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Restaging The Welfare Diva: Case Studies Of Single Motherhood And Social Policy, Iara Lessa

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

The single mother has been an enduring and representative character in the development of social welfare. Casted as the embodiment of the various crises of the family which Western democratic nations have experienced throughout the twentieth century, she is the representative of what is outside the foundation of a desirable life: an economically dependent family unit without a male head. Nevertheless, the single mother is also an actual woman raising children alone struggling for survival under very adverse circumstances. In its materiality, it is this body, not the allegorical character, who is the subject of studies and interventions concerned with …