Last week, news of Scotland’s unprecedented rise in lone parenthood – since 1997 the figure has risen from 140,000 to 174,000 - re-awoke issues around the relationship between policy and behaviour. Whilst Scotland’s record rise in single parents outstrips the UK’s by 7% (24% compared to 17%), Office for National Statistics figures show that under New Labour the number of lone parents in the UK has risen from 1.6 million to 1.88 million.
The Prime Minister’s response to the rise coincided with the publication of the Welfare Green Paper. With lone parents disproportionately likely to be out of work and claiming benefits, Blair made it clear that one implication of the Green Paper will be to put greater pressure on lone parents to enter employment. Furthermore, Blair's comments on the issue suggested that he is finally acknowledging that it is the organisation of his very own welfare system which has contributed to this dependency. However, what he has yet to acknowledge is the fact that current welfare arrangements are not only encouraging lone-parent dependency, they arguably also encourage lone-parenthood per se – at the very least in the sense that they provide perverse financial incentives for parents to leave their partners, and in that they in no way support or promote the couple family. Not just spokesmen from the Catholic Church, who argue that there is ‘an inbuilt bias against marriage’ but also the Liberal Democrats, directly blame the benefit system on the rising number of lone parents. Work and Pensions spokesman David Laws pointed to the fact that the current system presents a financial ‘disincentive’ for lone parents to re-partner.
Yet despite the evidence - particularly that from our overseas counterparts - the government continues to insist that the rise in the number of lone parents is simply a factor of that ethereal scapegoat ‘social change’.
Comments (2)
I did not choose to be a lone parent, I do not enjoy being on benefit but like a disproportionately high number of lone parents I have have disabled children who need me available to them, 24,7. I never hear about the statistics of disability and lone parents from politicians or the church, but its a fact 1/3 of lone parents have a disabled child. The strains of unpaid unsupported carer might be a factor in marriage break and lone parenthood rather than the myth of teenage council house queue jumper.But thats all you do hear, as if lone parenting should always be punished with sledge hammer social policy that always hits the child who is most vunerable
I feel a huge fear I am going to be again punished for being the carer for my disabled children because I also have the scapegoat tag 'lone parent. A situation that saves this government millions and leaves me and my already vunerable children in poverty. But lone parents are far easier to scapegoat than look at the real and complex issues
Posted by mai | May 7, 2007 12:39 PM
Posted on May 7, 2007 12:39
Just over a decade ago leading Conservatives were derided when they suggested that some teenage girls became pregnant in order to jump council house waiting lists. This is now a truth universally acknowledged outside Islington (a borough curiously unaware of the 'chav' culture gripping the rest of Britain).
How long will it be, I wonder, before recent studies in the US that indicate that it is welfarism and not institutional racism that is chiefly responsible for poverty and criminality amongst African-Americans are similarly accepted (and the implications for certain ethnic minorities and lower socio-economic groups here)?
Perhaps an African-American woman in the White House might be the catalyst in this process?
Posted by Joseph | February 1, 2006 12:36 AM
Posted on February 1, 2006 00:36