Beggars and Choosers: Artist Statement

For more than a generation, many politicians in the United States have argued that poor women who have children—especially those who need public assistance—are irresponsible and selfish, waste public money, and make bad mothers. Public opinion polls show that most Americans agree that women should not have children if they are too poor or vulnerable to support kids properly. In effect, they have embraced the idea that motherhood is an economic status—a class privilege—that should be reserved for women with enough money and standing to give their children advantages. Images have played a big role in promoting this idea. Just as Dorothea Lange's images of desperate, white, heroic Depression-era mothers were vehicles to explain why federal social provision was vital in the 1930s, images of "welfare queens" have been crucial in the campaign to show why federal cash entitlements for poor mothers—welfare—had to end.

Today, many officials continue to advise girls and women: "You shouldn't become a mother until you can afford to." But before we agree that motherhood should be reserved for women with resources, shouldn't we consider what images and information we are missing when we come to this conclusion? Shouldn't we consider that many employers pay hourly wages that are much too low to support a mother and child? Shouldn't we consider the fact that 40 percent of the poverty in female-headed households could be eliminated if women were paid wages comparable to the wages males earn for comparable work? Shouldn't we consider how the lack of educational opportunities, adequate daycare, affordable housing, public transportation, and health insurance create vulnerable mothers in the United States?

"Beggars and Choosers: Motherhood Is Not a Class Privilege in America" makes a visual claim for the legitimacy of all mothers and the importance of defending reproductive rights. Rights are essential since most of the mothers in the exhibition do not possess the social and economic identities that public policy and public opinion associate with qualified mothers. Many of the women belong to groups pressed to give up reproductive rights and to accept their duty to abstain from having kids.

But each woman in the photographs has rejected or ignored the coercive politics of motherhood. The subjects of "Beggars and Choosers" express their motherhood in ways that show the connection between reproductive rights and human rights. These photographs clarify the full meaning of reproductive rights: the right to decide to curb one's fertility as well as the right to decide to become a mother.

Rickie Solinger
Curator