Single Mothers

Difficulty of Simply Defining Lone Parents

Lone parents are generally defined in the research as families consisting of one parent, who is not a cohabitant, who is either living alone or with others, and who has dependent children. Although grouped together under a “single” definition, these families in reality vary greatly, due to the different existential and relational forms that may create them: widowhood, procreation outside wedlock, separation in fact, legal separation, or divorce.

Similarly, there is a great variability in the factors that may bring about the end of the condition of single parenthood: for example, marriage, cohabitation, children gaining independence, or children leaving the family nucleus. With this variety of transitions around the condition of single parenthood, a standard international definition does not exist to define this figure with precision.

In particular, there are three aspects that create ambiguity in pinpointing a criterion enabling the clear definition and thus facilitating the quantification of the phenomenon in a comparative view:

• the marital status of the parent (bachelor/spinster, married, separated, or divorced);
• the composition of the family: the presence or absence of a member of the family of origin, of a relative, of a partner. This variety strongly [Page 1353]questions the very concept of single parenthood (ie., may a parent actually exist “alone?”).
• the definition of a “dependent” child (until what age may a child actually be considered dependent on the family of origin?).

The strong differences existing between the various national differences make the data sources highly heterogeneous and often difficult to compare.

Differences in Lone Mother Households

A second observation: lone mothers are often presented as a homogeneous group, sharing similar disadvantages and existing as a group distinct from other women and from two-parent households. This conflation facilitates the social construction of lone motherhood as a social problem. Lone mothers are still constructed as deficit families in social and educational policies. They are positioned within a discourse that places lone-mother families as a threat to the moral order.

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