Reem was a second-generation Lebanese-Australian single parent living solely on Parenting Payment (PP) (single). ‘I hate it, to tell you the truth’, she told me. ‘I hate asking for money, I hate asking for help. I would love to be able to do it on my own and to earn my own money. I just don’t feel comfortable with it. Yes, I do receive money from Centrelink, but I don’t feel comfortable.’

Like Reem, the people I spoke to often qualified their answer by expressing their discomfort when I asked how they felt about receiving welfare payments. Rhetoric about welfare recipients as ‘dole bludgers’ and ‘tax burdens’ insists there is little comfort to be taken in social security. Being comfortable with receiving welfare payments would betray an unforgivable sense of entitlement or lack of aspiration. Reem offered her feelings of unease as testament that she did not take income support for granted and was not resting on her laurels.

Like many studies of class inequality before it, shame ran through a number of my interviews. It was sometimes named outright, but more often expressed as failure, inadequacy, defensiveness, exposure or a sense of being misunderstood. The single mothers I spoke to were among the most keenly aware of being judged. Jasmin acknowledged that PP (single) helped supplement her part-time work and provide for her young children, but she avoided judgement by not telling people about it. She knew first hand how judgement worked: ‘Before I had kids when I had a full-time job that’s how I looked at single mothers too. I thought single mothers were just sitting in a coffee shop drinking and popping out kids. That’s what I thought so I know they’re judging me.’

Jasmin implied that part-time work shielded her from the judgement – ‘That’s why I work’ – but she still ‘felt useless’ going from full-time employment to working part time and having children: ‘It’s different. From full time to part time, from making all this money, now I’m making $700 a fortnight and getting welfare.’ Devaluing the work she was doing didn’t seem to eat away at Jasmin, but it niggled at her sense of satisfaction and achievement.