Private Safety Net: Childcare Resources from the Perspective of Rural Low‐Income Families*

• Author: Jean W. Bauer,Mary Jo Katras,Virginia S. Zuiker
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/j.0022-2445.2004.00010.x
• Published date: 01 March 2004
• Date: 01 March 2004

Private Safety Net: Childcare Resources from the Perspective of

Rural Low-Income Families*

Mary Jo Katras, Virginia S. Zuiker,** and Jean W. Bauer

Phenomenological analysis was used to understand how rural low-income families accessed and used child-care resources

to meet the needs of their families using data from Wave 1 of the Rural Families Speak Project. In the aftermath of welfare

reform, results highlight the continuing need for policy aimed at building stronger supports for families with inadequate access

to child care.

The passage of the Personal Responsibility and Work

Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA)of 1996,

commonly known as welfare reform, changed how the

government supports low-income families. This legislation

changed 61 years of guaranteed benef‌its to eligible mothers and

children, along with many services and programs for low-income

families. The safety nets that once existed for these families have

been removed and replaced with work-focused programs. In the

aftermath of welfare reform, low-income families, perhaps more

than ever before, must rely upon many sources within their

environments in order to access the resources they need.

With the implementation of welfare reform came many

policy changes for those families receiving cash assistance and for

families relying on other programs and services that changed, such

as the Supplemental Security Income (SSI)program for children,

Food Stamps, child support enforcement, childcare systems, and

child nutrition programs.Recent studies have analyzed the impacts

of welfare reform by looking at program outcomes using quantita-

tive analys is, econometr ic methods, a nd secondar y analyses of

administrative data to investigate caseload decline, employment

status, employment and earnings, welfare spells (Bell, 2001;

Loprest, 1999; Weber, Duncan, & Whitener, 2001), and economic

well-being (Porterf‌ield, 2001; Weber et al.). Although these

macro-level studies give insight to general patterns and trends,

the family perspective is missing—that is, the voices of families

affected by policies often are muted in statistical reports. Instead

of allowing families to talk about the triumphs and tribulations of

their lives within a changing policy environment, previous studies

have offered a generalized picture of their experiences. We argue

that to understand the everyday unique experiences of families,

policy researchers must begin with the family’s perspective.

As a decade revie w of literature o n family policy res earch

highlighted, the family’s perspective has been virtually ignored

(Bogenschneider, 2000). Moreover, few studies have taken the

needed qualitative approach to understand the experiences from

the perspectives of low-income families, with a few exceptions.

Stack (1970)began from the family perspective by describing the

survival strategies of a Black community through an ethnographic

lens. Edin and Lein (1997)investigated the lived experiences of

379 urban low-income single mothers in four urban cities across

the United States to understand how they pieced together the

resources needed to meet the needs of their families. Newman

(1999)offered an ethnographic view of inner-city poverty by

letting families talk about their struggles to survive within their

communities. Seccombe (1999)interviewed 47 women from

small- and medium-sized communities in Florida to see their

perspectives on welfare reform. Monroe and Tiller (2001)

described the workof welfare-reliant women and their experiences

with participants in the labor force,the rural job market, their useof

support networks, and the stigma of welfare. Although these stud-

ies provide insight into the everyday experiences of low-income

families, missing are those from rural low-income families.

Previous studies have focused on urban low-income families

or combined allfamilies together, so the impact of one’s locationas

low income was igno red. Rural low-i ncome families fac e unique

challenges due to the variability in availabilityand affordability of

resources to help them get what they need (Lewis, 2000).There-

fore, a need for family policy research that attends to rural

low-income families’ perspectives and creates knowledge that

reflects their perceptions of reality in the era of welfare reform is

warranted. Researchers, policy makers, and families need to know

what is going on in rural communities to understand how low-

income families are doing in the ‘‘real world’’ (Lewis, p. 2).

Our study was grounded in a family ecological framework

that conceptualizes family and environmental interactions and

relationships by representing an ecological system of interdepen-

dent parts and wholes (Bubolz & Sontag, 1993; Zimmerman,

1995)in which family members affect each other, other families,

and the quality of thecommunity. Our purpose was to examinethe

perspectives of rural low-income families to understand their

experiences in accessing and using childcare resources to meet

the needs of their families in the aftermath of welfare reform.

Using phenomeno logical analysi s (Giorgi, 1997)offered validity

to these families’ experiences through their own words instead of

through a summary of statistics or a summation of overarching

themes. This microlevel analysis allowed for the perspective of

rural low-income families to surface in the context of the larger

macrosystem. Therefore, this study contributes to the family

policy literature by bringing forth a rural family perspective.

Specif‌ically, our goal was to understand the experiences of a

group of rural low-income families from the Rural Families

*This study is part of the USDA Agricultural Experiment Station Research, with

funding from USDA/CSREES/NRICGP Grant 2001-35401-10215 and 2002-35401-11591

and cooperating universities and the private sector off‌icially known as NC223: ‘‘Rural Low-

income Families: Tracking their Well-being and Functioning in the Context of Welfare

Reform.’’ Cooperating states include California, Colorado, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana,

Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New York,

Ohio, Oregon, and Wyoming, and the Minnesota Agricultural Experiment Station Projects,

MIN-52-055 & MIN-52-078.

Financial support for this study was provided by several sources at the University of

Minnesota: the Henry Borow Dissertation Award for Doctoral Research, the Center for

Research on Developmental Education and Urban Literacy in collaboration with the General

College, the Shirley Zimmerman Fellowship, Department of Family Social Science, and the

M. Geraldine Gage Fellowship, Department of Family Social Science.

**Address correspondence to: Virginia S. Zuiker, University of Minnesota, 290

McNeal Hall, 1985 Buford Avenue, St. Paul, MN 55108 (vzuiker@che.umn.edu).

Key Words: child care, low-income, phenomenology, policy, rural families, welfare

reform.

(Family Relations, 2004, 53, 201–209)

2004, Vol. 53, No. 2 201