The Changing Nature of Lone Parenthood and its Consequences

The increased number of lone-parent families is one of the most significant social trends to have occurred over the last thirty years. Today one-in-four children live in a lone-parent family compared to just one 1-in-20 in the late 1970s. The numbers of children that will at some time live in a lone-parent family are much higher, as for most it is a transitory state (the average duration being around 5 years), and therefore it is estimated that half of all children will spend at least some time in a lone-parent family. Today therefore lone-parent families can be considered a normal part of family life.
Yet, in spite of its frequency, lone-parenthood remains associated with high rates of joblessness, poverty and maternal depression and children in lone-parent families are widely considered to do less well than those from intact families. Because of the economic and social vulnerability of these families they have been at the heart of policy for over 25 years. Recently the perceived association of lone-parenthood with welfare reliance and poor outcomes for children, particularly in relation to anti-social behaviour among young people brought up by a lone-parent, has been emphasized as a reason for interventions.

Yet while for policy makers lone parenthood is seen as a problem the stylised facts on which much of policy analysis has been based, fails to recognise the extraordinary pace of change in the extent of lone-parenthood and the fluidity and diversity of lone-parent families today. Hence the basis for policy discussions is all too often both dated and treats lone-parents as a homogeneous population and defines them on the basis on current family structure, rather than examining the full family history faced by children. There is very little empirical evidence for the UK on how lone-parenthood has changed, or on how the growth in lone-parenthood (to the extent that it is now a social norm) may have changed the evidence base for assessing its consequences for parents and children. There is also surprising little evidence for the UK on the extent to which the relationship between lone-parenthood and poor outcomes, for mothers and their children, is causal - the question of how, if lone parents had remained with their child's father, poverty levels and children's outcomes (including academic achievements, behavioural problems and so on) would be affected has not been answered.

This project will fill this substantial gap in the academic literature by examining data from that tracks individuals over time. We will examine the trajectories of children (and their parents) born in 1958; 1970 and 2000, looking at changes in the experience of lone parenthood over time and in its consequences. Questions we will address include: How does the experience of lone-parenthood leads to a shift in the trajectories of both parents and children? Are there a set of "typical" routes into lone parenthood that can be identified? And do these routes matter to parent and child outcomes? Characteristics, such as the length of preceding relationships, time to re-partnering (step-parenthood) and the length of time individuals spend as lone parents, will be analyzed to identify "typologies" of lone parenthood and from this we will assess how outcomes for children are affected by these characteristics. A particularly important feature of some lone parent families may be multiple partnership transitions. In the US this has been found to be a particularly important reason for children doing less well in some lone parent families. We will assess UK evidence for this. Finally, we will examine whether the lone parent population is becoming more diverse and whether inequality between lone parent families is increasing. For example, as lone-parenthood has become a much more common experience is it also an increasingly unequal experience with some mothers doing well, retaining work and receiving maintenance, while others struggle to avoid poverty.

Lone parenthood, poverty and child development has remained a key dimension of social policy research for at least 25 years and remains central to the current government's objectives around child poverty and social mobility. This project will achieve a step-change in advancing our understanding about the changing nature of lone parenthood, its diversity and association with child outcomes and will be of substantial benefit to policy makers in the government as it seeks to improve equality of opportunity in Britain. To date the influence of family structure on social mobility has been missing from the policy agenda and little evidence exists to support policy in this area. We therefore would expect the work to be of significant interest to the newly established Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission. We would also anticipate communicating our findings to officials at the DWP and Treasury. The findings would also be of considerable interest to non-government organizations such as Gingerbread, Child Poverty Action Group, and the Single Parents Action Network. We will actively engage in ensuring the research findings reach these groups, as outlined in our Pathways to Impact statement. Social Policy at Bath and the Centre for Market and Public Organisation at Bristol (where Gregg and Harkness are associates) have outstanding reputations for high quality research, dissemination and for fostering wider impact. Recognition of the impact of research work at Bath on policy and practice is evidenced by its recent award of the prestigious Queen's Anniversary Award for Higher and Further Education. The award to Bath cited our ''Influential research into child poverty and support for vulnerable people'. This specifically included our research on lone parenthood and on children and poverty.

We will stage a major conference toward the end of the project to address a broad audience. This will be in London and we will seek to invite other major researchers on family structure, poverty and children's life chances from the UK and abroad. This will provide a key opportunity both for influencing policy makers and getting the research out into the public domain. We would seek to get charities and campaign groups such as Gingerbread and Child Poverty Action Group to engage in this conference ant to involve policy makers, such as Alan Milburn (the poverty and social mobility Tsar), and senior civil servants from the Treasury, Department for Work and Pensions and the Department for Education. We would anticipate producing a short briefing paper for this event which we would disseminate to selected policy makers, MPs, NGOs and the press.

The project will exploit Gregg, Harkness and Millar's extensive links to, and experience of working with, policy makers and practitioners to ensure impact (see also the impact statement and attached CVs). In addition to the briefing paper produced for the launch we will also produce a number of briefing papers aimed at different audiences such as employers groups or single parents. To achieve wider dissemination we would hope to produce an article for the ESRC's "Britain in 2014" and for the CMPO's "Research in Public Policy" bulletin. We will maintain a project websites and will post all outputs alongside a blog and podcast on the findings. We would anticipate having press releases around conferences and/or publication of the research, in conjunction with the University of Bath and CMPO press officers.