Lone mothers and lone fathers through history

The chapter will reflect upon forms and characteristics of lone parenting (also lone parenthood) in Western nations. A lone-parent family usually comprises an adult (a woman or a man) living without a partner and with one or more (dependent) children. The parent not living with a spouse or partner has most of the day-to-day responsibilities in raising the child or children. As we will see later on, the last three decades of the 20th century saw a marked increase in the number of lone mothers and fathers and in the interest in this population by social science researchers. Today, lone parents are one of the most challenging family forms (see, eg, Klett-Davies, 2007). In many countries, social workers are increasingly faced with meeting the complex needs of these mothers, fathers and their children.

The term ‘lone’ parent has come into more common use in recent years. As Caballero and Edwards (2010, pp 3–4) write:

Lone parents are certainly not a new phenomenon (Lewis, 1997; Bimbi, 2000; Simoni, 2000; Terragni, 2000; Larkin, 2009). In history, there are different examples of families with children and without one of the two parents, for example: spouses who died prematurely; fathers who moved away from their families; and women who became pregnant without being married (Skevik, 2001). For a long time, unmarried mothers have dominated welfare discourses: they have featured in policies for nearly two centuries. The stigmatisation of single motherhood also pervades the history of welfare discourse: single-parent families traditionally have been deemed a part of the ‘underclass’ – that is, the segment of the population that occupies the lowest possible position in a class hierarchy, usually composed of the disadvantaged – as compared to the nuclear, traditional family (Marsden, 1969).