Eight Lone parents and the Conservatives: anything new?
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Tina Haux
Abstract
This chapter focuses on lone parents, a group that, it argues, has represented a challenge for policy makers in the UK for three decades or so. It notes that under New Labour, the ‘lone parent problem’ is constructed primarily as one of benefit dependency and poverty, and the policy response is to get more lone parents into paid work through a mix of encouragement and compulsion. It demonstrates that the latter has intensified overtime, with the point at which lone parents’ receipt of out-of-work benefits becomes conditional on seeking work shifting from when their youngest child turns 16 (the situation prior to 2008), to when their youngest child turns seven (the situation at October 2010). It observes that the construction of lone parents as a social threat was a dominant perspective under the Thatcher and Major Conservative administrations, and it suggests that under the influence of The Centre for Social Justice and its problemisation of family breakdown in particular, this perspective is at risk of re-emerging.
Abstract
This chapter focuses on lone parents, a group that, it argues, has represented a challenge for policy makers in the UK for three decades or so. It notes that under New Labour, the ‘lone parent problem’ is constructed primarily as one of benefit dependency and poverty, and the policy response is to get more lone parents into paid work through a mix of encouragement and compulsion. It demonstrates that the latter has intensified overtime, with the point at which lone parents’ receipt of out-of-work benefits becomes conditional on seeking work shifting from when their youngest child turns 16 (the situation prior to 2008), to when their youngest child turns seven (the situation at October 2010). It observes that the construction of lone parents as a social threat was a dominant perspective under the Thatcher and Major Conservative administrations, and it suggests that under the influence of The Centre for Social Justice and its problemisation of family breakdown in particular, this perspective is at risk of re-emerging.
Chapters in this book
- Front Matter i
- Contents iii
- Notes on contributors v
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Symposium on the Coalition government
- Conservative social policy: from conviction to coalition 7
- Something old and blue, or red, bold and new? Welfare reform and the Coalition government 25
- The Conservative Party and the ‘Big Society’ 45
- The age of responsibility: social policy and citizenship in the early 21st century 63
- Debating the ‘death tax’: the politics of inheritance tax in the UK 85
- The debate about public service occupational pension reform 103
- Welfare to work after the recession: from the New Deals to the Work Programme 127
- Lone parents and the Conservatives: anything new? 147
- A treble blow? Child poverty in 2010 and beyond 165
- The English NHS as a market: challenges for the Coalition government 185
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Education in international context
- Citizenship education in international perspective: lessons from the UK and overseas 211
- “You’re only going to get it if you really shout for it”: education dispute resolution in the 21st century in England 233
- A sin of omission: New Zealand’s export education industry and foreign policy 257
- Student security in the global education market 281
- Exporting policy: the growth of multinational education policy businesses and new policy ‘assemblages’ 303
- Index 323
Chapters in this book
- Front Matter i
- Contents iii
- Notes on contributors v
-
Symposium on the Coalition government
- Conservative social policy: from conviction to coalition 7
- Something old and blue, or red, bold and new? Welfare reform and the Coalition government 25
- The Conservative Party and the ‘Big Society’ 45
- The age of responsibility: social policy and citizenship in the early 21st century 63
- Debating the ‘death tax’: the politics of inheritance tax in the UK 85
- The debate about public service occupational pension reform 103
- Welfare to work after the recession: from the New Deals to the Work Programme 127
- Lone parents and the Conservatives: anything new? 147
- A treble blow? Child poverty in 2010 and beyond 165
- The English NHS as a market: challenges for the Coalition government 185
-
Education in international context
- Citizenship education in international perspective: lessons from the UK and overseas 211
- “You’re only going to get it if you really shout for it”: education dispute resolution in the 21st century in England 233
- A sin of omission: New Zealand’s export education industry and foreign policy 257
- Student security in the global education market 281
- Exporting policy: the growth of multinational education policy businesses and new policy ‘assemblages’ 303
- Index 323
