The problem of lone-mother families in twentieth-century Britain

Abstract

This paper examines the way in which policy-makers approached the problem of lone motherhood and argues that the very different definitions of the problem over time go a considerable way to explaining the shifts in policy solutions. Major policy turning points are examined: the period just before and after the First World War, when anxieties about motherhood provided the justification for reform that would take all lone mothers and their children outside the poor law; Beveridge‘s 1942 Plan for social security reform which initially sought to make divorce an insurable risk; the 1974 Finer Report on one-parent families, which again tried to create a new benefit for all one-parent families; and the developments of the 1990s, which have sought to reduce lone mothers’ dependence on the state and increase their reliance first on fathers and most recently on earnings. Thus the paper focuses on the relationship between public and private law and how far lone mothers have been treated as mothers, wives or workers.