Introduction

As in many other European countries, the number of lone-parent families has considerably increased in France over the past three decades (Martin, 1997; Chambaz, 2000). As a group, they became more visible with the adoption of a new terminology to identify them. The expression ‘singleparent’ or ‘lone-parent family’ (famille monoparentale) was adopted by sociologists in France relatively late (the mid-1970s), compared to Anglo- Saxon countries, to describe the situation where one parent takes care of one or several children. Such families were previously divided into narrower and more confused categories according to marital status and moral standards, or mixed together in the category of ‘dissociated families’ (except widows) (Lefaucheur and Martin, 1993, 1997).

During the same period, the mid-1970s, French family policies were reformed to support these more fragile households. A new allowance, the Allocation de parent isolé (API) (Lone parent allowance), was created in 1976 to guarantee a minimum income for all lone-parent families (mainly with young children) whose resources were under a pre-defined threshold. We may consider this new policy as a real turning point in French family policy, in the sense that the objective became more to support poorer families, and less to compensate for the cost of children, regardless of the household's level of resources. Other means-tested benefits were created at the same time, like the ‘new school year allowance’ (allocation de rentrée scolaire), to give additional support to the more disadvantaged.

The API was firmly criticised in the mid-1980s. Some argued that it has pernicious or perverse effects. The beneficiaries of the API were suspected of hiding the existence of a new partner or even that they would ‘schedule’ a new birth to continue to receive the benefit. Dependency on this lone-parent benefit, mostly by young lone mothers, was firmly condemned (Sullerot, 1984) and some plans to abolish the API were formulated, but never enacted. One of the main issues was the apparent failure of that policy to encourage access to work and thus the possibility that it would create a risk of reinforcing the economic dependency of these women on the state. This issue of disincentive to work still exists in the 1990s, but the percentage of employed lone parents (including lone mothers), which is still high, has weakened the argument. Employment rates have not declined and, as in 1990, almost seven in 10 lone mothers were working in 2000.