How All Politics Became Reproductive Politics Quotes

“It is important to say that the explosion of immigrant nanny and household work was not an inevitable or even direct consequence of feminism in the United States. On the contrary, it was the endpoint of a long series of refusals on the part of government and business to meet the demands of the women's movement.”
― Laura Briggs, How All Politics Became Reproductive Politics: From Welfare Reform to Foreclosure to Trump

“The primary reason that U.S. infant mortality is so high compared to other countries is that African Americans suffer a staggering rate. If Black America were its own country, it would be ranked between China and Turkey.”
― Laura Briggs, How All Politics Became Reproductive Politics: From Welfare Reform to Foreclosure to Trump

“Teen pregnancy is not in itself a problem, although it is a marker of a problem in a society where good jobs are distributed almost exclusively to people who go through a long period of higher education. When girls believe, correctly, that neither they nor their children would be better off if they waited until their twenties to have their children, it means their opportunities are slim indeed. And that - rather than worries about sexually active girls - should trouble us a great deal.”
― Laura Briggs, How All Politics Became Reproductive Politics: From Welfare Reform to Foreclosure to Trump

“The irony is that only by a particularly narrow definition does a Walmart job get you off welfare - as a matter of policy, Walmart encourages its employees to apply for government benefits. Indeed, Walmart and other minimum wage workers at McDonald's and similar McJobs are the largest group of Medicaid and food stamps recipients in the United States. That is to say, US taxpayers subsidize Walmart paychecks (and corporate profits) by paying welfare benefits to its workers and their children. Welfare reform eliminated virtually all education and job-training benefits beyond "work readiness" classes that taught women to dress nicely and get their kids up early. The result: women couldn't get the education to get a good job and they were still receiving welfare benefits, but they could be counted on to clock regular hours and make profits for their low-paying employers. From welfare reform to Walmart, it was all reproductive politics.”
― Laura Briggs, How All Politics Became Reproductive Politics: From Welfare Reform to Foreclosure to Trump

“Although white women as a group lost the most in welfare reform, they got the one bone that's always been thrown to white working- and middle-class people in the United States: the opportunity to feel they were morally superior to people of color.”
― Laura Briggs, How All Politics Became Reproductive Politics: From Welfare Reform to Foreclosure to Trump