welfare mother

plural welfare mothers

1. USA woman who receives government support for dependent children.

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

   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

   2 more examples

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

   1997, Kathleen Mullan Harris, Frank F. Furstenberg, Teen Mothers and the Revolving Welfare Door, →ISBN, page 125

   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.

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