ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at two social policies: family leave policy, as proposed and enacted by the Clinton administration, and the 1996 welfare reform law from the perspective of inevitable human dependency. The first has the potential for being a policy that brings an ethic of care into the public arena. Unfortunately, the Family Leave policy enacted on the federal level in the US falls short of realizing that potential. The welfare reform act of 1996, TANF (Temporary Aid for Families) replaced Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), cutting off guarantees to poor families for cash assistance except on a very temporary basis. I discuss how the rhetoric around “welfare dependency” misses the crucial fact that caring for dependents makes the dependency worker herself dependent on others to assist with the provision of resources for her and the dependent she cares for. The failures are traceable to the failure of public policy to take into account inevitable human dependency.
