Single Mothers In International Context

Mothers Or Workers?

Simon Duncan, Rosalind Edwards

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781134228010
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Medicine
• Subtopic: Sociology

Single mothers caring for dependent children are an important and increasing population in industrialized countries. In some, single mothers are seen primarily as mothers and few have paid work; in others, they are regarded as workers and most have paid work; and sometimes they are seen as an uneasy combination of the two with varying proportions taking up paid work.; This edited collection explores these variations, focusing on the interaction between dominant discourses around single motherhood, state policies towards single mothers, the structure of the labour market at national and local levels, and neighbourhood supports and constraints.

Chapter 1

Introduction:
A Contextual Approach to Single Mothers and Paid Work

Simon Duncan and Rosalind Edwards

Single mothers caring for dependent children are an important and increasing proportion of the population in industrialized countries. In all countries they overwhelmingly outweigh the number of single fathers. Single motherhood is a gendered position, shaped by notions of appropriate relationships between men and women and the roles of mothers and fathers. In some countries single mothers are seen primarily as mothers; in others, they are seen primarily as workers; and sometimes they are seen as an uneasy combination of the two. Similarly, in some of these countries single mothers are characterized by poverty and dependency on state benefits, while in others their income levels are closer to the average and they are more likely to have paid work. This edited collection aims to explore these international variations. It describes the varying situations for single mothers along this mother–worker continuum for eight exemplary case study countries, exploring how these situations have developed, and with what effects in terms of single mothers’ lives and uptake of paid work.

Many collections of comparative material concerning single motherhood concentrate on national welfare regimes and policies. Indeed, within the comparative body of work concerned with welfare state regimes single motherhood is often used as ‘a litmus test, or indicator, of gendered social rights in different welfare regimes’ (Hobson, 1994: 171; see also Millar, 1995). (We return to this point below.) Such analyses adopt an explicit or implicit stimulus – response causal model, whereby national policy is presumed to be the dominant context for single mothers’ uptake of paid work. The assumption is that if a social policy stimulus is changed, single mothers will respond in an appropriate and uniform way. For example, it may be presumed that reducing the state benefit levels available to single mothers will force them to take up paid work, or less punitively, that increased provision of publicly funded child care will encourage them to do so. Such a simplistic causal approach tends to ignore social processes in local labour markets and neighbourhoods, and to play down single mothers’ own understandings and capacities for social action – albeit within the constraints of gendered and stratified socities. Indeed, in general, comparative policy analysis has tended to focus around theoretical or ‘league table’ descriptive secondary work. There has been very little primary cross-national intensive research on social processes, exploring informal structures, subjectivity and action (see Chamberlayne and King, 1996, for an exception).

Furthermore, edited collections often lack a coherent underlying conceptual approach, and thus end up presenting little more than a number of juxtaposed case studies from an ad hoc variety of countries. In contrast, this comparative collection is guided by a multi-layered context–action model for understanding the various dynamics and processes by which single mothers are positioned as mothers and/or workers, and by which they are constrained or enabled in combining motherhood and paid work. The selection of the case study countries is conceptually informed, therefore. The countries represented in this volume provide archetypes of the ranges of welfare regime categorizations, and within this a range of specific policies towards single mothers. The authors of the chapters in this book address both structural forms and the subjectivity of single mothers themselves in each national case, paying attention to the variety of social and material contexts in which single mothers are situated and which structure opportunities and constraints for taking up paid work.

Each chapter thus follows a common analytic structure which sees opportunities and constraints operating at four contextual levels: dominant and alternative discourses about single motherhood; state welfare regimes and policies; gendered and stratified labour markets; and neighbourhood resources and supports. Readers therefore are able to examine how this structure of opportunities and constraints for single mothers’ uptake of paid work empirically operates for each country. Furthermore, readers are also able to make comparisons across countries for themselves at any one contextual level.

We now elaborate further on the underlying conceptual model for understanding single mothers’ uptake of paid work which guides the structure of each chapter, and discuss the ways in which the four contextual levels interlock to produce the overall social contexts that present opportunities and structure constraints for single mothers.

Single Motherhood: Terms, Definitions and Characteristics

Following an introduction, section 2 of each chapter discusses national trends in the prevalence and characteristics of single motherhood. Such a task raises issues around terminology and definitions. Although this book is entitled ‘Single Mothers in an International Context’, ‘single’ is not a term that is uniformly used by the various authors to refer to all mothers living with dependent children and not living with a spouse or partner. In the British social policy context, as we note in chapter 3, single motherhood tends to be used specifically to refer to never-married mothers, and ‘lone motherhood’ is the generic term covering divorced, separated and widowed, as well as never-married, mothers. In their chapter on Australia, McHugh and Millar use the nationally prevalent generic term ‘sole mothers’, where again ‘single’ refers to the specific never-married category. Elsewhere, in other publications, authors have used still other denominations, such as Hobson’s (1994) adoption of ‘solo mother’ as a political strategy to denote the strengths of women ‘flying’ as mothers on their own.

Moreover, single motherhood (in its generic sense) is not an unproblematic household structure or family type; as Millar (1994) points out, it is a set of social relations. In different national contexts there can be wide variations in the definition of what constitutes the generic category of single motherhood according to the age cut-off signifying ‘dependency’ of children, whether mothers living in households with other adults such as friends and relatives are included, and even whether cohabiting mothers are included, and so on (see Roll, 1992). Such variations significantly affect estimates of levels and trends in single motherhood and bedevil demographic cross-national comparisons. Nevertheless, within comparative studies there is a convergence towards a definition of single motherhood that focuses on the situation where a mother lives with her dependent children, either alone or in a larger household, but without a spouse or partner (Millar, 1994).

Whatever the definition used, in this section authors are concerned to show the variety of characteristics and circumstances, in any one national context, of the women who form the generic category of single, lone or sole mothers. Thus, within the limits of national data collection, authors provide analyses of structured and material divisions within the generic group, and between single mothers and partnered mothers, around routes into single motherhood, race/ethnicity, income levels, living standards, uptake of paid work, and so on. Single motherhood may be a genereic family form, but at the same time it is both varying and variable within countries as well as between them.

Discourses Around Single Motherhood

Single motherhood is not an apolitical situation, but one suffused with political and moral evaluation. Having set out the (more or less) ‘objective’ facts about single motherhood, section 3 of each chapter considers the ways the situation is framed within dominant and alternative political and popular discourses around single motherhood, and particular groups of single mothers, as well as around families and motherhood in relation to paid work in general.

Through assigning meaning and causes to actions, discourses both name and make sense of social relationships and behaviour, and instruct us how we should think of and react to aspects of the social world. In other words, the sort of social world we see, and how we understand it, can depend on the lens of the discourse that guides our search and shapes our perceptions just as much as it depends on the actual ‘facts’ of the situation we scrutinize.

The dominance of a particular discourse or set of discourses around single motherhood in each national context not only affects how the situation of single motherhood is understood, but also what should be done about it. Furthermore, political rhetoric on single mothers, based on particular ideological stances about the welfare state and the nature of ‘the family’, can also influence the constitution of, and changes to, policy. (And in turn, policies towards single motherhood and families in general interact with popular and political perceptions to provide another reference point for the formation of discourses.) So, for example, in the USA and Britain, New Right discourses around the nature of the welfare state, as well as of ‘the family’ and relationships between men and women, and the threat to these provided by single motherhood, have gained prominence. As such, they have shaped quite different policy developments to those in, for example, Sweden, which has been shaped by discourses that have alternative concepts of the nature of the welfare state and gender roles, and which place single-mother households as merely another, unthreatening, form of family. Other chapters show other developments.

Thus, examination of the development and patterns of national discourses is important in that these provide another context, in terms of both influencing popular everyday perceptions and state policies, in which single mothers must negotiate their lives, including decisions to try for paid work or not.

State Welfare Regimes and Single Mothers

Section 4 of each chapter moves on to analyse the way national policies position single mothers within the context of the overall welfare state regime. They may be positioned as essentially home-makers who care for children, or essentially as paid workers, or perhaps as a variety of uneasy combinations of the two.

The comparative analysis of welfare state regimes as systems of stratification, as developed by Esping-Andersen (1990), has been both immensely influential and heavily criticized for being gender-blind. Various alternative classificatory systems have been produced that attempt to place gender relations in a more central position, with varying success in providing analytic accounts of different systems of gender inequality (see Sainsbury, 1994; Duncan, 1995, 1996).

In this book, authors assess the overall thrust of welfare policies in each national case, either drawing on Esping-Andersen’s categorization or more gender-aware versions. They provide an evaluation of the ways policies towards single mothers enhance or constrain their opportunities to take up paid work. For example, Ireland typifies a ‘strong breadwinner’ welfare regime, where policies position women primarily as mothers in home-maker roles and single mothers are excluded from paid work; Germany is a typical ‘conservative’ welfare regime, but here single mothers are expected to move into paid work after their children reach a certain age; the USA typifies a ‘liberal’ welfare regime, where policies ostensibly give mothers a ‘choice’ on whether or not to take up paid work, but lack of child care provision on the one hand, and minimal and stigmatized welfare benefits on the other, place single mothers in a difficult position; while Sweden typifies a ‘social democratic’ system, where state policies treat all women, including single mothers, as autonomous citizens and workers. Other countries occupy more transitional positions.

National contrasts in single mothers’ uptake of paid work are associated with differences in social policy, and as we have pointed out, this has been seen as dominant in comparative discussions of the issue. However, the nation state is only one of several contexts for single mothers’ actions: local labour markets, and neighbourhoods or social networks may also be important. Sections 5 and 6 of each chapter turn to these levels of analysis.

Single Mothers in Labour Markets

Section 5 of each chapter is concerned with labour markets. In order for single mothers to take up paid work jobs have to be available. Furthermore, the supply of jobs within any one country often varies markedly between local labour markets.

Within a national context there is remarkably persistent horizontal and vertical occupational sex segregation, with women concentrated in particular sectors, often in particular occupations, and at lower status levels, for less time, and in less secure and lower paid jobs (OECD, 1994). (And for women from minority ethic groups, sex segregation can interact with racial segregation to provide even more limited opportunites.) Thus in many countries most ‘women’s jobs’ cannot provide single mothers with an independent income.

But more than this, spatial and gendered divisions of labour mean that different amounts and types of jobs are available to women in different areas (Massey, 1995). In addition, women – and mothers in particular – often have limited job search areas because of their domestic and child-care responsibilities. This limitation can be even more severe for single mothers. So even if single mothers want to take up paid work, and even if state polices provide support for this, they may not be able to do so within a particular area.

Furthermore, there are entrenched historical and cultural regional social expectations about whether women, especially mothers, should work for a wage or primarily be home-makers. These regional discourses about women and work will interact with the nature and amount of jobs made available by spatially divided labour markets, leading to sub-national variations in single mothers’ uptake of paid work. Nonetheless, perhaps because of the dominance of national state policy in the literature on single mothers, this crucial context remains underexplored.

Single Mothers in Neighbourhoods: Social Support and Subjectivity

Section 6 of each chapter explores the constraints and opportunities provided by the neighbourhood contexts in which mothers live, and their own understanding of their identity as mothers and/or workers.

The local setting is a particularly important and relevant part of single mothers’ lives – a socially structured factor in the background of opportunities and constraints that are built into single mothers’ daily routines. Single mothers’ neighbourhood support networks represent local structures of interaction, giving them access to resources, or being resources in themselves, both through organized groups and other personal ties. Localized networks of kin and friends can be significant materially, including providing single mothers and child-care support in contexts where there is little publicly funded provision available (such as Ireland and Britain). Yet the way that single mothers’ support networks may vary according to locality and social group – affecting their ability to take up paid work – has received little attention in comparative work (for an exception see Cochran et al., 1993).

Social networks and support imply people in groups; groups that will define experiences and situations in common as well as individually. Thus as well as providing material support, single mothers’ social networks are significant in terms of their own subjectivity. Local social attitudes towards mothers who work and towards single motherhood can play a role in single mothers’ decisions about taking paid work, in terms of shaping their identity as mothers and/or workers, quite apart from national policy and labour market structures. Such neighbourhood norms may be similar to or differ from dominant national discourses.

Integrating single mothers’ own perceptions and sense of belonging within analyses of the structural contexts of their lives allows them to be seen as ‘creative, reflexive agents both constrained by and enabled by, as well as creating, the social conditions in which they exist (Williams, 1996: 3), rather than assuming they will simply respond to national benefits and services in uniform ways. Indeed, social ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• Acknowledgements
• Chapter 1 Introduction: A Contextual Approach to Single Mothers and Paid Work*
• Chapter 2 Single Mothers in the Republic of Ireland: Mothers not Workers
• Chapter 3 Single Mothers in Britain: Unsupported Workers or Mothers?
• Chapter 4 Single Mothers in the USA: Unsupported Workers and Mothers
• Chapter 5 Single Mothers in Japan: Unsupported Mothers Who Work
• Chapter 6 Single Mothers in Australia: Supporting Mothers to Seek Work
• Chapter 7 Single Mothers in Germany: Supported Mothers Who Work
• Chapter 8 Single Mothers in France: Supported Mothers and Workers
• Chapter 9 Single Mothers in Sweden: Supported Workers Who Mother
• Afterword Single Mothers – Mothers Versus Workers, or, Mothers and Workers
• Notes on Contributors
• Index