"We have reached a point where publicly expressed social attitudes towards 'sole parents' are curiously reminiscent of the negative stereotypes of unwed mothers of the 1930's and 1940's through to the 1970's"

I don't think that's true at all. We can only live in hope though. Children from single parents do worse by virtually all social indicators. Making single parenthood a lifestyle choice has done enormous damage to our society.

The single parent agenda has really just been one great big transfer of wealth from men to women. Now women can just decide to 'move on' with their lives because their 'ex' and the state will have to support them. It's all about 'choice' - so long as you are a woman.

“The program seemingly has no focus on the fathers (some of whom, of course, may not be teens).”

I’m sure the boys are fine paying child support out of their dole or from their pocket money.

“…who regard pregnancy as a means of escaping from school or dull work, or irritating families.”

And these young mums who didn’t want to go to school will do what to avoid this:

“… required to attend compulsory support and engagement interviews with Centrelink until they complete Year 12 or equivalent, or until the youngest child turns six.”

Same as they did the first time I imagine. And many who had an “accident” and weren’t avoiding anything will probably consider it too. Is this a policy to increase the population again?

'They' want babies at the age of one year old shoved into daycare with strangers, anyone understand what being institutionalised at that particular age does to a child? Or any idea what it does to a young mum and child when they are separated under any type of threat (poverty being a damn good one)… I suppose we will find out now.

What do you reckon Dane, should they have to put them in daycare or will the dads look after them while the teen mums attend school?

Sorry "Marie Coleman" Stopping breading mothers will help this situation of over-population, which if infrastructural climate is not compatible for Job offerings, the siblings labour, will be pointless.

This years, a record number of students are hitting the work force.............tell me, Where are they going to go?

What our pollies are doing, is to try and keep up with others, well out of their league. I've always said....Smaller and smarter.........or nots all well, with biting off more than one can chew:)

Ok! I can here you now......We have the right to breed:) and yes you have.........but while Jobs and the numbers wont fill, the encouragement for off-spring at this time, well.........you do the maths.

LEA

I agree totally with the author.
We can't lump all 'single mothers' in the one basket and have a one size fits all policy, because not all single mothers are uneducated or unemployable.

If we are going to target single teen parents, then I hope we target BOTH the mother and the father. If both these parents are supposed to have a 50% say in their child's upbringing, then the consequences or results of having a child in your teens should be equally shared amongst both parents.

If this does not happen, then the policy is a very sexist policy from some old-fashioned old male politicians, aimed at 'punishing' all the 'naughty girls' who didn't marry or stay with the father of their children.

'punishing' all the 'naughty girls' who didn't marry or stay with the father of their children......Well! No-one wants to clam responsibility for there actions.......How human:) True, I want a five year on, for breeding, if you can afford it,and A one years with full Gov's entitlements.

I dont know whats wrong with my maths, but the more people we have, the more the problems grow.

7 billion.........and counting.

Training what we have makes good sense....

LEA

If many of those women who got pregnant were allowed to have an abortion then most would take the opportunity to save themselves & the poor children from having this life of misery & stigma. I challenge those anti-abortionist to forfeit their taxpayer funded cushy positions & give to those who need to provide due to an unplanned accident. After all, they're the ones who are the cause of much the misery their targets are forced to live in.

Suzie I don't know how effective it is but I think the dad's (and girls without kids) are already targetted. There have been other measures announced to try and get them into either study or work.

I think the goal is a good one even if I have doubts about how well some parts will work. The intent does seem to be to try and stop a pattern of welfare dependancy starting early.

I wonder how many teenage single mum's the government will emply though and how many government owned workplaces will have an onsite creche/childcare facilities.

One of the griefs with any program's targetting welfare and people on welfare is that it's hard to target those "using" the system without hurting the genuinely needy. It's never a one size fit's all but institutionaised disretionatry power has a habit of becoming discrimination.

No easy answers which help all those in need but only those in need.

R0bert

Jewely,

"The want babies at the age of one year old shoved into daycare with strangers.....?"

It would seem so.
What they've done is tilted the chute to a more severe angle...so that now the babies will zoom even faster down the slope - straight into the arms of institutional indifference.

Isn't it great to be part of a society whose government devalues the mother/infant relationship of those without means, while simultaneously topping up the coffers of those that do.

One problem is, is that we reward the wrong end of the IQ scale to breed.

Poirot:“Isn't it great to be part of a society whose government devalues the mother/infant relationship of those without means, while simultaneously topping up the coffers of those that do.”

Funny how that keeps happening, this policy seems particularly sneaky and teen mums don't have a lot of support out there. Targetting people in society with the least advocacy is a no brainer and then making it look like they are recieving a favour must be considered a job well done and everyone can sleep well at night.

Up goes hotline calls to DoCS and up goes the daycare centre bank accounts. I predict a horrible backlash in a few years with these DC children and what this will do them being removed at such a young age.

We are we targeting (that word is bothering me more and more) babies.

I think everyone has either forgotten or doesn’t know what one year olds are like, it is a particularly clingy stage, they love their mums (young or old) and want more than anything to be around them and held by them. They are often still breastfeeding and need a lot of one on one physical activity. Most young mums by the time baby is one have fallen completely in love with them and enjoying each new milestone. They don’t want to miss those many first moments and should not be forced to.

What is about to happen will break bonds. Young mums are ignored as good mothers and adequate is frowned on here. The worst worst worst possible stigma I believe comes from places staffed predominantly by women who patronize and exaggerate all little and normal problems coped with as these young females learn to parent.

We are telling them with this policy that being a mum is not okay, wanting to be home with your child while it is a baby is not okay.

It is being made extremely clear that our babies and children are like puppies that can be kenneled whenever and not considered a priority. This will make the child less important in a young mother’s eyes which should be the opposite of what any society wants. My own children at one year old would have been terrified to have been dumped in a centre and handed to a stranger and it would have been unacceptable for me to do it to them. Now I pay taxes I want them to help a parent stay at home and care for their children.

They had the child and what the government should be doing is making sure they are caring for the child and being a responsible parent 24 hours of the day. Surely a parent is paid much less for the job they do than daycare staff (private businesses?) are about to be reimbursed through government.

The problem with the article is that the author has not given any reason why anyone should have to pay for single mothers to look after their own children.

The article is implicitly against equality under the law, against personal responsibility, in favour of the morality that you're responsible for everyone else except yourself, in favour of policies that destroy children's best protection - the family. It has an inexcusably naive view that the problems of "disadvantage" have nothing to do with government welfare, employment, education and relationship policies in the first place. They apparently just arise spontaneously out of society and there cannot be too much of government programs trying to micro-manage other people's personal lives by treating them unequally. I find it an offensive point of view

if the kids were taught to reject the immoral values of their parents then the problem would be greatly reduced. We are not however interested in addressing the root of the problem. It seems no one wants to make any 'moral'judgement. Maybe to have kids from 3 different fathers and then expect the tax payer to foot the bill is not real smart. The problem doe not appear nearly as big in a country like Singapore. I wonder why?

There was a report years ago demonstrating money allocated to supporting single parents was money well invested against potential fallout costs of juvenile detention, crime and community support around drug counselling.

The conclusions in that older report would still be valid today.

The mothers of pre and post war Britain not only continued to care for their children but manned the factories and services when the men were away at war. One difference is there were greater extended family supports by contrast today where families often live long distances from their own parents or relatives.

Most single parents are not teens, but fall into the middle class category where both parents do contribute to the care of their children after divorce (unless very young children are involved) and where both parents work and share the load.

It is interesting how cultural change also changes the mindset on the best ways to raise a family. Forcibly placing babies and toddlers into childcare would have been abhorrent in years past, now it is accepted without a blink of the eye. There is no credit given to the idea of positive outcomes of parents raising their young babies to school age (at least).

The real problem is how to prevent teenage pregnancy. Contraception is available and yet babies keep arriving. Teens are educated about sex and contraception, so why does it keep happening. Are they all a result of unbridled teen passion and uncontrollable hormones in the heat of the moment or is there still a remnant of not acknowledging that many teens will have sex and parents not keeping the doors open to discussing options. I don't know the answer.

Whether it is subsidised child care or a support pension it is still going to cost taxpayers money, I would rather see it spent on the best outcomes for the child. In some cases it might be childcare is the best option but for many the best option is that which nurtures the parent-baby relationship, no matter how much governments are pushing economic growth and productivity as the ruling principle.

I think you will find most on the Single mothers benefit are those who have been deserted by their husbands or defacto, not young girls. The number of very young mothers has declined over the years.

It is a positive thing to change the mindset, that having a baby does not mean the end of your life or education.

Saying the unsayable, Melaine Philips.

http://www.melaniephillips.com/saying-the-unsayable

<The sheer scale of the social damage being done by family breakdown is staggering. But even more astounding is the total refusal of the political class to acknowledge or deal with a phenomenon estimated to cost the country more than £20 billion per year.

On the contrary, our intellectual and political leaders have done everything in their power to accelerate the collapse of the two-parent family.

They have lavished incentives upon lone parenthood, turned a blind eye to or actively promoted cohabitation, and assiduously promoted the humbug that their principal concern is for the interests of all children and that it is invidious to discriminate between different types of family life. >

Recently on our newspaper was a report on education

<A Smith Family study has linked a father's education level to the professional success of his children.

The report - titled Unequal Opportunities: Life Chances for Children in the Lucky Country - compares the lives and backgrounds of 13,000 university graduates aged 30 to 45.>
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2011/05/09/3211850.htm?section=justin

I am a single, middle-aged (43) mother. I am also an Environmental Officer working part-time. I do not expect the Government to support me and my children, but I do expect my ex and father of my two children to contribute as he does throuh Child Support (although it was a fight for the first 3 years).

Enabling single mothers of any age is a good thing, as is enabling mothers in general. Whether it be better support for working from home or part-time etc. The Government may sprout "family friendly" but the individual Managers and Regional Managers are quick to pull out "operational convenience" (or inconvenience to them) if they don't want it - which they have done in my case for wanting to work from home and continue to work part-time (I am being gradually increased to full-time).

I did not put my children in care until they were 15months old and even then it was Family Day Care and only 2 days, as I found it more family friendly. I believe children in care practically full-time from a young age increases delinquincy problems later. Apart from the most obvious fact that their parent's aren't the ones raising them.

As for teenage mums - there is either abortion or adoption, if it was a "true" mistake. Of course there is prevention in the first instance - and this is the most important factor being overlooked. Females may have been just as young having children in our great-grandparent's day, but I would argue that they were also much more mature than the teenagers these days. At least one parent should be able to stay at home with the children until school age and be part-time after that. And yes, fathers of these children should be made to participate in either caring for the children or getting work to support them as they are just as responsible for the child being here in the first place.

One of the ironies of feminism is that the single mother continues to be stigmatised while the single father is commended for doing a difficult job in the face of adversity. Staying at home for women is seen by some as a failure of the sisterhood while men are patted on the back for undertaking a role dominated traditionally by women.

It is a strange world we live in that has, to some extent, lost its way.

Where I worked one of the men who had just started shared care of his kids lamented how difficult it was getting to work on time on 'his weeks', getting the kids dressed dropped off at different schools and organising lunches and dinners. The women in the office used to laugh at this and we often said to him 'welcome to the world of single mothers'. Later even he acknowledged he did not realise how hard it was for his partner until he shared the responsibility. Now both work and share care easing the pressure on one parent. That is the ideal if work arrangements can accommodate family breakdown.

This is not a reflection on the single father but more about why single mothers are not supported (socially/psychologically) in the same way. Despite the negative commentary, it is not teen mums that make up the majority of single mothers.

And in the case of divorce very commonly women are blamed for the increasing breakdown of family (unless I have spent too much time on OLO) even if it is the father that has left many times without contributing to the ongoing care of the children.

Whatever the reason for family breakdown, there is more to single parenting than finding someone to blame like adapting to new challenges in work arrangements to accommodate those changes.

i doubt many single parent mothers 'dump' the child on their parents (mother) so that they can continue to live their lives in public housing without the hourly-daily responsibility of the child. as one participant in this discussion says, the vast bulk of single parents (mothers) are those who have been in a relationship, frequently de jure marriage) who are deserted.

contrary to the contention (not made by the author but by a contributor to this discussion) that single parent families are the source of crime, disfunction, etc - this is to stigmatise unwarrantedly children coming from one parent homes and one parent homes as a whole. research does not support this notion (indeed, research establishes to the contrary), which is a stereotype based upon something other than the facts, viz prejudice.

many of those in high level positions or who are contributing solidly to the community and the economy generally, are from one parent homes. it would not take much to name many of them - a not insignificant number being men. so many men who have an appreciation of the contribution made by women - particularly women as single parents - are men who have been brought up in such constellations. they recognise the strength and commitment of their mothers to ensuring the family unit (one parent family unit) is a cohesive, well-functioning body frequently supporting innovative and positive thinkers within the ranks.

cont.
the reality of present day society is that the family is constituted by many forms of relationship. if 'the family' is to be supproted then the one parent family must be supported in ways that are positive, constructive and pragmatic, rather than prejudiced, stereotypical and judgmental. if people really care/cared about children, then they would not indulge their prejudices by seeking to stigmatise children born in circumstances where they will or may grow up with one parent only. sadly, some contributors to this discussion appear to come from a perspective which albeit on the one hand professing to be supportive of 'the family' and of children, on the other engage in prejudiced notions that are detrimental to children's wellbeing and do not recognise the realities of the position of marriaged women who are, too often, 'one husband away from welfare' (per betty friedan).

Spot on Jewely