Vulnerability and the State: The Uncertain Familial Path to Welfare Rights

• In Event: Institutional Paths to Equality: The Military, Courts, Marriage, and the Family

Abstract

This paper argues that vulnerability is an ongoing characteristic of the human condition, commencing, but not limited, to infancy. The very definition of parenthood includes responsibility for delivering care work to those in need of assistance, and so the family as an institution is a necessary but not sufficient resource for addressing vulnerabilities. Also, necessary is the authority and resources of the state. This research establishes that the government is most likely to provide welfare assistance in political systems in which the public conceptualizes the state as analogous to the family. By contrast, when the state is conceptualized solely as a market defined by competing and cooperative economic relationships, public attitudes are not as supportive of welfare provision. Thus, this paper illuminates how the family can be an institutional pathway for defining the state as responsible for addressing vulnerability as a universal human condition.

Author

• Eileen McDonagh, Northeastern University