Lurking in the shadows of this discourse about lone mothers and the underclass is an issue that we believe must be addressed head on: the issue of human agency, or in this instance, specifically, women’s agency. Right-wing ideologues, conservative politicians and anti­feminists lay much of the blame for the perpetuation of the underclass through lone […]

Thus far our analysis of why the 1990s has seen such widespread concern about lone mothers has focused on the moral panic that erupted over the issue of juvenile crime and the targeting of lone mothers as part of the ideologically and fiscally motivated restructuring of the British welfare state. Both of these elements are […]

Although much of the preceding discussion is unique to Britain in the early 1990s, there are many parallels with the United States. In both countries there has been a concerted ideological offensive against the welfare state by radical conservatives, and in both countries lone mothers have been highlighted as a serious financial burden on the […]

By mid-1993, the lone mother was being assessed in terms of her economic as well as her moral and social costs to the nation. The Sunday Times (11 July 1993) again led the way for the media with a special pull-out with the following headlines across four pages: ‘Wedded to Welfare’; ‘Do they want to […]

Although Murray does not reflect the views of any sizeable academic constituency in Britain, he is an important and influential figure. In 1987 he had meetings with Department of Health and Social Security and Treasury officials and members of the then Prime Minister’s Policy Unit, and two years later he addressed the Prime Minister (Dean […]

As Hall etal. (1978) point out, a widespread ‘moral panic’ about the ‘steadily rising rate of violent crime’ has been simmering away in British society since the 1960s. The most recent outbreak of moral indignation began with a focus on car crime committed by young men, and the racing of stolen cars around council estates […]

Our initial interest was prompted by the widespread moral outrage that followed the murder of a 2-year-old boy, James Bulger, in February 1993. In the period that followed the murder, the media homed in on lone mothers and their fatherless, supposedly criminally inclined children, identifying them as the core of the underclass and the source […]

Lone mothers and the underclass debate Sasha Roseneil and Kirk Mann Alongside the growth in the number of women both having children outside marriage and bringing them up alone, recent years have seen extensive public debate about lone motherhood. This chapter explores the way this debate has created a category of mothers that is not […]

Black families have consistently been identified as problematic in both Britain and the USA (McAdoo 1988; Phoenix 1987, 1990, 1993). In particular, high rates of lone motherhood in populations of African origin have been blamed for problems ranging from educational underachievement to delinquency (see, for example, the report of the official inquiry into the underachievement […]

Discussions of lone motherhood often fit a normalized absence/ pathologized presence couplet (Phoenix 1987), where those lone mothers and their children who are faring well are not discussed while those who are considered problematic make headlines. Negative discourses are bolstered by the few pieces of research that provide them with support. For example, a great […]