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The recent welfare-to-work reform requires lone parents with older children to be available for work. This article examines the likely effect of this reform and the proposed extension with regards to the employment rate of lone parents. It is argued that it will not lead to the desired increase in the employment rate of lone parents as the target g...
Contexts in source publication
Context 1
... relatively high employment rate of lone parents with older children compared to that of lone parents with younger children can be seen as both an endorsement of current government policy as well as a problem for its likely success. According to FACS, the employment rate, defined as working one or more hours per week, of all lone parents was 58 per cent in 2005 (see table 1 (table 1). This compares to an employment rate of 53 per cent of lone parents whose youngest child was between five and six years old, 54 per cent for those whose youngest child is between three and four years and 79 per cent for lone parents whose youngest child was between 16 and 18 and still in full- time education (see table 1) iii . ...
Context 2
... relatively high employment rate of lone parents with older children compared to that of lone parents with younger children can be seen as both an endorsement of current government policy as well as a problem for its likely success. According to FACS, the employment rate, defined as working one or more hours per week, of all lone parents was 58 per cent in 2005 (see table 1 (table 1). This compares to an employment rate of 53 per cent of lone parents whose youngest child was between five and six years old, 54 per cent for those whose youngest child is between three and four years and 79 per cent for lone parents whose youngest child was between 16 and 18 and still in full- time education (see table 1) iii . ...
Context 3
... in the following section results on the effect of three scenarios on the employment rate of all lone parents are examined. , 13 per cent of all lone parents have older children and are receiving IS (see table 2). In other words, the target group of the reform is a relatively small sub-group of all lone parents. ...
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Citations
... For example, they often have less individual floor space available, directly affecting the quality of housing experienced. As a second resident group, we thus analyzed how households with children-differentiating family households, or households with at least two adults (18þ) and one or more children (< 18), from singleparent households, those with one adult and at least one child (Murphy, 2019)-perceive housing precarity compared with households without children (Haux, 2014;Millar & Crosse, 2018). ...
Problem, research strategy, and findings
Increasing numbers of urban dwellers face housing precarity in cities worldwide. We conceptualize housing precarity as a multidimensional phenomenon, using five different dimensions: 1) housing affordability, 2) tenure security, 3) housing satisfaction, 4) neighborhood quality, and 5) community cohesion. By building on an original survey with 12,611 respondents from six cities (Berlin [Germany], Chicago [IL], London [United Kingdom], Los Angeles [CA], New York [NY], and Paris [France]), we examined how vulnerable residents—such as older residents, households with children, minorities, and renters—perceived the five dimensions of housing precarity compared with the rest of the population sample. We found first, that being a renter was negatively associated with all five dimensions of housing precarity, rendering renters more precarious than homeowners. Second, older residents did not seem to be more precarious than younger urban dwellers. Third, households with children and minorities had less tenure security and housing satisfaction than households without children or non-minorities. These results were largely robust across all cities. Further research is needed to analyze how local housing markets, planning and policy instruments, or land use conditions affect residents’ perceived housing precarity outcomes.
Takeaway for practice
This research can help city planners, urban practitioners, and policymakers to better understand the vulnerabilities of urban residents and the multidimensional manifestation of housing precarity. It calls for a resident-centered approach to urban planning that urges land use and planning interventions to be more sensitive to people’s differing housing perceptions and needs. Specifically, the findings suggest that renters, households with children, and minorities need comprehensive policies (and the municipal authorities’ strategic activation thereof) that stabilize their financial and legal housing situation, whereas older urban residents could benefit from community activation programs to support their neighborhood integration.
... We met the participants during 2014 when the mothers with children aged 5 3 or younger received arguably less pressure to leave social assistance benefits for paid work than those with older children. Haux's (2010: 10) study on welfareto-work reform highlights the key characteristic of unemployed lone parents as having a child under the age of 5. The majority of the participants were, therefore, more likely to be self-motivated to find paid work, because they decided to move off benefits when they were still entitled to them. ...
The current design of UK public policy and mainstream political and social discourse has consistently equated paid work with good citizenship and desirable parenting. The article presents findings from a recent qualitative study that explores how lone mothers with different moral rationalities judge themselves before and after making a transition from welfare (and being full-time carers) to paid work. The findings suggest that the design of public policy and related discourses worked well with the moral rationalities of some lone mothers who believed that paid work made them better mothers. However, it left others with moral values on direct care behind, as they suffered from physical and emotional exhaustion and feelings of guilt in paid work. The article highlights how dominant ideologies reinforce the pre-existing hierarchy of paid work and care, with the latter being viewed as deserving of less acknowledgement.
... Reforms implemented around 2008 changed voluntary elements of the New Deal into obligations. Single parents with a child aged 12, and later with a child aged 5, were now obliged to work and were pushed out of the social assistance scheme (Daly 2010;Haux 2012). In 2010, the new conservative government introduced Universal Credit, a merger of six existing tax credit systems. ...
To explain single-mother poverty, existing research has either emphasized individualistic, or contextual explanations. Building on the prevalences and penalties framework (Brady et al. 2017), we advance the literature on single-mother poverty in three aspects: First, we extend the framework to incorporate heterogeneity among single mothers across countries and over time. Second, we apply this extended framework to Germany, the United Kingdom and Sweden, whose trends in single-mother poverty (1990–2014) challenge ideal-typical examples of welfare state regimes. Third, using decomposition analyses, we demonstrate variation across countries in the relative importance of prevalences and penalties to explain time trends in single-mother poverty. Our findings support critiques of static welfare regime typologies, which are unable to account for policy change and poverty trends of single mothers. We conclude that we need to understand the combinations of changes in single mothers’ social compositions and social policy contexts, if we want to explain time trends in single-mother poverty.
... Over time, internationally, lone parents have found themselves subject to an increasing range of welfare conditionality applied across a number of policy areas including employment, housing, and parenting (Finn & Gloster, 2010). A range of literature questions the efficacy of employment-related welfare conditionality for lone parents (Haux, 2011;Johnsen, 2018), with little evidence that imposing welfare conditionality on lone parents achieves positive outcomes for women or children (Millar & Crosse, 2017). Internationally, housing policy and practice has become a key site for conditionality (Watts & Fitzpatrick, 2018, p. 67) with more use of conditional, probationary, and renewable social housing tenancies in the United Kingdom and shifts to segregated housing with conduct conditions in France, Austria, and Sweden. ...
This article focuses on multiple conditionalities in benefits and housing from the perspective of lone parents in Ireland. The Irish case echoes historical experiences elsewhere and is offered not as an exceptional or extreme case but as an in‐depth single case study and a lens for comparison. Although contemporary forms and combinations of conditionalities are new to Ireland, the experience of multiple conditionalities in benefits and housing is not new. Hence, a historical perspective is used to examine contemporary multiple conditionalities in benefits and housing. In the past, conditional regimes for lone parents were justified in terms of moral reformation for first time mothers and avoiding moral contagion of mothers with subsequent pregnancies. In contemporary times, in the case of employment, lone parents are problematised as working part‐time and “nesting” on in‐work‐benefits, and in the case of homelessness, lone parents who prioritise the security of tenure embedded in social housing are accused of “gaming” the system. While acknowledging ambiguities, the paper finds the overlap of welfare and housing discourses contribute, intentionally or unintentionally, to epistemological foundations or understandings of lone parents, shifting public perceptions, and framing them as “problems” to be solved. They simultaneously temper lone parents' expectations. Increased precarity and disempowerment is associated with dual conditionality, and ontological uncertainty is multiplied when experienced cumulatively across employment, social protection, and housing regimes in a context of generally poor public services and labour market precarity and in the historical context of stigmatisation. Nonetheless, lone parents demonstrate considerable agency.
... It shows how increased welfare benefit conditionality (DWP, 2013;Graham & McQuaid, 2014) has been reinforced through heightened media stereotyping, which commonly couples single motherhood with irresponsible parenting and benefit dependency (Jensen & Tyler, 2015). Studies document how this emphasis on employment as a vital condition of contemporary "legitimate" citizenship can leave mothers who are bringing up children single-handedly disadvantaged socially as well as materially (e.g., Haux, 2012;Pulkingham, Fuller, & Kershaw, 2010). ...
... Research by Churchill (2007), for example, found that policies fail to comprehend tensions lone mothers encounter a day-to-day level between fulfilling commitments at work and giving sufficient time and attention to their children. Haux (2012) discusses how worker citizenship has increased pressure on lone parents attempting to manage competing responsibilities. She disputes the use of age of their youngest child as the criteria for labor-marked participation; family composition, health, and local job opportunities are also significant. ...
... Feminists including Walby (1994) believe that, despite being ostensibly gender neutral, citizenship is predicated upon the male citizen. Research has shown that lone mothers' citizenship status can thus be compromised by the demands of sole parenting (Haux, 2012;Pulkingham et al., 2010). ...
Lone mothers commonly face social stigma alongside practical challenges in fulfilling both principal breadwinner and primary carer roles. This chapter draws on findings from qualitative research involving a sample of lone mothers in the north of England to discuss how they negotiate competing employment and parenting demands within a socio-political context characterized by “worker citizenship”. This model positions them firmly as workers while increased benefits conditionality is reinforced by media stereotypes that conflate lone motherhood with welfare dependency. A comparative research design was developed to explore experiences of mothers in two nearby locations with contrasting socio-economic profiles using a Bourdieusian approach to class analysis. Factors affecting lone mothers’ subjective perceptions of a historically de-legitimated identity were investigated during semi-structured interviews with women in diverse situations. The interviews revealed that participants across the sample viewed being in paid employment as the most significant factor in mitigating stigma. They emphasized their work orientation and saw this as an aspect of responsible parenting. Most mothers in the more affluent location used the cultural capital of educational qualifications to secure work that could be balanced with parenting. In contrast, most mothers in the deprived location expressed frustration at being unable to access jobs that are compatible with childcare and consequently felt stigmatized for claiming benefits. The chapter is of value in illustrating the significance of avoiding stigma as a consideration in lone mothers’ deliberations on work/family interface. It also highlights the impact of class and location on lone mothers’ ability to balance employment with childcare. © 2018 by Emerald Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.
... Investigations of lone parent activation experiences show mixed results. Research in this area reports feelings of humiliation or being judged (McArthur et al. 2013), pressure to take any employment (Haux 2012), and not having enough information. Other research indicates that experiences are largely dependent on the caseworker allocated (Good Gingrich 2010). ...
Lone parents and their children are the biggest group at risk of living in poverty in Ireland and activation is regarded as the solution to this problem by policymakers. While workfare requirements are now placed on lone parents whose youngest child is aged 14 or over we question the capacity of the current activation policy to deliver an adequate income for these families. Drawing on evidence from other countries and the current Irish context we argue that the absence of tailored support for lone parents, low levels of educational attainment, difficulties with childcare, the efficacy of financial supports to provide income adequacy and the failure to take into consideration their parenting responsibility means that the implementation of the policy is fraught with difficulty.
... For the first time, lone mothers were required to move off of Income Support and on to Jobseeker's Allowance and be available for employment once their youngest child reached a certain age, which Labour intended to gradually reduce from 12 to seven years. There were, however, certain 'flexibilities' for lone mothers (Haux, 2012;Whitworth and Griggs, 2013). For instance, subject to a minimum availability requirement of 16 hours, lone mothers with a child under 13 could restrict their work availability to normal school hours, while those with older children could restrict theirs to fit around their caring responsibilities. ...
Since the late-1990s, advanced economies have converged on an ‘active’ social policy agenda aimed at maximising employment. Consequently, women are no longer treated as caregivers. Rather, they are required and assumed to be in employment. Although gender has moved from margins to the mainstream of comparative welfare state research in recent years, the agenda of ‘gendering’ the analysis of welfare states under activation remains incomplete. This three-paper thesis contributes to completing this agenda. Papers 1 and 2 assess activation strategies towards lone mothers who, as sole breadwinners and caregivers within their households, are a ‘litmus test’ of gendered social rights. Focusing on the UK, Paper 1 shows that, against the commonplace characterisation of the UK as a pioneer of ‘making work pay’, changes to the UK’s tax-benefit system since 2010 have weakened lone mothers’ financial incentives to work beyond a few hours a week. Paper 2 subsequently builds on Paper 1 in dimensional and geographical scope by examining how active labour market and family policies across 22 welfare states help or hinder lone mothers’ employment. It shows that cross-national variations in support for maternal activation are not well captured by the commonplace dichotomy within the mainstream literature between a Nordic-style ‘train-first’ approach to activation and an Anglo-Saxon ‘work-first’ approach. Paper 3 then extends Papers 1 and 2 in conceptual terms. It argues that analysing women’s social risks under activation requires looking not just at active labour market and family policies. Also important are gender boardroom quotas and other regulatory policies that set numerical targets for women in top corporate board and executive positions. This is because a ‘critical mass’ (23-40 per cent) of women in top management can generate important ‘trickle-down’ benefits, which can help to alleviate some of the ‘new’ social risks (e.g. work/care conflicts, in-work poverty) faced by women at the bottom of the labour market under activation.
... The definition of the lone parent client group, like the client groups in previous chapters, appears to have been driven in large part by benefit eligibility. This can be seen in the participation requirements for NDLP/ND+fLP which required individuals to have: The lone parent client group and wider policy towards them is particularly well researched (Marsh, 1997;Thomas et al, 1999;Lacovou & Berthoud, 2000;Marsh et al, 2001;Millar & Ridge, 2001;Marsh & Rowlingson, 2002;Vegeris & McKay, 2002;Casebourne & Britton, 2004;Marsh & Vegeris, 2004;Martin et al, 2004;Knight & Kasparova, 2006;Goodwin, 2008;Riccio et al, 2008;Collard & Atkinson, 2009;Casebourne et al, 2010;Finn & Gloster, 2010;Gloster et al, 2010;Ray et al, 2010;Sims et al, 2010;Haux, 2012). ...
... Er is een aanzwellend internationaal debat over de problemen van eenoudergezinnen in de herstructurerende verzorgingsstaat. De focus ligt daarbij op vraagstukken van gender, burgerschap en sociale rechtvaardigheid (Fraser & Gordon, 1994;Schram, 2000;Lister, 2006;Gillies, 2008); op de voorwaarden voor eerlijke wederkerigheid in contractuele zorg-en welzijnsarrangementen (White, 2000;Goodin, 2002;Stanley, 2005); en op de effecten van toeleidingstrajecten naar werk op eenoudergezinnen (Knijn, 2004;Haux, 2011). Minder aandacht is er voor de emotionele aspecten van de problemen van eenoudergezinnen in de bijstand. ...
Migratie en sociale zekerheid worden vaak gezien als onmogel k koppel; migranten drukken op de schatkist en ze onderm nen de solidariteit die nodig is voor sociale zekerheid. Daarom wordt vaak gezegd dat er een keus gemaakt moet worden: of een muur om het land of een muur om de verzorgingsstaat. Maar dat is niet nodig. Migratie heeft een ander, veel diverser gezicht gekregen. Veel migranten komen om te werken, komen vaker uit Europa en patronen van vestiging en terugkeer bestaan naast elkaar. Of arbeidsmigratie de overheidsf inanciën en de solidariteit onderm nen, ligt aan het type migratie en het type sociale zekerheids- stelsel. Daarom is het wel nodig om aanpassingen te maken, zowel aan de kant van het migratiebeleid als aan de kant van de sociale zekerheid.
... Er is een aanzwellend internationaal debat over de problemen van eenoudergezinnen in de herstructurerende verzorgingsstaat. De focus ligt daarbij op vraagstukken van gender, burgerschap en sociale rechtvaardigheid (Fraser & Gordon, 1994;Schram, 2000;Lister, 2006;Gillies, 2008); op de voorwaarden voor eerlijke wederkerigheid in contractuele zorg-en welzijnsarrangementen (White, 2000;Goodin, 2002;Stanley, 2005); en op de effecten van toeleidingstrajecten naar werk op eenoudergezinnen (Knijn, 2004;Haux, 2011). Minder aandacht is er voor de emotionele aspecten van de problemen van eenoudergezinnen in de bijstand. ...
Hoe komt het toch dat onze relatief genereuze verzorgingsstaat vaak geen effectieve hulp biedt aan mensen die de voorzieningen het hardst nodig hebben? Waardoor belanden velen dus ondanks hulp keer op keer in schulden, armoede en isolement? Aan de hand van ervaringen van eenouder gezinnen (i.c. moeders) in de bijstand betogen we dat deze mismatch een gevolg is van de impliciete voorwaarden van de verzorgingsstaat. De (materiele) sociale zekerheid die de verzorgingsstaat biedt, is slechts toereikend bij een solide basis van emotionele en relationele veiligheid. Alleenstaande bijstandsmoeders (en waarschijnlijk ook andere multiprobleemgezinnen) ontberen deze. Daardoor komt de (materiële) zekerheid die de verzorgingsstaat biedt, niet tot zijn recht. We besluiten met voorstellen om de benodigde relationele en emotionele zekerheid in het stelsel een plaats te geven.
