Taylor & Francis

Reflecting biases that permeate the U.S. culture, professional accounts generally interpret stories of minority women from a deficit perspective. Problems such as substance abuse, domestic violence, and teenage pregnancy are often presented from an outsider's viewpoint and cast as intrapersonal phenomena independent of historical, political, and cultural context. This article suggests that stories and their implications change significantly depending on whether they are interpreted from a deficit or strengths perspective.

Many homeless women become separated from their children. The purpose of this study is to determine the predictors of entering a shelter with or without children and predictors of being separated from one or more children. Further, the authors also seek to understand the unique experience of homeless mothers separated from children. Findings suggest that women with mental illnesses and those separated from children are less likely to enter the shelter with children. Special needs were not significant predictors for being separated from any children.

This article explores how incarceration amplifies the disconnection from school and work experienced by urban, young men of color in the United States and ultimately leads to their social exclusion. The authors draw on longitudinal data collected in interviews with 397 men age 16 to 18 in a New York City jail and then again one year after their release.

This paper provides a broad overview of the current poverty status of Latinos in the United States. Data from the 1996 U.S. Census indicates that poverty affects Latinos disproportionately and that Latinos' low educational attainment and poor occupational status participation have a great impact on the current poverty conditions of Latinos. Also discussed are the effects of poverty on the well-being of Latinos. The findings from the U.S. Census and several major health surveys suggest that there is a relationship between poverty and Latino current health and educational status.

As the United States attempts to minimize public spending on social welfare programs and to shift the authority over many programs to the states, the federal government needs to establish a program of income security for children that is not tied to welfare. Such a program is in the national interest because the country will need a strong, competent workforce to deal with stiffer global economic competition and a greater financial obligation to support the elderly.

Through focus groups and a written activity, this study explores and compares 41 low-income Maryland parents’ childcare priorities and definitions of ideal high-quality care. Features of ideal high-quality care identified by parents align with professional standards and with descriptions found in existing literature, though parents’ operationalized definitions of quality varied, and their expectations were lower than most professional standards.

In the last 15 years, the triumph of neoliberal politics in the United States has been marked in part by the end of welfare “as we knew it” and the long-coming disappearance of the family wage. Remnants remain, such as work supports like child care assistance. In the current context of high unemployment, legislators are debating eliminating child care subsidies.

This article describes factors that predict the use of early childhood education and care among Latino families, as compared to non-Latino black and non-Latino white families in the United States in two age groups (0-2 and 3-5 years old). Using National Household Education Survey data, this study presents a framework and examines the association of numerous child and family characteristics with the number of hours children spend on care, the number of care arrangements, and the type of care used.

Regardless of their economic background, most working parents face the task of arranging childcare at some point. The decision-making process they experience is often complex, and this complexity is intensified for particular groups of families with limited financial and social resources. In this paper, we present findings from a three-year qualitative study of the childcare choices of low-income working families, many of whom were immigrants, had limited English proficiency, were parents of children with special needs, or represented some combination of these factors.

During the late twentieth century, the US social safety net was transformed to incentivize work by providing generous wage subsidies for low-income workers and reducing federal assistance to able-bodied unemployed adults. Following the transformation and during the economic boom of the 1990s, welfare rolls and annual poverty rates plummeted, especially for children. Despite the economic boom, there were still many persistently poor children living with parents who did not work, and little is known about how the reforms impacted these children's finances.