Swarthout’s Reviews > Family Values: Between Neoliberalism and the New Social Conservatism > Status Update

New York’s homelessness problem had “a very prosaic source,” note Perrow and Guillén: “mental patients were turned out into the streets . . . funds for subsidized housing for the poor were cut, even while financial benefits were available for housing for the well- to-do; in New York City developers of commercial office space and expensive condominiums benefitted from handsome tax breaks

The fact that fathers “choose” to support wife and children and mothers “choose” to perform most of the unpaid reproductive work of care, thus relieving the state of any such responsibilities, represents the equilibrium state of the family in a free- market order, a state of mutual dependence and self- suffi ciency that neoliberal welfare reform must strive to restore.