Here is a link to the David Freud report published today that was commissioned by the government.

I was on Radio 5 Live last night debating some of the ideas. One of the other speakers was a woman whose youngest son was 16 and who had been on benefits for the past 16 years.

She objected to the 'demonisation' of lone parents. She said she could not work for various reasons, including ill health. But the crux of the matter seemed to be that, to her, it appeared financially impossible or, at least, disadvantageous for her to work.

She said she could not afford the childcare costs. She had no family to help look after her children. And it later emerged that she feared she would lose her benefits, her house and her housing benefits if she took a low-paid job.

Then on to the radio came several lone parents who said that they had managed to combine lone-parenting with work. One of them revealingly said that her friends did not think of her as a lone parent because she had worked more or less ever since she had children.

Some people get exaggerated ideas of what they would lose in benefits if they took up work. But it is also true that the level of benefits, especially housing benefits, are so high relative to low wages, that they can make it difficult for someone to justify going out to work.

For myself, I do not wish to 'demonise' lone parents. I wish to point out that, over several decades, governments have wrongly reduced the natural incentives to marriage. Men and women both have responded to the change of incentives with the result that we have had a lone parent epidemic with consequent damage to children. The lives of the women and men concerned have also been damaged. To make it worse, we have also brought about one of the lowest rates of work among lone parents. This leads to demoralisation and a culture of complaint rather than one of achievement.

Posted by James Bartholomew • Indexed in Parenting • Welfare benefits

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