This chapter reflects the position on the Child Support Act as it was in autumn 1994. However, important concessions were made by the government in December 1994 and early in 1995. Briefly, these changes were, first, that action would be deferred on certain categories of cases (where parents had not co-operated or supplied enough information, […]

Walby (1990) has explored a general movement away from ‘private patriarchy’ in women’s position in society. She comments that recent British history has seen a change in both the degree and form of patriarchy, with reductions in some specific aspects, but also counter-attack, often on new issues. Thus she argues that private patriarchy has given […]

Two concepts will now be examined as relevant to a wider understanding of the Act. The first is the government’s understanding of the notion of ‘parental responsibility’. The second may be seen as another way of interpreting the first, and this is the concept of ‘private patriarchy’. The latter will be discussed with particular reference […]

Within the current rules, many absent parents will continue to face maintenance demands far in excess of their previous payments, and an increasing number of absent parents will be brought into the operations of the Agency. The long-term reduction of income for absent parents and their existing families will progressively erode their standard of living. […]

Initially, parents with care with new or changed claims for the three benefits mentioned (income support, family credit, and disability working allowance) were subject to the Act’s provisions, as well as parents with care not on these benefits but without an existing maintenance order or agreement. Existing claimants of the relevant benefits are to be […]

Lorraine M. Fox Harding Since 1979, the Conservative governments in Britain have developed an interest in the issue of family responsibility, notably as it impinges on the scope of state responsibility and in particular on the amount of expenditure involved. A rhetoric of family behaviour has been developed in which certain themes, such as individual […]

The policies that various European states adopt in relation to motherhood and paid work can be distinguished in terms of various gender contracts, embodying expectations and setting out parameters of what women and men should be, how they perceive themselves and what they do (see Duncan 1994 for a review). This explains the differences in […]

Job availability is crucial, even if lone mothers want paid work and are supported in this materially and normatively. Ermisch (1991) has shown that lone mothers’ employment does indeed fall in recession. Moreover, remarkably persistent horizontal and vertical occupational sex segregation, whereby women are concentrated in particular occupations and at lower status levels, means that […]

There are significant variations between neighbourhoods in lone mothers’ rates of employment. For example, Brighton and Hove (two contiguous District Councils) lie near the national average, with 40 per cent of lone mothers in paid work, 14 per cent full-time. Within these areas, though, ward rates (taken as measurement units) varied from 23 per cent […]

Economic calculations, rather than an asocial economic rationality, are a factor in lone mothers’ decision to enter the labour force or live on benefits. They are not, however, the only form of rationality at work, and may be overridden by other ways of making sense of the world. Carling (1991) has discussed the ways in […]