Lone Parent Families
Women, Children & the State
Longman Social Policy in Britain

By Karen Rowlingson
November 2001
Longman / Pearson Education
ISBN: 0-582-28761-8
200 Pages, Illustrated
$72.50 paper original

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Approaching two million families in the UK currently have only one parent. The growth in lone motherhood has been one of the most dramatic changes in family patterns in the last 25 years. It has challenged long-held policy assumptions, raising a series of questions and issues that are at the heart of our understanding of the nature of the welfare state and the relationship between state and family.

Lone mothers have become an important political issue in the UK since the debacle of the 'Back to Basics' campaign, and in the US attacks on 'welfare babies' born to lone mothers have become a platform for the republican backlash against former President Clinton's welfare programs. But the subject of lone mothers is not only of interest in itself; it has implications for major policy issues.

The academic debate on lone parents is very broad in scope, covering gender roles, the relationship of the family and the state and the relationship between social policy and labor market policy. This book examines in a comprehensive and accessible way these key issues and their impact on the UK and other countries.

Karen Rowlingson is a Lecturer in Social Policy in the Department of Social and Policy Sciences at the University of Bath. Stephen McKay is a Principal Research Fellow at the Policy Studies Institute in London.


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