About
I study how policymakers, bureaucrats, and advocates define the needs of children and poor families, and how these definitions inadvertently create new inequalities. Drawing on multiple types of qualitative data, I show how culture shapes the relationship between poor families and the state.
My dissertation, “Logics of Caregiving in the Delegated Welfare State,” shows how political struggles over the purposes of welfare programs and early education create unexpected effects for how poor families access benefits. Like most of the U.S. welfare state, child care funding is complex—a mix of subsidies, public programs, private partnerships, and tax credits broadly aimed at promoting “work” and “education.” Funding streams and regulations reflect policymakers’ shifting definitions about the goals of child care. Accordingly, the U.S. child care system serves multiple purposes, is notoriously complex, under-funded, and fragmented—a pattern that notably results in uneven policy outcomes and new inequalities. Using Chicago, Illinois as a case study, I combine archival administrative records, ethnographic observations, and interviews with caregivers to learn how federal and local child care policies define the needs of children and poor families, how these policies place beneficiaries in ambiguous roles, how families navigate this ambiguity, and what inequalities result.
