Some common themes emerge from the discussion of the three sources of income presented in previous sections of this chapter. It was argued in the first section that the state support offered to lone mothers is closely related to the state support offered to all families with children. In the second section it was similarly argued that policies towards child maintenance are related to the extent to which the state accepts collective responsibility for children as opposed to enforcing private responsibility. And finally it was suggested that policies to support the employment of mothers in general are also the most important factor in determining the employment rates of lone mothers. In these cases the treatment given to the needs of mothers in general seems central to understanding the position of lone mothers.
Lone mothers are not so much a separate case but a specific example of how women as mothers are treated in policy in different countries.
Another way to express this is to consider how caring work is treated in different welfare states. The need to incorporate care work into comparative analysis has been at the heart of much of the feminist critique of the analysis by Esping-Andersen (1990) of what he termed the ‘three worlds of welfare capitalism’. His approach was based primarily on the relationships between the labour market and the state and the extent to which state provisions ‘de-commodify’, that is, allow workers to have an adequate standard of living outside the labour market. The focus of this analysis is paid work, and it is not clear how unpaid, caring work fits into this, if at all. Thus the experiences and circumstances of women in different welfare state regimes are not systematically included in the analysis. According to Sainsbury (1994:3), attempts to introduce gender into this type of comparison can be divided into two main approaches: the first is ‘to problematize several basic concepts in the mainstream literature by inquiring how they are gendered…to utilize mainstream theories and conceptions, and where necessary to refashion them, so as to encompass both women and men’. The second approach has been to ‘argue that mainstream theories are fundamentally lacking. Because crucial elements are missing, alternative theories and models are required.’ Perhaps the best known of the latter approaches is the typology constructed by Lewis (1992b), in which she sets out a threefold division of countries that relates to the role attached to the ‘male breadwinner’. These are:
1 Strong breadwinner states (e. g. the UK, Ireland). A firm dividing line is made between public and private responsibilities, benefits are used to replace male earnings and there is a lack of benefits and services that would help women work outside the home.
2 Modified breadwinner states (e. g. France). Priority is given to horizontal redistribution between those with and without children, so there are high levels of universal child provision, coupled with a recognition of women’s claims as both mothers and workers.
3 Weak breadwinner states (e. g. Sweden). Commitment to dual breadwinners with services and benefits to assist parents—male and female, lone and married—to combine child care and employment.
Lone mothers would receive the highest levels of support in either the modified breadwinner approach (where they benefit from the focus on families and positive employment policies) and in the weak bread-winner approach (where they benefit from policies to integrate parents into employment), and this seems to fit with the above discussion. Lone mothers would fare least well in strong breadwinner states but this category seems very large and undifferentiated, and indeed Lewis argues that ‘predicting the treatment of lone mothers in strong breadwinner countries is virtually impossible because their situation defies the logic of the system’. Thus lone mothers might either be treated as mothers (benefits to stay at home) or as workers (incentives to enter the labour market).
However, breaking down the strong breadwinner category in a bit more detail could provide a better predictor of the treatment of lone mothers. The analysis above suggests that we need to consider the way in which the earnings of the male breadwinner are replaced, in particular whether this is by means of social insurance or social assistance. Countries with a strong breadwinner/social insurance model replace male earnings with social insurance benefits to cover contingencies such as unemployment, sickness and retirement. Social assistance plays a limited, perhaps discretionary role. The prediction for lone mothers would be relatively high rates of employment for negative rather than positive reasons—the lack of social assistance would give little choice. Germany fits this pattern very well. By contrast a strong breadwinner/poverty relief model replaces male earnings with means-tested benefits intended to meet family needs. The prediction for lone mothers would be low employment rates because social assistance would offer an income, albeit low, for those outside the labour market. The UK and Ireland would fit here. Thus it is important to consider the extent to which benefits are mainly contributory, and hence rest on labour market participation, or are means-tested, and hence rest on demonstrating need.
Focusing specifically on lone mothers, both Cass (1992) and Hobson (1994) also seek to analyse how caring work is recognized in different welfare states. Cass discusses three main models. The ‘needs-based welfare state regime’ enables women to stay at home and provide care but only in the context of both low wages and low benefits (Norway and Australia). The ‘market-centred welfare state’ gives caring work little support but at the same time leaves support for paid work to the market (Austria and the USA). The ‘liberal welfare state regimes’ partially recognize caring work but also leave support for paid work largely to the market (the UK). Similarly,
Hobson (1994) contrasts policies in Sweden (a ‘parent-citizen — worker’ model), where all parents are expected to be in employment and supported in their dual role by the state, with the Netherlands (a ‘mother-carer-citizen’ model), in which lone mothers are paid a benefit to stay at home and care for their children. These represent two different policy logics in relation to the role of mothers. In Germany, she argues, policy is based on defining women not so much as mothers but as wives: their entitlement is through their husbands and so women without husbands receive very little financial support as full-time carers but nor do they receive support to go into employment. And finally, in the USA, ‘work and welfare’ are kept very separate, with little support for employment and those on welfare are seen very much as undeserving and dependent.
The relationships between family, state and labour market, where we started this chapter, are clearly very complex in character and not easy to disentangle. Different studies have tended to highlight different aspects, and this to some extent reflects the fact that the studies have looked at various combinations of countries. There is a need for a more systematic analysis across a wider range of countries. The factors that should be examined in more detail are, however, becoming clearer. These include whether claims are on the basis of status as wives, mothers or workers; whether these are established as universal citizenship rights or selective needs-based rights; the extent to which rights are defined in relation to paid employment; the nature of social rights to services as well as individual rights to benefits; the nature of the obligations that family members are deemed to owe to each other and the role that the state plays in either guaranteeing or enforcing these.
Not only do assumptions about gender roles influence the development and nature of social policy but gender relations are also themselves affected by the nature of welfare provisions. Thus the concept of gender can be either ‘explanandum or explanans’ (Bussemaker and van Kersbergen 1994:9), both cause and consequence, in our understanding of the nature of welfare states. Child-support legislation, for example, reflects a particular view of the gender roles, with men as financial providers and women as family carers (Lister 1994; Millar 1994b), but at the same time it helps to create a particular relationship of dependency between individual men and women (Clarke et al. 1994b; Burgoyne and Millar 1994). Policies that support lone mothers to stay at home and care for their children rather than take up paid employment are a reflection of a particular view of the nature of motherhood, but at the same time they are part of the process that constructs the experience of motherhood through the choices that are, and are not, open to lone women with children. Thus it is also important to consider the ways in which different policy regimes construct the experience of lone motherhood.
Finally, moving away from the theoretical to the policy implications of these comparisons, two points stand out. First, comparing different approaches to the support of lone mothers draws attention to what lone mothers have in common with married mothers rather than what separates them. There are common needs for support if they are to take paid employment, common needs for financial support to help meet the costs of children, even perhaps common needs for mechanisms to give them entitlement to male incomes. Gender rather than family status is the key variable in understanding the situation of lone mothers. Second, almost everywhere lone mothers have a higher than average poverty risk. The main, but still partial, exceptions are countries such as Sweden and Denmark, where gender equality has been a much more central goal of policy. Traditional expectations of gender roles within the family still shape policies in many countries and, while this is the case, lone mothers are likely to remain poor.
NOTES
1 The fifteen countries were Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, the UK, Australia, Norway and the USA.
2 One strong area of criticism of the UK scheme has been that it overturns previous ‘clean-break’ settlements.
3 Using labels such as ‘Anglo-Saxon’ and ‘Scandinavian’ points up similarities between countries but can also serve to mask differences. For example, Leira (1992) shows that the Norwegian approach to child-care policy is quite different from that of Denmark and Sweden.
Chapter 6