Charity or Job: The examination of the Ontario Mothers' Allowance.

摘要

This thesis is the examines the Ontario Mothers' Allowance program by studying its documents, reports and correspondence, and how the use of surveillance and self-government played a key role in the evolution of this form of welfare assistance in Ontario. It also examines the underlying issues surrounding the women involved in this program, particularly how the phrase 'a fit and proper person to have the care and custody of her children' is used as a mould by which those women were regulated, and also the roots of what a proper person, or better yet, a proper woman and mother was meant to be. I examine these issues through the use Michel Foucault's concept of governmentality and the sub-concepts involved with it such as surveillance; knowledge/power; truth and expertise. It also uses the case files of many recipients of the monthly allowance.