Beyond the Welfare Queen: The Rhetorical Construction of Single Mothers in American News Media

Abstract

This research employed a critical rhetorical lens to examine the construction of single mothers in American news media during four discrete but interconnected historical representative anecdotes that reflect periods of high interest in single mothers: after Dan Quayle’s Murphy Brown speech; during the 1996 welfare reform legislation; surrounding the Bush administration’s marriage initiative; and the calendar year 2012. I examined the ways in which media discourses perpetuate moral regulatory discourse and employ heteronormative, hegemonic, patriarchal ideals of family and mothering to single-mother families. This research found that news media narratives about single mothers largely support a decades-long project of moral regulation undertaken by political and social elites who have a vested interest in maintaining the patriarchal status quo. This research further found that the voices of single mothers are largely absent from news media discourse, which instead gives space to politicians, academics, political pundits, and others who contribute to negative stereotypes about single-mother families. Moreover, single mothers are often rhetorically positioned in relation to men, and only recently have they begun to articulate their identities for themselves within news media discourse.