and Medical Leave Act form a relationship that reinforces stratification.
That population excluded from the provisions of the Family and Medical
Leave Act will more likely be forced into requiring assistance from AFDC
under the Family Support Act. Therefore, the policies themselves provide
for divisions and the perpetuation of a privileged vs. non-privileged set of
beneficiaries. Thus the Family Support Act and the Family and Medical
Leave Act create a contemporary version of a two-tiered system of social
provision. Not all "family policy" is equal.
ENDNOTE
1.
I use Barbara Hobson's (1993) definition of "discursive resources" in which she uses the
term to include: "one, ways of formulating public debate that allow for linkages to other
policy concerns and hegemonic ideologies; and two, policy arenas where groups can represent their claims and construct their own interpretations of issues at stake and the
policy measures needed."
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