welfare mother

welfare mother (plural welfare mothers)

1. (US) A woman who receives government support for dependent children.
   • 1997, Kathleen Mullan Harris, Frank F. Furstenberg, Teen Mothers and the Revolving Welfare Door, →ISBN, page 125:

     Welfare mothers who stay in school and finish their high school education secure a stable job and exit welfare rapidly.

   • 2000, Vivyan Campbell Adair, From Good Ma to Welfare Queen: A Genealogy of the Poor Woman in American Literature, Photography, and Culture, →ISBN, page 22:

     Here the welfare mother is the bad mother; the castrating matriarch.

   • 2008, Lynn Fujiwara, Mothers Without Citizenship: Asian Immigrant Families and the Consequences of Welfare Reform, →ISBN, page 128:

     In fact, the political preoccupation with welfare reform, as it encompassed drastic changes to multiple forms of public assistance, became synonymous in the arguments of avid reformers with assumptions about undeserving welfare mothers, deviant women's responsibility, and dependency.