By treating the family as an economic unit for the purposes of determining eligibility, the means-test undermined unemployed men's status in the family, forcing them to depend on the wages of their wives or, more commonly, their children. By putting white working-class men in a position of dependence long reserved for women and children, the family means-test was widely interpreted as a crisis of both masculinity and the working-class family.

Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, loc. 215