In the rhetoric that preceded and paved the way for so called welfare reform, the passage of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996, poor, single mothers were repeatedly characterized as the causes of virtually all that was wrong in the United States. Single mothers particularly those on welfare, have been relentlessly stereotyped by politicians, policy-makers and pundits as lazy, dependent, reluctant to work, often as promiscuous and corrupt.
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