Doctoral Dissertation Research in Political Science: Cultural Attitudes Toward Child Welfare Policies in the United States

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What do Americans believe the state should provide to its citizens in matters of child welfare? How do attitudes about race and poverty structure beliefs about government involvement in this area? This project uses original survey research to inquire into opinion on policies that influence child welfare, including foster care, childcare, welfare, and parenting policies that are targeted toward low-income mothers. This project will provide new insight into the intersection of racial attitudes and attitudes about welfare policy by interrogating the impact of gendered racial stereotypes, such as the construct of the "welfare mother." Last, developing new measures and gathering new public opinion data in a politically important, yet unexplored, area is valuable in itself. The investigator will survey online a random sample of 400 Americans from the general population, 300 Latino-Americans, and 300 African-Americans. The survey poses questions about real and hypothetical policies concerning child welfare, focusing on prenatal care, child support, and welfare. It also includes an experimental manipulation, in which respondents are primed to imagine a poor recipient of government assistance who is either Black, white, or Latino before they are asked a battery of questions about welfare recipients' behavior. Data analysis will assess, among other things, whether this racial priming impacts survey responses. The investigator hypothesizes that ethnicity and class are indeed central to public perceptions of policies that concern child welfare and parenting. This project will be relevant to the interdisciplinary group of academics who study child welfare, parenting, racial attitudes, gender, and/or social welfare policy, as well as to political organizations and policymakers involved in politics of these issues. When the survey is completed, the researcher plans to present this research to colleagues at workshops and conferences, to relevant political practitioners, and to people outside academia and politics through community forums and media exposure. In short, this work will engage academics across disciplines, political organizations and politicians, and Americans at-large.