The rise of single parent families

[speedymama]

BBC website have a story on the increasing numbers of single parent households and it is being discussed on the Have Your Say forum. My mouth fell open when I read some postings and I thought I would share them here. Please note that as usual, there is no mention of the fathers.

"The problem here is that many girls don't have the morals or self-respect to keep their legs shut. This lack of morals and lack of respect then permiates into the world at large - which is what causes the problem.

The stark fact is that in 21st century britain, becoming a single parent is clearly the best career option open to a large number of teenage girls.

"Of course it matters. Social decay courtesy of poor parenting and a weak Government.

If you are not in a committed relationship, don't have children.

If you are intent on being a single parent career sponger, don't have children as an economy enhancer.

I'm fed up with paying for other peoples social mistakes. Come on Britain!!"

if fathers are allowed to escape so easily from their responsibilities and all the pain is put automatically on mums' shoulders there will be more single mums.
i couldnt read all the posts here, but i agree with expatinscotland and colditz very much.
i think something must be done for those fathers in escape and enjoying their lives rather than to go over single mums who allready have such a hard life.
we rant here with our very right comments but does it help in real life? what can be done?

im a single parent and thoroughly enjoy discussing that fact with people who post comments like in the OP.

for every generalisation they spout i prove is wrong, certainly in my own case and quite often in the larger majority.

agree monika11. I don't know what the answers are. In an ideal world, both parents would shoulder their responsibilities without it having to be forced on them, simply because they'd love and care for their children and want to maintain a relationship with them. Even if the parents couldn't stay together, the relationship with the children shouldn't be abandoned. However, as we don't live in an ideal world, I think sadly the most realitic way does have to be through a 'carrot and stick' system.There need to be 'carrots':-strategies to encourage both parents to WANT to be there for their children, but if that fails, there needs to be the 'stick' and this most likely needs to be the threat of financial hardship for parents not meeting their responsibilities. No man should be allowed to father kids and then walk away, enjoying a comfortable life style himself and leaving the tax payer to foot the bill.If I were to split up from my DCs father, I don't see why my children should suddenly become anyone else's responsibility. We would both need to continue to work (we do at the moment anyway) and would probably both have to adjust to a less comfortable lifestyle.

The question of what to call lone parent families is tricky because as many on here have said it's infuriating to be tarred with the same brush as the fecklessly fertile. What amuses me is that the stereotypical-teenage-mum-on benefits-in-council-accommodation could also be descibed as a SAHM, alongside the upright ladies of MN who extol the virtues of bonding with their babies and devoting quality time to their DC!

and can't teenage mothers in council houses do the same londonmamma>?

Yes Custy, they are SAHMs just like any other SAHM. My point is that calling all non-employed mothers SAHMs or stereotyping all single parent families as problematic NEVER gives a true picture of how different everyone's situation is.

SIngle-mum-bashers are either the resentful ill-informed who are struggling themselves and so believe that it's all the fault of some class of "them" be it teenage mothers or immigrants... rather than putting some of the blame on the corporations that pay such shitty wages, for instance, or wondering why so much of one's taxes go on the royal parasites. Or they are peole who simply hate women and object to them behaving with any kind of autonomy (refusing to stay with unsatisfactory men, refusing to be ashamed of having sex, refusing to be exploited by bad employers, etc).

WHat many people seem not to understand is that it doesn't take much to slip into the poverty trap. An accident to either the wage earner or another family member, job loss because the company has decided to outsource everything to the developing world because they only have to pay staff their 3p a day and no need to worry ab out health and safety
It's comforting to insist that everyone on benefits is somehow a lazy, conniving, worthless dolescum, because it makes you feel that it couldn't possibly happen to you. But it can.

Strong words madamez! I don't think this debate should be about bashing any sector of society - that helps no one. But surely the underlying principle is that it's a question of balancing rights and responsibilities. Ok, we don't want to force women into staying with crap partners, but neither are women forced to have children with crap partners in the first place. Yes, there will always be the exceptions - the teenager whose contraception fails and doesn't realise she's pregnant til too late etc. But I know some single mums who admit that they just made a really bad choice in having children with their partner. And if we truly want equality between man and women, then surely the starting point is that each should accept equal responsibility for choices they make. I'm also totally aware that life can deal you a shit hand. In our time together, DH and I have had to face redundancy. We also lost our home in the housing crash in the early 90s. I'd just had DC 1, we were both working (so paying huge nursery fees too) and DH even did evening shifts in a factory on top of our 2 full time jobs. But it wasn't enough to stop our house being repossessed. We went back to living in a cramped council flat, in an area we didn't choose, with horrid neighbours who blasted music half the night. I would have loved another DC, as I never wanted a big gap between my kids, but there was just no way we could afford it. Basically, we had to claw our way back up and 6 years later I finally had my longed for DC2. It's only now that DH admits that there were many times during those awful years that he felt like buggering off. It was a nightmare of stress and work and nothing else. So yes, blame employers who pay a pittance, blame the government for not making child care tax deductible and all the other systems that work against hard-working families - but please don;t assume life is a bed of roses for all two parent families.

So if Dh left me (I hope unlucky) for another woman after several years of what I thought was a happy amrriage (I mean, MIl didnt think there was anything worng wither and FIL left after 35 +years) then I am to blame for making the wrong choice? .

We did lose our house preceisely through the sort of circumstances madamez describes-DH was a successful manger at a haulage company, then he got depression, took lots of time off certified by GP, at elast inpart because meds made him unfot to drive and there was a long commute and you don't go to a haulage yeard when drowsy, and anyway far too ill to work- went back AMA to get an income, , got the sack for too much time off.

Job gone- abracadabra. Along eventually with house.

It really can happen to pretty much anyone.

No I certainly wouldn't use the word blame. I think that's an irrelevance. We weren't to blame that there was a housing crash. We weren't to blame that our mortgage payments more than doubled in the space of months beacuse of rising interest rates. But the point I'm making is that it doesn't then help to pass the buck on to anyone else to pick up the pieces. If my DH HAD left during this dire time (and bear in mind we were both teaching full time, he was doing evening factory shifts, we had a DC of less than a year old who was still waking in the night and we lived in a shitty flat) I think in the short term it would have been a 'quick fix' for him (he says he'd have gone back to his parents who had a much nicer house) but it wouldn't have helped any of us in the long term.

Mamazon, to be clear, I posted those quotes in the OP to show what narrow minded and and utterly scary views were being posted on the BBC website. They are not my quotes.

sha said like in the OP

you did post quotes in there

maybe wrong dont thikn she meant offence!

OK, just wanted to be clear.

Ebenezer, I think we might be broadly in agreement: I'm not knocking people who are partnered and having a hard time on a low income either. What I despise is the "don't have children you can't afford" mindset, which doesn't take into account the fact that sometimes, people's financial circumstances worsen dramatically - what are you supposed to do about your DCs then? Put them in care? Smother them?

of course not - don't think I ever suggested that madamez!!!
I guess my post answers your question really. You struggle! As I said, we both worked full time, DH took on extra shifts and we put off having the rest of our family til considerably later than I would have ideally wanted. For me to have had a second DC while not being able to afford it would have doubled my childcare costs, making it unaffordable to work. So we would have got deeper into debt. I suppose I could have walked out or kicked DH out and intentionally made either him or myself into a lone parent, which would have deprived DC of a mother or father. Not very responsible in my opinion.

Things can happen in life and we can all suddenly become single mothers in need of financial help. That is part of the social safety net that is (and should be) part of most developed societies.

However, I do feel that the current system encourages single motherhood, especially for the very young among us. There would be far less teenage pregnancies carried to term if they thought they could not count on public funds to support them.

Not sure how the legislation would have to be so that the first case is supported and the second is not, but surely there must be way.

totally agree, CoteDAzure. I have no problem with my taxes supporting a single parent who has run into unforeseen difficulties - that's exactly what the 'safety net' of the welfare state is for. I object strongly to my tax paying young teenage mothers who have never worked, in many cases haven't even bothered to put the effort in to get any qualifications from school, and then get pregnant as a 'lifestyle choice'. I'm not suggesting most single parents are like this, but some are, so let's not pretend they don't exist.

Ebenezer: appreciate that these are nosy and intrusive questions (so you are naturally at liberty to tell me to mind my own business here) but: when you decided you couldn't afford another LO for the present did you and your DP just stop having sex? Or did you agree that if you suffered a contraceptive failure, you'd have an abortion?
I'm just kind of wondering about this: partly because I lost my main income-generating job when 5 months pregnant with my DS. Technically I would probably have been within the legal time limit for an abortion but I didn't feel I could have one (In no way am I judging or implying any judgement or comment on what anyone else would do/has done/might do in a similar situation).

As to teenage parents: for some of them having a child to look after spurs them into making an effort to improve their lot (and the DCs future) by setting up businesses, getting training... one hears now and again of groups of young sinlge mothers setting up co-operatives doing things like selling on used baby gear and such.. but in some cases, if teens don't get pregnant they still spend years on benefits because there are either no jobs for them (no work without experience, can't get experience because no one will give you a job) or the education system has failed them so completely they aren't able to keep a job.

Buty "who looks afte the children and how do they get an income" is like "who does all the shitwork", one of the essential questions about how a society ought to work. Because it's a question that's not going to go away.

I think this comes down to accomodation again - I have no idea if its true but I am told that one of the reasons some girls deliberately become single mothers is wanting a secure, independent home of their own.

I think that teenage pregnancy rates would drop here if the presumption was that the young mother continued to live with her own family. In many cases the support of her family would be helpful. In some cases their antagonism would make the arrangement impossible. Perhaps the choice for teenage mothers should involve staying at home or staying in some kind of care home while on the council waiting list.

This would reduce the bitterness of those who need council housing but will never have the necessary points and reduce the attractiveness of using it as a lifestyle choice.

maybe i am confused.
i agree about trying to get single mums to work, and its not easy because of childcare costs, etc.
but at this moment why we forgetting the fathers?
why they slip away without having any responsibilty and enjoying their lives?
they should have some contribution, in fact 50/50.
how can be this done?

and this way may decrease single parenthood.

Upwind: while there are some families where a pregnant teenager could be cared for, supported and helped both to bring up her child and make something of her life, there are far more where either the physical overcrowding makes life difficult, or the psychological pressure and/or abuse that would be inflicted on a young mother would make life unbearable. Oh, and just imagine what the "care homes" would be like. Seen The Magdalen Sister,s have you?
Frankly, the best way to ease the resentment of those in need of council houses would be to BULID MORE F* COUNCIL HOUSES! There is nowhere near enough social housing provision, hence many of the more serious social problems at present.

Madamez, no I don't mind you asking. When DH and I realised that another child would be even more of a financial disaster, we spent 5 years being fanatical about contraception. A kind of 'belt and braces' job; I remember going for the morning after pill on a few occasions because i was so anxious. I appreciate that there is still a very tiny possibility of falling pregnant in these circumstances, and of course I don't know what we would have done if i had. I guess probably we'd have ended up having the baby and getting further into debt. But the point I was making was that even though DH and I had been dealt a shit hand, we really worked to try to be responsible and handle things in the best way for the long term.
The comments about how teenage mothers should be treated are interesting. Yes, we've all seen The Magdelen Sisters and I don't know anyone who would propose treating them in an inhumane way. That's not the answer. But neither is it the answer to just churn out more council homes, and more benefits and allow people to feel that they can make this lifestyle choice at the expense of others. Sorry this is a lengthy post, but let me just tell you about a situation where i work. I'm a teacher in a comprehensive. A girl i taught who left school last summer aged 16 was pregnant by the time she left. She was quite upfront that she wasn't interested in qualifications or college - she had a boyfriend and she wanted a baby. This girl can now be seen wheeling her child round the town every day. She lives on benefits, and although not rolling in money, she is housed, her baby has a different outfit on every day - oh and the girl can afford to smoke as well. Her boyfriend who is slightly older is unemployed too. Meanwhile, one of my teacher colleagues has just had to return to work after the birth of her baby. She would love to be a SAHM, but her husband doesn't earn a huge amount and so she has no choice. Can anyone explain to me how this is a fair system? That a woman in her early 30s who has got herself trained and worked for years, paying her taxes, has less choice about than a girl who decides to get pregnant at 16? And what really concerns me is the message this gives off to all the other impressionable teenage girls at school - they see this girl around town every day, showing off her baby. Is it any coincidence that we have such a high rate of teenage pregnancy compared to the rest of Europe?

AS several poelpe on this have said @i dont want my taxes spent' etc, can I just say that I am quite happy for mine (well DH's atm but only utnil I grad and again in the recent past- only 'finished' my last job March) to go to helping single mums. Why? because shoving single mothers into care homes / unhappy family situations / even worse poverty is not going to help them, or importantly help them to raise healthy, intelligent kids with higher aspirations for themselves. It is proven that children from teengae pg's are mre likelt to repeat the pattern: creating even worse living standards won't help break that. Additional benefits for teenage mums who geta qualification- hmm, that actually could cahnge things (and would cosyt loedd in the long run as the mums would be claiming maybe for the pre-school years, rather than for ever).

The kids I know who became mums ata younf age weren't after council houses (and I did grow up on a council estate so am part of 'that' culture). In the main they got pg by accident (and when I look back I can see it could easily have happened to me- well indeed, I was only with dh 4 months beofre i did get pg, its really luck that he wanted to stick around and not do a runner). Quite a lot also did it because they were despearte for love- I amthinking of two peole in aprticular,one who was n care after abuse and felt very alone (4 kids by 19, two different dads- eacht ime she really beleived he would stick around) and another at school who was just a mess, a total loner, no self esteem.

When I was 17 / 18 / 19 I really believed each love affair was 'it'. Seems pathetic now, but I thought yep this si the one. bar ne person, I think they'd have all scarpered had we been unlucky and I fell pg. To assume these girls were sleepinga round or whatever isn't I feel quite fair, teenagers can be very naive and hopelessly optimistic.

IMO the only way to change this si to focus on the next generation and the dads. We had a scheme at teh surestart that finded my last FT job, where they ahd a Das's worker that rana ctivities for them, and also for them and their kids- evenings out, breakfasts, go akrting, bech trips. It gave them a peer group that wasnt all pub based and unemployed asd responsibility free, andmade them feel they were worth the effort- and so were the kids.

Simultanewoulsly, identify the more vulnerable kids. Those that are from single parent famillies. those thata re isolated, under achieving, those whose friends are pg- whether it was 14 or 25, in my social groups i saw that if one girl / woman got pg, so did her friends, and quickly.

Dont stigmatise though, or isolate, or you'll just be creating more problems for society.

Ebeneezer I've also been working in a comp (in a different role, mentor, whilst i do my degree and hope PGCE next year). I an see your point, and I remember well the devastation i felt going back to work when ds1 was 9 weeks becasue we had no money otherwise (different amternity laws then). However, I suspect that the difference is that whilst you're looking at the adult (I use the term loosely) involved, i am trying to focus on the qwelfare of the babies. I dont believe a baby should suffer from bad housing / lack of good food (they get fruit and veg vouchers now and hallelujah, still oily fish etc costs) and all those thinsg that get kids off on the road to replicating their own conception and birth.