How Is Article 88 Different from Welfare in the United States?
Welfare in the United States has not been designed to acknowledge and award the labor of mothering. It is based on the premise that work can only be done outside of the house and that women must enter the workforce in order to contribute to society. The US Welfare system, in fact, does not award women who work in the home with social security but rather gives mothers a small amount of cash assistance, while they are forced to search for paid work. The basic idea is that children who are born poor are innocent and deserve some basic support, but once they grow up and become mothers (or fathers) themselves, they have no “excuses” for being poor. Women who have worked in the Welfare Rights movement have protested the oppressive cycle that forces women to place their children into under-funded childcare and themselves into low-wage work; instead, they demand that the care that they provide for their children and communities be acknowledged, valued, and remunerated. Before Welfare Reform, A
