The inter-connectedness of child poverty and maternal poverty

It has been argued above (section 3.4.1) that models of the ‘unitary household’ must be abandoned in favour of intra-household analysis if a proper

understanding of poverty is to be reached. An analysis of the intra-household aspects of child poverty policies shows that they rely almost entirely on the actions of parents. Wages pass into the hands of parents before they can benefit children, as do state benefits. So, at an intra-household level, parental spending choices are the key determining factor in lifting children out of poverty

(Middleton et al 1994, Gregg et al 2005). Moreover, there is strong evidence to suggest that the working patterns of parents, their physical, emotional and mental health, their aspirations for their children, and their ability to be good parents are all linked to the outcomes of their children (Ridge 2002, Ghate & Hazel 2002, WBG 2005, Katz 2007). As DWP’s Opportunity for All stated: ‘the role of parents and carers is of crucial importance in determining children’s life chances. Parenting can have an impact on a multitude of social policy outcomes including educational attainment, health, levels of anti-social behaviour, crime and later employment potential’ (DWP 2004), while Bradshaw et al’s 2003

review of research and policy on women’s poverty concluded: ‘it is unlikely that targets to … eradicate child poverty … will be achieved unless gender is fully addressed within these policies’ (iii).

Yet despite statements such as these, and a raft of initiatives designed to improve parenting skills, the poverty of parents, and particularly mothers, has received scant attention from the government (Lister 2006, Rake 2001). This lack of interest in the poverty of mothers at government level is mirrored in academia (Warburton-Brown 2010). The literature on the poverty of mothers in their own right, and the connections between poor parents and poor parenting, in the UK context is small. Within the work that has been done in the field, two themes dominate; paid work and single motherhood. Both these areas are important for understanding maternal poverty, but much of this research subtly pathologises poor mothers; they are either defined as lacking a man or lacking a job, both of which are considered undesirable. Yet 62% of households with children below the 60% of median income poverty line have two parents and 55% have an adult in work; only 29% are non-working lone parents (authors’

calculations from DWP 2010, Table 4.3). In fact, what poor mothers lack are resources. Research not dominated by single motherhood or paid work has often focused on the effect that growing up in poverty has on children, rather than on the effect living in poverty has on mothers, as encapsulated in the title Support

for Parents: The Best Start for Children (HM Treasury/DFES 2005). A handful of

books have directly dealt with the day to day lives of poor parents, fathers as well as mothers (Katz 2007, Hooper et al (2007, Ghate & Hazel 2002, and see Attree (2005) for a synthesis of twelve qualitative studies), but no major academic study of maternal poverty in the UK has been published.

The closest thing to an in-depth investigation of mothers’ poverty is the first chapter of Women’s and Children’s Poverty: Making the Links (WBG 2005). Here, Lister reviews almost a hundred studies, academic articles, and government publications dealing with family poverty. Drawing on these, she concludes there is a strong and complex inter-connectedness between maternal and child

poverty. She also finds that poverty has a strong negative effect on the mental and physical health of mothers and the well-being of their relationships. She cites many studies that have made passing reference to maternal poverty, but fewer that have it as their primary interest. Drawing on these, she draws a number of clear conclusions about the inter-connectedness of the poverty of mothers and children which are highly relevant to this PhD:

• Women are more likely to be poor than men (Bradshaw et al 2003)

• The well-being of mothers underpins both children’s development and parents’ employability (Marsh & Vergeris 2004)

• The well-being of children cannot be divorced from that of their mothers (Ridge 2002)

• Poor health, both physical and mental, is more prevalent among the poor and among women. This has a major impact on their parenting abilities (Lister 2004, Graham 1987, Ghate & Hazel 2002)

• Household debt is highly correlated to maternal stress (Kempson 2004 et al)

• The doctrine of maternal self-sacrifice means that mothers are often the most deprived members of a household (Goode et al 1998, Cantillon & Nolan 2001)

• Mothers try hard to protect their children from the stigmatisation

associated with poverty. Where they are unable to do so, they often feel shame and guilt (Ermisch et al 2001, Ghate & Hazel 2002)

• Economic dependency on men makes women liable to deprivation and can trap them in relationships (Pahl 1989, Goode et al 1998, HM Treasury 2004)

• The cost of protecting children from poverty is likely to be high for a mother’s health and morale. This in turn can undermine her parental capacities (Graham 1987, Featherstone 2004, Utting 1995)

• The government’s focus on parenting programmes largely ignores the issue of maternal poverty (HM Treasury 2004)

• Mother’s poor mental and physical health is likely to have a serious impact on their ability to find and keep paid work, the key route out of poverty in the government’s anti-poverty strategy (Marsh 2001)

• Mothers’ employment income is often critical in keeping a household out of poverty, and getting more mothers into work should therefore remain a government priority (Marsh & Vergeris 2004, Millar & Gardiner 2004)

Lister concluded that it was time for government to include the poverty of mothers in their strategy for addressing the poverty of children, and the weight of studies she assembled to support this argument is hard to dispute. However, right up until the end of New Labour’s time in power there were no explicit plans or policies for dealing with the poverty of mothers (Lister 2006).

3.6 Conclusion

A study of the literature on women and low-income has revealed that women’s poverty has tended to be hidden, and although now more visible it is still hard to measure. Women are generally poorer than men, and experience poverty for longer periods, but there is little agreement about how much poorer women are than men, or how their material circumstances are best measured. The greater incidence of poverty among women is linked to their position in the labour market: women’s wages are generally lower than men’s and women workers are concentrated in low paying, part time jobs. Moreover, caring responsibilities fall unequally on women, further limiting their access to the labour market. Women

are heavily over-represented in the poorest households: single parents and single pensioners.

Although lacking an explicit focus on reducing women’s poverty, the family income policies of New Labour governments did transfer considerable resources directly to women through the National Minimum Wage, Working Tax Credit, Child Tax Credit and increased Child Benefit. Other policies also had some success in getting more women into work. However, what policy can achieve may be restricted by the normative and cultural issues underpinning a mother’s decision to enter or stay out of the labour market. Moreover, the exact effects of these policies on low income women cannot be established because poverty and income are measured at the household level.

A number of studies have suggested that there is reason to believe that women often receive a lower level of resources within households, but the way data on poverty is collected makes it extremely difficult to measure this. Indeed no effective statistical measure has yet been devised for measuring the material circumstances of women within households, although clear criteria for such a measure do exist. Nevertheless, understanding intra-household income

distribution is crucial to understanding the material circumstances of mothers.

Finally, the poverty and well-being of mothers is intimately connected to the poverty and well-being of their children, a connection that has been generally ignored in government policy, and at best dealt with only indirectly. It has also been under researched in academic work. Indeed there are major gaps in the literature dealing with maternal poverty as a whole, with existing work focussing on single mothers and/or parents on benefit. Mothers in couple families have been much less studied. There is also an almost total absence of studies

considering women in households just above the poverty line, described in this study as lower income families. As a result, this literature review has had to draw solely on studies dealing with women in poverty.

These findings have identified four central themes to be addressed in this PhD. First is the impact of government policy on the women in the study group and in particular the extent to which increased income transfers from the state have

benefited them and their families. Second is their relationship to paid work. How do they feel about undertaking paid work? What sort of jobs are available to them? How do they balance paid work with their caring responsibilities? And what are their normative attitudes to reconciling paid work and caring work? All of these questions need to be explored with the women in the study group. A third key issue is that of intra-household income distribution. Current measures of poverty and/or material deprivation at household level do not adequately address the possibility that some household members have unequal access to household resources. Addressing this means devising a method for measuring material deprivation for the mothers in the study group as individuals as well as for their households, answering the challenge laid down by Payne. This issue is further explored in the next chapter, where the focus moves to the literature on intra-household income distribution, and the discussion is completed in Chapter Five where the material deprivation measure developed for use in the study is explained. The fourth issue is the impact that living on a limited income has on mothers. A small but consistent body of literature has shown that mothering on an inadequate income has serious implications for both a mother and her

children. These questions take the study beyond the everyday practicalities of women’s lives and into areas dealing with emotional well-being and the

relationships between family members. Such sensitive issues need to be explored with the women in the study group.

While many previous studies have dealt with women in poverty and parenting on a low income, two major gaps are apparent in the literature; there is no notion of lower income families as worthy of study in their own right and there are almost no studies explicitly focused on poor mothers in couple families. This PhD therefore has the potential to explore two areas ignored by existing scholarship. In short, studies focussing on the financial circumstances of mothers in lower income families are entirely missing from the existing literature.

Chapter 4