“When mothers are partnered the shared demands of earning and family care mean more choices around the division of labour between the couple.”

I would agree with that, and a family with a mother and a father normally means more choices and opportunities for all concerned:- for the mother, the father and the children. Such families are normally wealthier and happier.

The present rate of single parent families is mostly because of divorce and separation, with some studies indicating that at least 40% of couples latter regretting that they divorced or separated in the first place.

Feminists have been of minimal help, as they have long advocated the replacement of marriage with de facto or ad hoc relationships, resulting in increased rates of poverty, child abuse, STD’s, DV etc. In effect, marriage has been replaced by a whole range of often unsolvable social and economic problems.

Trying to accommodate so many single parent families is proving unviable, so maybe society should go back to basics, put feminism to one side, and revisit marriage.

Regardless of what we might wish the rates of marriage to be in our society, we are faced with the fact of single parents.

But, if a child's environment is insufficiently resourced socially or economically it faces an uphill battle. That applies for issue of large families or small, and for single parents of whatever ilk.

When economic fundamentalism impacts negatively upon the time, loving attention, and adequate care which is necessary for grooming childrens' development - the results become harshly manifest in the educational establishments.

Don Aitkin's recent article on education follows the nature/nurture theme from there

Timkins
You do need to understand that it was not feminists who set about creating high divorce rates and destroying the family as you know and love it.

It was ordinarly women who realised that they should not have to accept a life in which there is no chance of happiness or fulfilment for them.

There happen to be a lot of very unpleasant and badly behaved men out there and the fact that women lose income and all sorts of other benefits when leaving a marriage should indicate to you, that divorce is not a lifestyle choice made by women hoodwinked by feminist propaganda.

Do you think women should have to go back to accepting violence and abuse in silence for the sake of the marriage. Perhaps it is men who need to change so that marriage provides satisfaction for both parties?

Compelling sole parent pensioners to return to work is discriminatory on 3 levels:

1 - against children from separated marriages, in terms of parenting
2 - against parents who are doing it on their own, in favour of parents who are married to a high income earning partner and get FTB-B
3 - against custodial parents in favour of non-custodial parents, who face no such compulsion even though so many are apparently unemployed.

I fully support increasing opportunities for sole parents to achieve economic security. On divorce or separation, custodial parents' responsibilities for the day to day physical and emotional care presently provide very limited opportunities to 'move on' in terms of getting decent jobs, repartnering, etc. In stark contrast to a non-custodial parent.

Apparently, most non-custodial parents are unemployed or very low income earners(40% of Child support payers pay $22 a month in Child support). So, WHY is the Government not targeting them, rather than (or at least as well as) the custodial parents who are in fact already working raising kids (benefiting the children and society, and severely limiting their own prospects as a consequence)?

What is that 40% of non-custodial parents doing with their time, and in terms of meeting their responsibilities to their children? What example are they setting to their children, by not being employed? Or alternatively, by fixing the books to hide their income and their responsibilities?

Why are they allowed to just walk away from their responsibilities to provide for their children financially and set them good examples, while the custodial parents are labeled bludgers who are setting poor examples to their children, and have to take the whole can - caring for kids and 'paid' work? With little community support for them to do so?

I find this extraordinary.

Mollydukes seems to think that most divorces are caused by the violence of men. Well they're not. Alot of men are violent pigs but most divorces are not because of violence.

If a couple with children wishes to divorce why is it up to the government to make sure they can do this with as little change to their lifestyles as possible? Surely if you're big and mature enough to break up a family you can recognise that some lifestyle changes are inevitable. Such as the non-custodial parent will have reduced time with their children and the custodial parent will have to go to work to provide for their family. Why is it so inhuman to expect single parents to work?

Two parents in a household makes life easier. One parent makes life harder. There's nothing that the government can or should do about it.

Dear oh dear, "Timkins" is banging on about the evil feminists who spoiled his marriage again. How boring, guess I'll tune him out again - which is a bit of a shame really, since he occasionally has a good idea.

Mollydukes,
I would agree with Bozie that “abuse” is only a minor reason for single parent families.

The principle reason is divorce and separation, and the principle reasons for divorce and separation are “Affective issues” according to the study at http://www.aifs.gov.au/institute/pubs/WP20tables.html#table3 . This includes such things as “Communication”, “Incompatability”, “Affairs” etc. Interestingly, both males and females report almost identical %’s in this area. This means that both males and females should improve in this area, as marriage is highly important for the good of society.

From what I have seen, feminist propaganda is almost always anti-male and anti-marriage, and I have seen almost nothing from feminists that is pro-male and pro-marriage. Feminists should therefore begin to closely study their own communication and their own often biased research, before they talk about “discrimination”.

The government program to encourage single parents to work may / may not be greatly constructive, but encouraging more marriage and less divorce and seperation would be better in the long term one would think.

The Women's refuge I escaped to from my husband was government funded.

The single parents pension I received for 3 years, helped me to re-establish myself.

The student allowance I received while at college assisted with my degree.

My mother looked after my then young children - there were very few child care centres and beyond my means anyway.

The point is single parents need both support and encourgement to re-enter the work force and recover from the break up of their relationship (regardless of who ever is at fault it is painful for both parties). A civilised society takes care of its people that is why we have government. If people are left to flounder then all too often the result is misery, depression and criminal behaviour.

I believe in equal opportunity for both men and women - our government is the instrument through which legislation can be made to assist this ideal.

People can work hard 'do the right thing' and still life can trip them up through no fault of their own. If there are no agencies in place (such as refuges) these people may well fail.

It is very hard for single parents raising children it is in our best interests to care for our people. This means a supportive system for parents to find work - a punitive approach is not the way.

Garra, Timkins does have some good ideas and I guess in this issue, he is responding with the same personal insights about the causes of single parents, that I (and Ringtail) are.

There may be a minority of marriages that break up due to male violence but when yours is one of them, it is difficult to see the statistics as being more ‘real’ than one’s own experience.

I guess this is the same for Timkins and he can’t see that feminism is not the problem.

Bozzie, you are wrong because there is a lot that governments could and should do about making life easier for the single parents of either gender. The result of poor parenting is children who grow up to be poor and inadequate individuals and a burden on us all, even if we don’t provide them with welfare.

They will still be a burden in the increased crime and social problems poorly socialised individuals create.

Some people are unfortunate enough not to have family or friends that they can rely on.

In a decent society that benefits us all in the long run the government provides a safety net

Mollydukes, thanks for your most recent post on this topic. Your earlier one left me with the impression that you thought male violence was the main issue in modern family breakup, thanks for clearing that up.

I agree that feminism is not itself the problem. There were some really important issues which needed (not saying all are done with either) to be addressing in regard to gender equality. Valuing people for who they are rather than what gender they have.

As you pointed out in your post it is easy to see the whole situation through the filters of our own experience.

In my case I had a sometimes violent wife (thankfully my experience was no where near as bad as Ringtails). In my search for understanding I have formed the view that she treated family life as a smorgasboard. She wanted and demanded the benefits of both feminism and the old approach. Lots of rights and few responsibilities. The image that continues to come to mind is the demand to be treated as the little princess. Part time work for her, sharing of housework and child raising (but key decisions about both should be hers alone), outside work is mens work and not her responsibility and a continual insistance that she make the major decisions about the families finances (ever increasiong debt).

Post separation/divorce - she moved to another area (after I bought a house) which made the demands of shared parenting very difficult on the child and involving him in the issues enough to do him real harm. The milking of the system continues with a coresponding reduction in my role as a dad and ongoing financial burden to myself and other taxpayers.

Not feminism, just abuse. The safety net should take some account of how people got to need it, not be a tool for the self centered.

Mollydukes,
You started out believing that divorce and single parent families mostly occur because of abusive husbands, but it was pointed out to you in the link provided, that only 25% of divorced women actually listed abuse as a reason for their divorce. 75% didn’t, but feminists have routinely portrayed males as being abusive, and your prior beliefs about husbands and divorce should indicate to you just how pervasive that propaganda has become.

If someone puts to one side any pre-conceived notions that fathers are abusers, dead beat dads etc, they may see situations differently.

In the case of encouraging single mothers back into the workforce, there could also be a case of inequity for fathers:- if it is looked at from a father’s viewpoint.

If the woman is a single parent, then she can receive various government pensions and subsidies, and it appears that this list will grow as the government develops programs to retrain single parent women back into the workforce. She will also be receiving child support paid by the father (although he will most likely have no say in how that money is spent).

A married woman receives very little of these government pensions and subsidies, and if she stays at home then this will be paid for by the husband, and if she wants to go back into the workforce, then it is likely that the husband will have to pay for any retraining as well.

From the father’s viewpoint, he is always paying out. He becomes the workhorse and paypacket no matter what the situation. He presently has few choices available, and he will get almost no government support, recognition or even acknowledgement.

Marriage is there for a reason, because anything else becomes too complex and does not work very well for society as a whole, but the concern by many men about the propaganda that is so often being thrown at them (eg abuser, dead beat dad etc) can be better understood when looked at from the male’s viewpoint.

"At the moment we have hundreds of thousands of Australians of working age who have no obligation to look for work even though they are capable of it and that's going to be the focus," Mr Costello said yesterday.
(From ‘The Age’ 10/05/05)

The question to be asked is, ‘Why is this the focus of the budget?’. At this point in time, we have roughly 5% unemployment, and untold numbers of people who are under-employed. A significant number of these people are desperately seeking work, but are unable to find it. This is because there just isn’t enough work available for the ammount of people who are seeking it.
So what is to be gained by forcing the stay at home mothers and disabled people, to become job-seekers? Or forcing the unemployed to look harder for jobs? These initiatives are not focused on creating more jobs, they are about enlarging the pool of people who are looking for the existing ammount of jobs. The Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry has been complaining for a while about ‘wages pressure’. Now if the pool of job-seekers is enlarged, competition for jobs will increase, which will probably result in ‘wages pressure’ being eased. In other words, more job seekers means lower wages for workers.

But there is also a secondary purpose to these measures. The Federal government, by demonising welfare recipients of any description, is preparing the public for cuts to welfare payments. The Nine Network’s A.C.A. has been assisting with this demonisation lately, by running stories about ‘lazy’ unemployed people.

At the same time, the Government is hinting that it is about to cut taxes for the wealthy.

So there is a clear, two pronged agenda emerging here. On the one hand the Federal government is trying to look after its wealthy business partners, by keeping wages low. At the same time, it is depriving money from the most needy groups in our society, to provide tax cuts to its wealthy constituency.

Well done guss! That is a very perceptive analysis.

RObert sorry if I gave the impression that I think all men are violent. Like Ringtail, I was married to a violent man but I have sons and I do not hate men by any means.

It certainly is a difficult issue to know how to 'punish' the badly behaved parent without punishing the kids.

I brought up the topic of violent men because I think Timkins needs to see the other side.

My ex never paid any child support. He would only work for contractors who paid cash. I never denied him access.

He would make arrangements to come and pick up the kids and then not turn up mostly because he got too drunk or stoned.

I didn't refuse him access even after this. After the first couple of times it happened, we prepared ourselves for the eventuality that he wouldn't come and had an alternative activity planned to ammeliorate their dissapointment.

I know that he was and is simply too damaged himself to have been able to do any better.

There really are a lot of unhappy badly behaved people out there and I think (as a psychology graduate who, like Ringtail got this while on welfare bringing up 3 kids) it is all down to the quality of the parenting.

Talk

guss, part of this might be an attempt to change the perception some have of welfare away from being a "right" and have it seen as a safety net provided for those who really need it.

There are some (and I'm not going to try and guess what percentage) who see welfare (and associated bits) as a legitimate alternative to medium levels of income.

Working full time in a fairly well paying job I was not netting much more than the ex when she was working one day a week and we were doing shared care once Income tax, C$A payments, FTB (A&B), single parents pension, rent assistance etc were allowed for. She has now suceeded in reducing my time with my son by a variety of means (moving away, PAS etc) so I am guessing that some of those payments will go up. Government support is seen as a legitimate alternative to supporting herself and carrying her share of the cost of raising our son.

Somehow we need to cater for the genuinely needy (parents left with most of the care of their kids by the other parent) and at the same time ensure that those who try and milk the system miss out.

Guss,
I would agree that the government is primarily looking at the dollar, as it has rarely mentioned the growing number of single parent families in the past. From a social aspect I have some concerns regards so many children going to day care centres or coming home to an empty house (because their one and only parent is at work).

Perhaps government should also be initiating programs to reduce the number of single parent families. Eg:- reduce the amount of divorce and separation by 10% every 5 years. One can imagine how well off society would be now if such a program was initiated 20 yrs ago.

Mollydukes,
It appears that you have gone to the next stage of trying to justify the number of single parent families. First start by inferring that fathers are abusive. Should this be disproven, then try and infer that fathers do not make proper parents. There can be other inferences made also:- eg children do not need fathers, men are not interested in children etc.

At all times never regard males as being disadvantaged in any way, and never make any positive comments regards the male gender unless absolutely necessary. It is the essence of feminism, and is widely used within feminist indoctrination and propaganda.

However I cannot see how over 760,000 single parent families in Australia (most of which are welfare dependant in some way) provides for quality parenting.

RObert there are those who see welfare as their 'right' and this is not a useful way to see things, but I object to the punitive way that this goverment is going about addressing this problem and wonder if it is really a problem?

The current policy only creates fear and more unnecessary divisions between the haves and those who consider themselves to be have nots.

It seems to me that your experience is from a more 'middle class' perspective. My perspective is from the 'welfare class'. When these families split, there are no assets to divide up etc.

Some of the resulting single parents are totally incapable of organising their lives so that they can find work as well as deal with their children. If there is some provision to equip them with the knowledge and confidence to do organise their lives so that the kids get looked after, then it could be a good thing.

The fact is that some of these parents (and I don't think we need to google for statistics) have never been in a family in which anyone worked. Their parents were part of the generation when there was 11% unemployment and come from areas in which there still is 30 - 40% unemployment.

I still believe this move is more to do with providing a larger pool of workers to oil the wheels of the economy and that the attitude is that there have to be losers and they don't matter all that much in comparison to the bigger picture.

I really is so unfortunate that some parents deliberately make life difficult for their former partners. So much emotion and hurt and lack of any attmept to see the other point of view, underlies and contributes to these actions. It seems impossible to remember that once the two people loved each other.

The problem is not that single mothers don't want to go outside and work, besides bringing up their precious offspring, it's just that they have no-one to help them do so.

Answer.

Get the Grandparents more involved! Give them more incentives for helping out.

And people with no relatives or helpful friends around them, of course should not be expected to work.

Latch Key children due to no example of unity or loyalty from the home would soon turn into criminals, resulting in even greater monetary costs for the government

I think there is a problem with measuring someone's worth by whether or not the have a 'proper job'. The very reason we pay taxes is so that we can live in a civilised country, where the vulnerable can be protected from the extremes of poverty. Some may see it as a bit of an indulgence, but I think that if we can afford to keep parents at home looking after their kids, then this is a good use of tax revenue. It is a great thing that we are lucky enough to be able to do this. It is much better to spend the money in this way if we've got it, than to return it to people earning $125,000 p.a. (or more), who don't really need it.
The welfare state is a good thing - it shows that we have advanced to a level whereby we can afford to properly look after the needy and the vulnerable, and we all benefit from this. If some people become 'dependant' on it, then is that really such a bad thing? The consequences of welfare dependancy are not so great, that we need to punish entire sections of our society who genuinely need assistance.

We need to get families HELPING one another more, not KICKING them out into the workforce and further disintegrating children's sense of a LOVING home, where someone is always there to hear them or where they can just play or 'hang out' in peace.

Will taking this away from the children and handing them over to 'professional child care workers', create peaceful, happy people? Or will it just predispose these single parent children to anger, and a lack of purpose to contribute to this country in the future and work themselves? Without family and friends to love with you, what is the purpose of contributing or working at all?

In other words, WHAT IS WORK FOR?

Is it not to labour and then enjoy the fruits of that labour? Doesn't Peter Costello know that 'All Work and No Play makes Jack a Dull Boy?'

If the Government really wants to do the smart thing and allow parents to get out there into the 'workforce', without the resulting neglect to children's emotional and physical needs, they should be encouraging the older generation of Australian family and relatives to get more involved, and give them money and incentives to want and be able to do so more effectively. The wealth of wisdom and information stored in these 'old' people, is just phenomenal and should be tapped to inspire and teach our young people to be even more creative and hard working.

Let's not discriminate against the children of poor people and take away the meaning of what a true, caring, close knit family is, just because their parents can no longer live together.

Australia isn't the greatest, most peaceful country in the world to live in by accident. It's BECAUSE we believe in the welfare system, that we are so blessed with all our wonderful, money generating creativity. (Eg musicians, movie stars, some of the best markets in the world).

So if older relatives were given more inspiration to help bring up Australia's children, then even more creativity and wealth would abound!

Regardless of what E. McInnes says in the article the one certain trend is that the institution of marriage is dying.

The only issue left is having a child and how the care of the children is to be protected from aggressive take-over acts by one parent for personal and financial gain the current active system results in which to current statistics the aggressor to break parent-child relationship is the mother in close to 90% in some studies.

You can only kick a dog that many times before it starts to react and then I suppose you can ignore your responsibility for why the situation is where it is and limit the context to what suits you and get a great big gang of supporters to back you still does not change the accountability for acts.

We are heading for a huge social upheaval resultant from the traumatized hearts of our children in the past and current which is no longer acceptable. This is the main point and primary context and so articles such as these that ignores the real human trauma are just another one that supports the current brutality and should be treated as such... not registering at all on my scale on importance.

Sam

Children are not cash cows, or employment opportunities; nor are they accessories. Men have always understood this. It is time more women did so.

Seeker, your comment reveals such a black hole of ignorance that it truly sucked words from my mind. I don't even know where to begin to respond to you, that there are men out there who truly think that. 'Accessories, cash cows?' Do you get out much?

I know this is a lousy post but then maybe it is an appropriate response to seeker's.

Think I'll just show seeker's post to my kids.

GOOD LUCK to the schools trying to control all the resulting unparented children!

GOOD LUCK to all us citizens having to protect our property and selves from them too!

People who rely on the old age pension (and all others who have parented children), have a duty of care to their children's children, if needed.

NOW is when they need your help Grandparents!

Now why doesn't the Government encourage Grandparents to get more involved with the day to day care of their Grandchildren? It would solve so many child care headaches, and other older people who would love to help with children who don't have Grandparents available to help due to distance or ill health for example, could apply to be carers and be given incentives and benefits for doing so.

How much more soul filling than going down to the local RSL and playing the pokies, or caravaning around Australia every month or so.

What do you think Kay Patterson, Kevin Andrews and Peter Costello? Sound feasible?

If Single Parents are going to be denied money to care for their children if they don't find work, then Old Aged Grandparents receiving the Old Age Pension should be responsible for the same amount of child care. 15 hours per week. Fair?

KidsNeedParents

Grandparents who want to care for their grandchildren will be doing just that. You can't force grandparents to care for their grandchildren. In fact, just because they're grandparents doesn't make them an appropriate carer for a grandchild, particularly if they resent being coerced into care.

I don't know where to start with these male posters who are claiming the moral high ground in relation to marriage. Who doesn't want a successful marriage?

Possibly that attitude of moral superiority is an example of behaviour within marriage that makes conflict unresolvable.