The paid work/unpaid work equation

Modern welfare states have been constructed around the paid work/welfare relationship. Just as governments have always been most concerned about the structure of incentives and disincentives that impinge on the able-bodied worker, so the core social policies of modern income maintenance systems have hinged on the relationship of the individual to the labour market. Carol Pateman (1988) has argued that the very definition of citizenship in the modern state rests on the idea of independence, which is defined in terms of the ability to earn a wage. But this raises in rather an acute form both the welfare and citizenship status of those who have been and are marginal to the labour market, especially if they are able-bodied adults with no obvious reason not to be in employment.

Historically, many countries did not expect mothers to go out to work. Central to the post-war welfare settlement was the idea of a male breadwinner model family, in which it was assumed that women would in the main be dependent on their husbands, an assumption that was inscribed in the whole social security system. Under such an assumption, lone mothers as a group posed particular problems. As women with children and without men, were they to be treated as mothers or workers? In strong male breadwinner countries, they tended in the post-war period to be treated as mothers (Lewis, 1998). Thus in the UK and in the Netherlands lone mothers in receipt of benefits were not required to register for work so long as they had a child under 16 years of age. In countries where the male breadwinner assumptions were rapidly modified, as in Sweden, or were less pervasive, as in France, lone mothers have been less likely to be treated categorically. There is evidence that in those countries that adhered to the male breadwinner-based assumptions longest and that chose to treat lone mothers as mothers there has recently been a pendulum swing in attitudes towards treating them as workers. This has been most striking in the UK and the Netherlands, where both governments moved in 1996 towards treating lone mothers in receipt of benefit as workers rather than as mothers (see Chapter Ten of this book).