“You’re not going to get far working at Burger King,” she told me.

Davis has been able to find minimum-wage work over the years at fast-food restaurants and grocery stores, but the money is barely enough to feed five kids, pay the rent, and put gas in her car. Improving her opportunities through education, a key idea behind welfare reform, was nearly impossible with the jobs available to her and the time constraints she faced because of motherhood. A few years ago, she tried to go back to school, but the only classes that fit her schedule were online. It was tough to attend online classes and do school work while raising five kids and working part-time, so Davis ended up failing two semesters and quitting.

She knows that she needs a job where she has room for advancement to make it worth the time she’ll sacrifice away for her children. But at the state jobs office, she told me, “they just want to send you out there, get any job, accept any job, they don’t care if you’re happy with the job.”

Seefeldt and Sandstrom found that Davis’s struggles are typical of single mothers without more education and work experience: They face big barriers re-entering the workforce—dealing with childcare, transportation, and health insurance, all for paltry wages. Unfortunately, many mothers who do find work are only one crisis away from losing that job. One broken car, one sick kid, one court date can upend the fragile system they’d created for themselves.

“The mantra in Michigan was a job, a better job, a career: Through work you would experience upward mobility,” Seefeldt told me. “There was never any evidence that was the case.”

The lack of good, steady jobs makes it clear why single mothers rely on “packaging strategies,” as Seefeldt and Sandstrom term them. Sometimes, these strategies become so entrenched that women don’t need to depend on assistance from the government at all, especially when there are numerous hurdles to clear in order for them to receive benefits.

Suzanne Morrisey did her doctoral research on women in Syracuse, New York, eligible for benefits through Women with Infants and Children (WIC). Part of her research focused on why so many mothers in Syracuse who qualified for WIC were not enrolled in the program (women who are pregnant and on Medicaid are eligible for WIC). In nearby counties, three-quarters of eligible women were enrolled in WIC; in Syracuse, fewer than half were.

Morrisey found that women in Syracuse had created their own social networks that sometimes provided what they could get from WIC, but with a lot less hassle. If the father of their child brought over a big case of infant formula, there’s little reason for them to go to a WIC office, wait in line and receive vouchers, which they have to bring to a supermarket, where they are perhaps stigmatized for using benefits. Solutions come from surprising places. One woman had a friend who worked at a clinic and gave her free expired formula, for example. Another would rely on the woman she called her “mother-in-law,” even though she wasn’t married to the father of her child, and was no longer in a relationship with him. Still others would trade childcare or share food that might soon spoil.