REPORTS OF COMMITTEES
| Published date | 01 January 1975 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2230.1975.tb01401.x |
| Date | 01 January 1975 |
REPORTS
OF
C0MMI"EES
"
IN
THE
G.M.A.
WORLD
"
THE
Finer Report on one-parent families is nothing if not com-
prehensive. In one volume of findings and another of appendices, it
covers matrimonial proceedings, maintenance, social security and
other State benefits, employment, housing, child care, education,
birth control and everything else which could
in
any way relate to
the position of
a
lone parent. Nor does it confine itself to law only:
the Report is full of valuable sociological and historical information.
It discloses many defects (some of them fairly horrifying) in the
existing system, and suggests reforms the value and practicality of
which cannot for the most part be denied, despite the lack of
enthusiasm shown for them by the Government.
Yet the Committee's major recommendation, the introduction of
a new non-contributory benefit for lone parents (the guaranteed
maintenance allowance) does not do justice to its research findings.
This is because many of the difficulties which lone parents have
arise from the fact that they are predominantly women, as much
as from their status as lone parents. They are the result of the inferior
economic position of women and
of
the social isolation which our
assumptions about motherhood and the care of young children
impose on them. The lone mother shares these problems with the
mother in a two-parent family, but in her case they are intensified.
They are inter-related problems, as are their solutions, and though
the Committee acknowledges this, its recommendations do not seem
to take account of it fully.
The economics
of
lone parenthood
The great majority of one-parent families are fatherless: only
100,000
out of a total
of
620,000
such families are motherless. There
are
920,000
children in fatherless families and only
160,000
in
motherless families.a Only
153,000
lone mothers (excluding widows)
are in work, either full or part-time. Over
70
per cent. of those
working earn less than
€20
a week.3 The number of lone mothers
receiving supplementary benefit
in
1971
was
238,000,
and for most
of them this was their main source of income. That the number
receiving supplementary benefit has risen steadily since
1955
'
can
in
part be explained by the increase in divorce rates and illegitimate
births, but it also has a great deal to do with the comparative levels
1
Report of the Committee on One-Parent Families. Cmnd. 5629,
H.M.S.O..
1974.
a
p. 22.
3
These are flgures for 1971. The average weekly earnings for a man in full-time
manual work at this time were f31. Average
gross
earnings for women manual workers
in April 1973 were about half of those of men (f19-10 as against f37.40)
(p.
267).
If the Equal Pay Act
is
to have any effect there
is
obviously much to be done before
December 1975.
52
4
p. 245.
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