Lone-Parent Families

• 22% of families with children Lone Parent Families
• 90% of Lone Parent Families female led
• Child living with Lone-Parent 2x as likely to be in poverty 
• Reasons for Lone Parent Families: 

  1. Increase in divorce and separation
  2. Decline in stigma
• Reasons for Female Headed Lone-Parent Familes? 

  1. Women by nature in ‘nurture’ role 
  2. Divorce courts custody to women 
  3. Men less likely to give up work to care
• Renvoize 1985: professional women able to support their child without fathers involvement 
• Cashmore 1985: wc mothers with less earning power chose to live without a partner, often due to abuse. Feminist ideas encouraging increase in never-married lone mothers 
• Murray 1984: Growth of welfare state due to over-generous welfare state. Welfare state causes ‘perverse incentive’ and a ‘dependency culture’. 
• Criticisms of Murray's 'perverse incentives': 

  1. Lack of affordable childcare prevents lone parents from working, 60% of lone parents unemployed. 
  2. Inadequate welfare benefits 
  3. Lone parents mostly women who earn less than women 
  4. Failure of fathers to pay maintenance