“The degraded welfare mother was thus made to serve as a warning to all Americans who were working more and earning less, if they were working at all. There is a fate worse, and a status lower, than hard and unrewarding work. Welfare mothers were natural candidates for this labor-regulating role after the 1960s because of the changing gender and racial composition of the labor force… with the rise of the predominantly female and minority service sector proletariat, the degradation of female relief recipients as a means of regulating labor became entirely consistent with the historic uses of welfare to enforce market discipline.”

- Frances Fox Piven and Richard A. Cloward, Regulating the Poor: The Functions of Public Welfare