Stigma and shame attached to claiming social assistance benefits: understanding the detrimental impact on UK lone mothers’ social relationships

Abstract

ABSTRACT Employing evidence from a recent qualitative study, this paper provides new insights into the social relationships of lone mothers in the UK and exposes how these relationships are negatively affected by the stigma attached to claiming social assistance benefits. The political discourse attached to welfare policy reforms has stigmatized benefit claimants as a means to activate them into paid work. Consequently, lone mothers on benefits have reported being seen primarily as failed workers and citizens, rather than as struggling mothers trying to support their children in difficult circumstances. This stigma is internalized as feelings of shame, and has damaged lone mothers’ social identity and permeated the closest of their familial relationships, highlighting the extent of its insidious and damaging power. Sadly, lone mothers and their relatives were engaged in a process of othering that only served to trap them further into stigmatizing discourses.