ABSTRACT
As we saw in Chapter 1, lone parents in Britain are much less likely to have paid jobs than those in most other countries. They are also much less likely to work than all mothers in couples, with the difference particularly marked for part-time work. This low rate of employment is partly because lone parents have relatively little education and few qualifications, and reflects the fact that lone parents often have young children. But whatever the reasons for this low rate, the government is currently trying to increase the proportions of lone parents in paid employment. It sees employment as the best way of improving the living standards of lone parents and their children. In the past, however, it was often considered best for children if their mother stayed at home and cared for them. And indeed, when benefits for lone parents were introduced in the 1930s in the USA, they required lone parents to stay at home. The equivalent benefits today are more likely to be used to compel them to take paid work. Thus there is a tension between the roles of ‘mother’ (as child-carer) and ‘worker’. The nuclear family of past years was thought of as containing both a worker and a carer: with lone parents there is often a conflict between which of these two roles is seen as the priority.
