Lone Parenthood

10 Key excerpts on "Lone Parenthood"

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  Lone Mothers Between Paid Work and Care

  The Policy Regime in Twenty Countries

  • Majella Kilkey(Author)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • Taylor & Francis

    (Publisher)

  1 The presence of a male partner in the case of married and cohabiting mothers, enables the sharing of the responsibility for the material and emotional sustenance of a child/ren. In contrast, the absence of a male partner in the case of lone mothers, renders this responsibility solely or primarily that of the mother. It is essentially, therefore, the preclusion of the possibility of a division of labour (in the traditional sense or otherwise) in the realm of child-rearing responsibilities which has come to define lone motherhood in sociological terms.

  The validity of the assumptions on which such a definition is predicated, is questionable. The extent to which couples share responsibilities and resources is variable (Pahl, 1989; Bryson et al., 1994; Van der Lippe and Roelofs, 1995; Eurostat, 1997), and the situation of some partnered mothers may be akin to that of lone mothers. Similarly, some non-resident fathers may maintain responsibilities in the functions of child-rearing (see Bradshaw et al., 1999), such that the above distinction between a lone-mother family and a couple family is blurred.2 Moreover, the emergence of alternative living arrangements among couple families - ‘living apart together’, for example - may also weaken the distinction. Bearing these reservations in mind, this study was interested in lone mothers as mothers who in the absence of a male partner, must assume sole or primary responsibility for the material and emotional well-being of their children. We define them as such.

  In the academic and policy-related literature, a variety of alternatives to the term ‘lone mother (family)’ exist to describe the situation outlined above: ‘single mother (family)’, ‘solo mother’, ‘one-parent family’, ‘fatherless family’ and ‘disrupted family’, for example. The decision to use ‘lone mother (family)’ exclusively in this study emerged from a process of elimination of the alternatives on the basis of a number of criterion: clarity, accuracy and ideological neutrality. The term ‘single mother (family)’ was rejected, since it may invite ambiguity if lone mothers are distinguished by marital status, and the category of single never-married mother introduced. ‘One-parent family’, ‘fatherless family’ and ‘disrupted family’ were also deemed to be inappropriate, since they are inaccurate: the first two terms ignore the existence of a biological father, while the third disregards the fact that many lone-mother families are formed without disruption to an existing family unit. In addition to being rejected along the above lines, some of the alternative terms were precluded because of their rather strong ideological connotations. Thus for example, the terms ‘fatherless family’ and ‘disrupted family’ are often adopted in the literature which presents lone motherhood as a social threat (see for example, Dennis and Erdos (1992) and Blankenhorn (1994) on fatherless families, and Ní Bhrolcháin et al. (1994) on disrupted families), while the adoption of the term ‘solo mother’ by Hobson (1994) is a “political strategy to denote the strengths of women ‘flying’ as mothers on their own” (Duncan and Edwards, 1997a: 3).

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  Vulnerable Groups in Health and Social Care

  • Mary Larkin(Author)
  • 2009(Publication Date)
  • SAGE Publications Ltd

    (Publisher)

  The number of lone parents has tripled since the 1970s and there are now 1.8 million lone-parent families in Britain. This represents one-quarter of all families, who care for a total of 3 million children. Britain has the highest proportion of lone-parent households in Europe (Chambaz, 2001; National Statistics, 2007a). The extent of lone parents’ vulnerability has featured in many policy documents on social exclusion, most notably those on the promotion of paid work and the eradication of poverty. This chapter will explore some of the key issues in relation to the social and political concerns about lone parents. These are their experiences, the costs of supporting them and the different approaches reflected in the political initiatives directed at them. As 90 per cent of lone parents are women, the focus in the discussions will mainly be on lone mothers. However, lone fathers will be addressed to illustrate particular points as appropriate.

  DEFINING LONE-PARENT FAMILIES

  For official and statistical purposes a lone-parent family is usually defined as a divorced, separated, single or widowed mother or father living without a spouse (and not cohabiting) with his or her never-married dependent child or children. The reality is that definitional precision is elusive. One reason is that, as already indicated, there are many different routes into Lone Parenthood. These are divorce, separation, having a child as a teenager or during adulthood without having a partner or being married, and the death of a partner or spouse. Another variable is that, although nine out of ten lone parents are female, lone parents do include both men and women. The final complicating factor is that Lone Parenthood can be transitional. A summary of the changes in family structure that have occurred in recent decades is required in order to fully explain this factor. One such change is that there has been a move away from traditional nuclear and extended families and an increase in lone parents and reconstituted families

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  Diversity in Family Life

  Gender, Relationships and Social Change

  • Ruspini, Elisabetta, Elisabetta Ruspini(Authors)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Policy Press

    (Publisher)

  Researching lone parenting is not an easy task. One major problem complicates research on lone mothers and fathers, especially in a comparative perspective: the lack of a standard definition of lone-parent households and its implications for empirical social research. This exerts an impact on the availability of comparable data sets for the study of lone-parent families. This is due to the fact that lone parenting is a multifaceted and dynamic experience. Lone Parenthood is a status that people come into in a variety of ways: divorce, long-lasting separations, desertion, death of a partner, birth of a child outside marriage or child abuse/neglect. (In case of neglect/maltreatment, children may been removed/taken away from the unfit parent. An unfit parent is a person, mother or father, who neglects his or her child in such a way that puts the child at risk, such as failing to take them to school regularly, failing to provide basic necessities, putting them in danger physically or mentally on a regular basis, and so on. If a parent is found to be unfit, the child may be put in the custody of the other parent. The other parent then becomes a ‘lone’ mother or father.) There are also different routes out: marriage, remarriage, cohabitation, placing children for adoption and children growing up and leaving home.

  There are, indeed, many issues involved in settling on a specific definition of lone-parent households. In particular, we need to determine the age limit for the children, the marital status of the head, whether to include cohabitants as single and whether to include single parents who are co-residing with other relatives, such as the grandparents of the children (see, eg, González, 2008). One research report on the situation of lone parents in Italy, Germany, Poland, France and the UK (EU Lifelong Learning Program Leonardo da Vinci Transfer of Innovation2 ) shows significant differences in the definition of lone parenting between these countries: some countries recognise the break-up of a cohabiting relationship as equivalent to the divorce of married persons, and some do not. For example, the Italian National Institute of Statistics (Istituto Nazionale di Statistica; ISTAT) defines a lone-parent family as a family composed of only one adult (widowed, divorced, single). In Germany, the definition of lone parents used by the Federal Ministry for Family, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth is the following: mothers or fathers who are unmarried, widowed, separated or divorced, who live with their child or children up to the age of 18 years in one household. In Poland, a lone-parent household refers to a household in which a single adult lives alone with one or several children. According to the French National Institute for Statistics and Research (Institut National de la Statistique et des Etudes Economiques; INSEE), a lone parent is a parent with full-time responsibility for the care of one or more single children under the age of 25 (with the condition that none of these children have children). For the UK General Household Survey,3 a lone-parent family consists of one parent, irrespective of sex, living with his or her never-married dependent children, provided these children have no children of their own. The UK Census further specifies that the children only count as dependent if they are aged either under 16 or from 16 to (under) 19 and undertaking full-time education. Gingerbread Northern Ireland4 – the lead agency working with and for one-parent families in Northern Ireland – expands the term ‘lone parent’ to include parents who have full custody of children while the spouse/partner is in long-term institutional care (ie prison or long-term hospitalisation). Gingerbread Northern Ireland also expands the definition of a dependent child to include: any child under the age of 18 years; a person who is over 18 years and due to a physical or mental disability is unable to become independent of his/her parent; or a person pursuing education/training who is unable to become independent of his/her parent. In a final example, for the International Encyclopedia of Marriage and Family,5

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  Child Poverty

  Aspiring to Survive

  • Treanor, Morag C., Morag C. Treanor(Authors)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • Policy Press

    (Publisher)

  Family separation and divorce is often the point at which many children experience poverty. Poverty can come hard on the heels of breakdown and separation, and children’s economic and emotional wellbeing can be particularly fragile as a result. However, poverty and emotional mal-being are not inevitable consequences of separation and divorce. The role of separated fathers in lone-parent families, particularly their financial contribution and involvement in their children’s lives, are explored. This chapter looks closely at how the state involves itself deep in the heart of family life in relation to support for children following separation or divorce. Although children are often the centrepiece in relation to policy rhetoric and development, their needs and concerns are often subsumed beneath the interests of the state and the perceived interests of parents. It explores the role of childcare and child maintenance policies in securing equity between children and between parents. Finally, it explores how they can establish financial adequacy and security; fundamental issues for children.

  Lone parents are not a homogenous group

  Around 75 per cent of children in the UK live in two-parent families and 25 per cent live in lone-parent families (Lansley and Mack, 2015 ); although, from the disproportionate attention lone parents receive in political and media circles, you would be forgiven for thinking there were far more of them. The incidence of Lone Parenthood is increasing in many wealthy societies (Calder, 2018 ), although in the UK the proportion has remained stable for over ten years (Gingerbread, 2018 ). Lone Parenthood is not a fixed state as much as another stage in family life and is usually temporary (Treanor, 2018b , Zagel and Hübgen, 2018 ), lasting on average around five years in the UK (Lansley and Mack, 2015 ). The majority (90 per cent) of lone-parent households in the UK are female and only 10 per cent are male, proportions that have not changed in over a decade (Gingerbread, 2018

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  Fertility, Health and Lone Parenting

  European Contexts

  • Fabienne Portier-Le Cocq(Author)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Taylor & Francis

    (Publisher)

  The countries included are Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. With the financial crisis starting in late 2008, the analysis is designed to evaluate health pre- and post-crisis and how social protection may buffer against adverse effects of unemployment in these two time periods. As the definition of Lone Parenthood differs across countries, international comparisons are not entirely straightforward (Office for National Statistics 2015). Combined with increasing variation in family and household composition, precision in cross-country comparisons is still lagging. In this chapter, a lone parent is defined as a parent not married or cohabiting with a partner with at least one child under age 18 living in the household. Therefore, this definition does not discriminate between the origins or timing of Lone Parenthood. Lone parents are compared to parents who are either married or live as married, although the partner may not be a parent of (or take on parental responsibility for) the child(ren) in the household. With a focus on health differences, it seems reasonable that this distinction captures the main socio-economically driven health differences for our comparative purpose. By this definition, Figure 11.1 shows the proportion of lone parents as a percentage of all parents (on the left axis), which on average is 10.4 per cent. Proportions vary greatly across Europe, ranging from 5.8 per cent in Greece to 15.9 per cent in the United Kingdom. The countries do not group in any obvious way, although lone parents tend to be more prevalent in all Nordic countries. In all countries, lone mothers represent the large majorities of lone-parent households (as shown on the right axis), on average 83.5 per cent

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  The Life Course

  A Sociological Introduction

  • Stephen J. Hunt(Author)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Red Globe Press

    (Publisher)

  Despite the fact that there are an increasing number of women opting for single parenthood, there are clearly profound social anxieties which exist in regard to state benefits payment, child personal development and wider social consequences (Cherry and Dillon 2009 ; Evans and Thane 2012 ). A measure of contemporary research points to the conclusion that growing up in a lone-parent family may disadvantage children. Some studies, often informed by distinct ideological agendas, indicate a father and mother each make a distinctive contribution to a child’s social development, suggesting that it is unrealistic to expect one parent alone to perform as constructive a role as two working together. For instance, evidence implies that children of lone-parent families fare worse in finding employment and are more crim-inally inclined than children from two-parent families (in the USA, they are also twice as likely to be imprisoned for a variety of crimes). There would seem to be some evidence that the consequence of single parenthood is also reflected in terms of the educational performance of the child. In 2001, according to a study by the Institute for Social and Economic Research in the UK of more than 1000 children, those with two parents perform better at school than those from single-parent families. The gap between the exam achievements of children with single-parents and those from traditional family backgrounds is as wide as that between children from the poorest and wealthiest families. The report concluded that these differences ultimately translate into differences in earnings throughout the life course. The ‘problem’ with single-parent families has particularly focused on the absence of the father. Sociologists such as Dennis and Erdos ( 1993 ) have even argued that in some geographical areas single-parent families are so widespread that a male generation has grown up without the discipline of a father figure.

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  Lone Parent Families

  Gender, Class and State

  • Karen Rowlingson, Stephen Mckay(Authors)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Unmarried fathers in the UK have relatively few rights in this area though they have been able, since 1990, to make a Parental Responsibility Agreement with the mother or apply for a Parental Responsibility Order if the mother will not co-operate. However, there has been very little up-take of such provisions. While the law in this field makes a significant distinction between married and unmarried fathers, no such distinction is made in the area of child support. As we shall see, biological parenthood is the only relevant factor as far as financial relationships are concerned.

  Research with lone parents suggests a rather low level of contact between non-resident parents and children. According to one such survey about a third of children in lone parent families had lost all contact with their non-resident parents. A survey of non-resident fathers, however, paints a rather different picture with only 3 per cent of the fathers saying that they never had any contact with their children. The research suggests that a number of factors are related to contact: the time it takes to visit the children; the new family composition of the non-resident parent; and the employment status of the non-resident parent.

  Biological parents are not the only people who look after children. Many working lone parents, especially with children under 11, use child-care while they are working. In most cases the childcare is ‘informal’ and unpaid, provided by family and friends.

  The acceptability and flexibility of different forms of childcare are important issues. Many women feel it is more acceptable to leave their young children in the care of people they know and trust rather than to other people. Perhaps there is a feeling that ‘care’ and love should not be commodified - bought and sold. There may therefore be some general preference for unpaid informal care for ‘ethical’ reasons. These might also be combined with practical reasons as formal care may be less flexible than informal care. If a lone parent has to work different shifts, a formal childcarer or nursery may not be able to cover certain times. Perhaps a grandmother would be more flexible here.

  Now we turn to a wider question concerning outcomes for children. Do children have better outcomes, worse outcomes or the same outcomes if they live in a lone parent family compared with a couple family? This is a crucial question in the debate over Lone Parenthood. Numerous studies have been carried out to answer this question but the methodological difficulties surrounding it are considerable. Despite these difficulties, a number of studies have addressed this issue. A number of conclusions have been reached:

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  Lone Mothers, Paid Work and Gendered Moral Rationalitie

  • S. Duncan, R. Edwards(Authors)
  • 1999(Publication Date)
  • Palgrave Macmillan

    (Publisher)

  This is still an ambiguous status, however, where German lone mothers are portrayed as ‘deviant’ in terms of prescribed family forms (Klett-Davies 1997). In contrast again, public discussion in Sweden tends to see lone mothers as just another family form, receiving social support on the same basis as any other family (Björnberg 1997). It is also notable how it is chiefly in the English speaking world of liberal state welfare regimes that lone motherhood enters debate as a wider political symbol. There are also shifts over time within any national context. Different discourses and terminologies can gain ascendancy, and others can become marginalised (Lewis 1995). For example, in Britain during the 1960s the concern was with the social problem of deviant ‘fatherless families’, who required special treatment. But by the 1970s and 1980s the underlying assumption became one where the needs of ‘one parent families’ were not fundamentally different from other families, they simply had ‘extra’ needs. More recently, as we have seen, the emphasis has changed again, where ‘single parents’ are more likely to be seen as ‘anti-family’ welfare scroungers (Song 1996). Everyday life, however, and the social meanings involved in it, is not just conducted at the national and ‘public’ level. Rather, the meaning and characterisation of lone motherhood can differ across social loca- tions? – from one social class, ethnic group, age group, and neigh- bourhood, to another – depending on the context from which it is perceived. Locally available understandings in social networks and 24 Lone Mothers neighbourhoods, in localised socio-economic and cultural contexts, can also inform different interpretations – and these can become locally dominant even if they are marginalised in wider debates. In the rest of this chapter we detail the diverse ways in which lone motherhood is understood at these different contextual levels.

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  Families and the State

  Changing Relationships

  • S. Cunningham-Burley, L. Jamieson, S. Cunningham-Burley, L. Jamieson(Authors)
  • 2003(Publication Date)
  • Palgrave Macmillan

    (Publisher)

  Part Two The Family and the State across the Lifecourse 4 Lone Parents and Child Support: Parental and State Responsibilities Karen Clarke Introduction In the context of a more general re-orientation of ‘western’ govern- ments’ commitments to state welfare, there has been a radical shift of policy in Britain on the financial support of lone parents and their children. These changes appear to have been maintained despite a radical change of government in the UK in 1997 from New Right Conservative to New Labour. State policies directed at lone parents are particularly interesting because they involve the articulation of under- lying principles of family responsibilities and gender roles. This chapter examines these principles as they were enacted in policy and experi- enced by lone mothers in the UK during the 1990s. It looks at the extent to which the concept of paternal responsibility, which underlies it, is one which reflects the beliefs of separated parents and, finally considers the significance of the modifications proposed by the Labour Government to the original policies of the Conservative Government, in terms of the relative responsibilities of state and family for children which they imply. The 1991 Child Support Act which came into effect in April 1993 was one of a number of policy measures aimed at redrawing the boundaries of state responsibility for family welfare. The Act, together with changes to the social security system, aimed to increase the extent to which parents, rather than the state, took responsibility for supporting children in lone parent families. This was to be done first by increasing the proportion of ‘absent’ 1 parents making some financial contribution to their children’s support (and increasing the level of that contribution); and second, by increasing the financial incentives for lone parents to contribute to their own and their children’s support through 91

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  The Economic Emergence of Women

  • B. Bergmann(Author)
  • 2005(Publication Date)
  • Palgrave Macmillan

    (Publisher)

  10 Lone Parents and their Poverty In most of the human societies we know about, both past and present, the male parent has been an important personage in the life of his children. Typically, he has lived with them and made substantial contributions toward the expense of raising them. Over the last half-century, we have been witnessing what appears to be a loosening of the economic and social bonds between men and their children. In the United States almost 20 million children—approaching 1 in 4 children—are being raised by mothers who do not have a husband living with them. Some of these husbandless mothers have another adult (who may or may not be the father of one or more of the children, and who may or may not be a sexual partner) as part of their household, but a large majority does not. A majority of the children living apart from their fathers in the United States get little or no economic contribution from them. The estrangement of so many men from their children results from a breakdown in the social arrangements—marriage and the extended family—which served in the past to funnel economic resources from male adults to children. The result of this breakdown is inadequate provision for an increasingly large proportion of children. Many “economically fatherless” children, together with their mothers, live in a state of extreme deprivation. Today in the United States, families consisting of these currently single mothers and their children constitute an increasing share of all poor families. Women who rear children without the financial help of a man face a difficult task in an unfriendly economic environment. For some, the best they can do is to get along for a while on a below-poverty-level welfare grant while living in a decrepit apartment in a dangerous neighborhood. Others wring what they can out of a labor market in which many of the jobs that pay a “family wage,” particularly those that do not require a college education, continue to be reserved for men.

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