The concept of rational economic decision making, and what factors are relevant to and constitute it, are not neutral and gender-free. In particular, ‘rational economic man’ is a self-contained uncontextualized and emotion-free individual agent, whose actions are governed and calculated by the self-interested drive to maximize economic well-being to himself (and, perhaps, to members of […]

The uptake of paid work Rosalind Edwards and Simon Duncan Lone mothers, caring for dependent children, are a rising proportion of the population in western Europe. Poverty and dependence on state benefits are increasingly important characteristics of lone — mother families in Britain, as compared with most other west European countries. Over 60 per cent […]

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 […]

The extent to which lone mothers are economically active varies substantially across countries, ranging from about three in ten in Ireland and the Netherlands up to eight or nine in ten in countries such as Sweden, Finland and the USA (Table 5.3). To what extent do the different policies across countries account for these differences? […]

Most countries recognize the costs of children to some extent in their social security systems (Bradshaw et al. 1993; Wennemo 1994), and where universal child benefits or family allowances are provided, lone mothers are entitled to receive these. Eligibility for these benefits is thus on the basis of their status as mothers or as carers […]

Jane Millar It has been just over twenty years since the Finer report on lone — parent families in the UK was published (Finer 1974). The report was the first attempt to consider in detail the policy implications of changing family structure and remains the most detailed and comprehensive account of the circumstances of lone […]

In seeking to isolate the conditions that facilitate the rise of female­headed households across time and place, which may also bear on the variable prevalence of lone mothering, Momsen (1991:26) has pointed to forms of inheritance, control of property and economic opportunities. Female-headed households, she suggests, are more likely to emerge where property is individual […]

Stacey (1983) offers the hypothesis that modernization under the auspices of revolutionary socialism may have been less destructive of pre-modern family ties than that under capitalist modernizing processes. As an adjunct to modernization elsewhere—though not itself warranting the label of ‘modern’—the slave system was particularly destructive in rupturing pre-existing marital, family and household forms. Procreation […]

In charting the transformation of patriarchal forms in twentieth — century China, Stacey (1983:181, 254) describes a close connection between political agendas and family and household forms in a rather different context. Unlike in Iran, it was not western reforms that were under attack but feudal practices as embodied in Confucian patriarchy. While claiming that […]

Yet ideologies—whether religious or political—may be powerful tools for changing or preserving family and household forms. (Mary Mclntosh, Chapter 8 in this volume, analyses this in relation to the UK.) Afshar (1987), for example, notes how the Iranian state referenced Islamic values when introducing new legislation governing marriage and the family following the 1978 revolution, […]