How Australian welfare reforms shape low-income single mothers’ food provisioning practices and their children’s nutritional health

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis paper examines the food provisioning practices of low-income single mothers affected by market-driven welfare reforms in Australia. We explore the tensions between women’s care responsibilities and the government’s welfare-to-work reform, and the effects of these tensions on the nutritional health and wellbeing of women and their children. Conducting a thematic analysis of 20 interviews with single mothers receiving either Parenting Payment Single, Newstart Allowance (NSA), or the Disability Support Pension, we found that when women’s income and time were significantly compromised, especially when women were transferred onto the less generous unemployment benefit NSA, that food provisioning became more psychologically taxing and nutritional health decreased. The findings suggest that public health researchers must focus on challenging the structural antecedents of women’s food work and hunger to alleviate the responsibilities of single mothers in countries facing similar circumstances.