A Welfare Mother

A WELFARE MOTHER is a footnote to New York City life. It presents a tiny bit of information, intentionally limited in scope, on what ought to be at least one very long chapter in the book of New York: welfare and the Department of Social Services. Susan Sheehan, a writer on the staff of the New Yorker, where this work first appeared in a slightly different form, has written a profile of a Puerto Rican welfare mother, describing for 95 pages the daily comings and goings of Carmen Santana and her family.

But despite some valid insights into the realities of a welfare recipient's daily existence, reading A Welfare Mother is an excrutiatingly frustrating experience. The text ambles through external description without dropping any clues to the humanity behind the name Carmen Santana. It is written as a newspaper article, in crisp, clear, objective, unemotional prose, and from start to finish the journalistic facade never cracks.

Sheehan spent nearly two years with Santana and hardly penetrated the pedestrian facts and figures of her life. Her view of welfare through an entirely material lens is tragically blind to the violent conflict and controversy surrounding the welfare system today.