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Socialist Review Index (1993–1996) | Socialist Review 168 Contents
From Socialist Review, No. 168, October 1993.
Copyright © Socialist Review.
Copied with thanks from the Socialist Review Archive.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
Recently I, and others like me, have been found to be the cause of everything that is wrong with this country today, from the current economic climate and a rising level of juvenile crime right through to the housing shortage. No, I’m not a Tory minister, I am a single parent. There, I’ve admitted it ... I feel much better now.
The barrage of abuse started when I accidentally switched on the radio during the Sunday service (is nothing sacred?). The vicar presented a picture of single parents as young women unable to cope with their children and desperately searching for a man who is going to make them complete. As a former battered woman, a new man is the last thing I’m looking for.
There followed a tabloid moral panic with such enlightening statements as, ‘A bad father is better than no father.’ Try telling that to a woman whose children have been sexually abused. Then we were called ‘feckless young women’. While I realise that we don’t yet live in a land of equality, there are such things as single parent men ... I know, I’ve seen them. Single parents are widowed, deserted, flee violence, have no access to birth control or are raped. There’s nothing feckless about that.
It was stated that we do it for the money. Well, at £70.55 per week (and a milk token) for a single parent with two children it was hardly my most brilliant career move to date, although it probably represents a modest lunch bill for those who set the benefit rates.
The government’s solution was the launch of the Child Support Agency. The working parents, who are the only ones who can benefit from the agency, are told that they will have to wait as income support claimants are prioritised. Women fleeing violence are put at further risk while their benefit is deducted pound for pound for any maintenance received. The agency claims that it will not pursue claims where there is a history of violence but in practice requires documentary evidence. It also fails to recognise that emotional abuse is domestic violence. The formula for assessing maintenance is too rigid and does not take into account amicable court settlements, the needs of a second family and travelling and accommodation costs of access parents.
A friend of mine was summoned to the DSS six months before the introduction of the CSA. She was asked the name of her child’s father, how many times she had had sex with him and where and when her child had been conceived. Failure to produce this information would result in a cut in her benefit of around £20. My friend could not provide the information ... she had been raped. She was so distressed that she felt forced to find work, but the cost of her childcare means that in real terms she earns less than Income Support levels.
So incensed was I by all this unfair scapegoating that I rang a phone-in on Radio 4 and invited Redwood, or another Tory MP with an axe to grind, to spend a ‘feckless’ week with my family. No sooner had I put the phone down than it rang. Briefly my life flashed before my eyes at the thought of having to entertain a Tory for a week. It was a friend of mine thanking me for at least trying to redress the balance. My invitation still stands, but so far there have been no takers.
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Last updated: 27 February 2017