Abstract
Progressive family policy regimes typically aim to promote and protect women’s opportunities to participate in the workforce. These policies offer significant benefits to affluent, two-parent households. A disproportionate number of low-income and impoverished families, however, are headed by single mothers. How responsive are such policies to the objectives of these mothers and the needs of their children? This chapter argues that one-size-fits-all family policy regimes often fail the most vulnerable household and contribute to intergenerational poverty in two ways: by denying at-risk children adequate parenting, and by undermining their mothers’ legitimate interest in nurturing and caring for their own children. The capabilities of these mothers and the well-being of their children are better served by policies which recognise maternal caregiving as a productive and valuable occupation meriting equal respect and social support.
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- 1.
Percentages vary from country to country. However, in every OECD country at least 85% of single parents are single mothers; in others, such as the UK, it is more than 90%.
- 2.
This is a colour-blind figure. In the African-American population, more than 65% of impoverished households are headed by a single mother.
- 3.
The Federal Poverty Line for a two-person (e.g., one parent and one child) household in 2017 was $20,290. However, the median income for single mothers in the US includes a population with much larger households. According to the NCCP “…on average, families need an income equal to about two times the federal poverty level to meet their most basic needs”. (NCCP Fact Sheet 2018)
- 4.
The income gap between the two groups remains when using personal income as the measure. The median personal income of married mothers who out-earn their husbands was $50,000 in 2011, compared with $20,000 for single mothers.
- 5.
OECD data report.
- 6.
The doubling occurred between 1980 and 2005; the Great Recession saw a halt to this increase for the last decade. As noted above, however, OECD predictions see the earlier trend continuing at an even faster pace.
- 7.
OECD data report. There are exceptions. The US projects a further increase of only around 10%, but its baseline of 40% still predicts that single parents will head half of all US households. German is the one exception, with a projected decrease owed to reduced fertility rates.
- 8.
In the US, only about 15% of low-income, lone parents receive financial support from the absent parent. (Child Trends 2018) In the OECD, on average, fewer than half of all lone parents reported receiving financial help from the absent parent. There is considerable variation across countries. Less than 25% of sole-parent families in the Mediterranean countries, Ireland, the UK and the Netherlands received cash transfers from the absent parent, while this is over 80% in Denmark, Norway and Sweden. (OECD FDB 2010)
- 9.
- 10.
In the US over half of low- income single mothers (52%) are under age 34, compared with 38% of higher-income single mothers. Three-fifths (61%) of low-income single mothers have not attended college, compared with two-fifths of single mothers in higher-income households. Low-income single mothers are also more than twice as likely to be unemployed or not in the labor force (43%) compared to their higher-income counterparts (16%). (Mather 2010)
- 11.
Employed, low-income single mothers are much more likely to work in the service sector (41%) compared to single mothers in higher-income families (17%). (Mather 2010)
- 12.
Children in households in the bottom income quintile are three times more likely to develop asthma than those in the top quintile.
- 13.
As Mather observes, ‘A large number of lower-income single mothers have become “disconnected” from education…. Given the current state of the job market, these single mothers are at high risk of remaining poor, with little hope of pulling themselves out of poverty.’ (Mather 2010, 3)
- 14.
Various measures of parenting competence exist. The CNLSY (Children of the National Longitudinal Study of Youth) measured parenting using the well-validated HOME-SF scale (Home Observation for Measurement of the Environment-Short Form). The HOME scale consists of mother self-reports and interviewer observations on the emotional and learning environment of the home. A full list of items on the HOME scale can be found at http://www.nlsinfo.org/site/childya/nlsdocs/guide/Appendixes/A-HOMEScales.htm
- 15.
Family income is, overall, a much stronger predictor of children’s school success than race. (OECD ‘Doing Better for Families’ 2011)
- 16.
These are strikingly disproportionate numbers, given that single parents head only about 9% of all US households,
- 17.
Financial investment differences are also high. In 1972–73, top quintile families spent $2700 more per year on child enrichment than the bottom quintiles. By 2005–6, this difference had almost tripled to $7500 (Kornrich and Furstenberg 2013)
- 18.
I here discuss only the mother’s engagement with the child. I do not mean to imply that there are not equally important interactions with his biological father. However, these interactions do not have the same biological basis, nor do they typically underpin the same agent-relative moral reasons. My topic in this section is the biological trajectory of mother-child relations, the character of the mother’s experience of these, and the moral intuitions they very commonly, although not exceptionlessly, generate.
- 19.
In Bernard Williams’s well-known terminology, it is a ‘fundamental project’ underpinning an agent’s ability to regard his/her life as meaningful.
- 20.
A freedom or opportunity is ‘real’ for an individual just if it stands as a genuine option open to him, and is not merely a formal or legal negative liberty (Williams 1973).
- 21.
Nussbaum assigns to the phrase ‘basic capabilities’ a very different meaning than Sen’s. For convenience and economy, I adopt Sen’s use of it here, although it does not strictly apply to Nussbaum’s well-known list of ten capabilities which a minimally just society will guarantee.
- 22.
It is worth noting, however, that UK and many other national health service policies allow that a woman’s capability to conceive a child – her opportunity to achieve reproductive functioning – is a health entitlement justifying public support for assisted reproductive therapies such as IVF.
- 23.
Less than 20% of low-income single mothers in the US receive regular child maintenance from the fathers of their children. In the UK the figure for single mothers overall is only slightly better at 29%; low-income single mothers fare far worse. Absent fathers are, as an OECD average, required to pay just 15% of their gross incomes support for one child. Resident mothers typically spend roughly four times that on their children’s needs.
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Denham, A.E. (2019). The Nature of Nurture: Poverty, Father Absence and Gender Equality. In: Brando, N., Schweiger, G. (eds) Philosophy and Child Poverty. Philosophy and Poverty, vol 1. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-22452-3_9
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