<div class="field">I am interested in poverty and social policy, gender and work, and the relationship between the two. In recent work, I am concerned with how women’s social interactions guide their economic outcomes. This question is central to my 2013 book,&nbsp; <em>Ain't No Trust: How Bosses, Boyfriends, and Bureaucrats Fail Low-Income Mothers and Why It Matters</em>&nbsp;(University of California Press). The book provides a qualitative comparison of low-income mothers’ experiences with welfare and low-wage work before and after welfare reform and investigates women’s social interactions with caseworkers, employers, child care providers, romantic partners, and networks of family and friends. &nbsp;I argue that these social interactions produce distrust creating barriers to the very actions reform hoped to promote.&nbsp; Policies that do not address the structural factors that shape these interactions and produce distrust -- particularly the fact that low-income mothers' interests are often at odds with their interaction partners -- will be limited in their ability to truly improve the lives of low-income women&nbsp;and their children.</div>