Lone Mothers, Paid Workers, and Gendered Moral Rationalities

## Acknowledgements ix We have many people to thank. It is common practice to start with acknowledgements for academic support and to finish with thanks to family. However, we would like to start with our parents, none of whom made any direct contribution to the book. Ros's parents -Jean and Michael Joseph -provided her with longstanding opportunities to indulge in vigorous debate of political and moral issues, including those around lone motherhood. Simon's parents -Helen and Duncencouraged him to look. The research project that provides the backbone of this book was fund by the Economic and Social Research Council (grant no. R00023496001). We would like to thank the members of the project advisory group: Graham Crow (Southampton University), Kieran Murphy (Gingerbread) and Bonnie Ure (London Borough of Southwark) for their support. Cilizia Armstrong-Gibbons, Joan Astill, Hope Banton, Laura Hart and Elizabeth Hibberts carried out interviews with groups of British lone mothers for us. Ulla Björnberg, Alina Tuvenäs and Sigrid Wall interviewed lone mothers and provided us with data for Göteborg, and Louise Gerber helped us with translating the scripts. Martha de Acosta organised interviews with lone mothers and provided us with data for Cleveland (USA). Claudia Neusüss interviewed lone mothers in Berlin, and she and Monika Zulauf provided us with data. Thanks as well to Tom Browne for his help in producing the SAR data, and to Simon Gleave for the LS data provided by the ONS. Terry Allen collated day care and employment data for our British case study area. Jane Pugh supported us throughout the project in drawing up maps and graphs and being ready to change and amend them in line with the evolution of the book. Thanks also to Annabelle Buckley at Macmillan for being patient with delays. Many academic colleagues also provided us with opportunities to discuss our research, or commented on drafts of articles or chapters for this book. In particular, we would like to thank Frances Cleaver, Graham Crow (once again), David Donnison, Robert Eastwood, Susan Himmelweit, Diane Perrons, Fiona Williams, and members of the Women's Workshop on Family/Household Research. Final responsibility for the arguments here, or any errors or omissions, of course lies with us as authors. ix 'chaotic concepts' -concepts which have little parallel with actual causal relations. 'Lone mothers' may be just such a concept. For both these reasons -arguing from form to process, and the misidentification of substantive, causal groups -research based around taxonomic difference is in serious danger of neglecting process and of misappropriating cause. Rather, we need to go inside the 'closed box' (sometimes called the 'black box') of the category lone mothers and examine social differences and social behaviour within it. In this book we take a multi-layered context-action model for understanding the various dynamics and processes by which lone mothers do, or do not, combine motherhood and paid work. We therefore address both structural forms and the subjectivity and agency of lone mothers themselves, paying attention to the variety of social and material contexts such as social class, ethnicity and geographical location in which lone mothers are situated. This discussion of research approach also has policy implications. Lone mothers are not an homogeneous group in terms of social characteristics, and it is not always lone motherhood that determines their behaviour. It is therefore extremely unlikely that, as a categorical group, they will hold similar views and respond to policy developments in similar ways. Unfortunately, this is the assumption held by both conservative new right and Fabian social policy analyses and proposals. In so far as more 'communitarian' approaches like the British 'New Labour' Welfare to Work programme draw on these \* ethnicity defined as in 1991 Census (Black Other includes Black British and some small, miscellaneous groups) + including self-employed with employees Source: 1991 household SAR, authors' calculations. perspectives, then the same mistake will be replicated. It may be that social policy needs to dispense with the chaotic concept 'lone mothers' altogether. ## Extensive and Intensive Research -Mixing Quantitative and Qualitative Data Going inside the 'closed box' of the taxonomic group 'lone mothers', and placing emphasis on direct access to process, has implications for research design and methods. These are usefully summarised by the distinction between 'extensive ' and 'intensive' research (Sayer 1984, 1992). The former refers to research which aims to describe overall patterns and distinguishing features, for example the characteristics of a population. Taxonomic groups are the type of group studied usually (though not necessarily) using quantitative data from large scale surveys including official statistics. While producing representative description, this design is weak on explanatory power, that is on how something happens. Intensive research in contrast seeks to find out how a process happened by focusing on what agents actually do. It focusses on substantive process connections in causal, social groups rather than taxonomic groups. Taking a close-up look, it can better identify processes and mechanisms, going beyond simple association. It is often 'local' in that it deals with the complexities of social action in context, usually (although again not necessarily) employing indepth case study and qualitative methods. Each research design has different strengths and weaknesses, and are therefore more or less appropriate to different research questions. In this way they should be seen as complimentary. Unfortunately, and unhelpfully, they are usually regarded as lying in opposition to one another. This is particularly evident in the strict division often made between 'hard' quantitative, and 'soft' qualitative, data and methods (see Brannen, 1992). There are three problems here. First of all, the complimentarity of the two research designs is lost. Secondly, the reduction of research design (what the research is able to do) to techniques and methods (how the research is undertaken) in itself exacerbates the division. There is no necessity that a particular research technique or method is limited to either intensive or extensive research. Thirdly, and most unfortunately, there have been strong tendencies to privilege one design over another. Usually this has taken the form of seeing extensive research and quantitative methods as somehow superior, partly because of its associations with economic 6 Lone Mothers 8 Lone Mothers nicity and 'conventionality'. As discussed earlier, much previous work on the uptake of paid work by British lone mothers, in focusing on characteristics such as housing tenure, educational level or employment experience, has an unspoken concern with social class issues. Why are British lone mothers less likely to be in paid work than in most other western countries? And is 'welfare to work' the right sort of policy response? This book sets out to answer questions like these through in-depth analysis of how lone mothers negotiate the relationship between motherhood and paid work. Combining qualitative and quantitative data, it focuses on social capital in different neighbourhoods, local labour markets and welfare states, and throughout makes particular comparisons with lone mothers in Germany, Sweden and the USA. In so doing, the book provides a critique of conventional economic accounts of decision-making, and posits an alternative concept of 'gendered moral rationality' which can better account for lone mothers' labour market behaviour. It also sets up a new framework for understanding political and policy discourses about lone motherhood, and develops a concept of 'genderfare' with which to understand national policy differences Front Matter....Pages i-ix Explaining the ‘Problem’ of Lone Motherhood: an Introduction....Pages 1-22 Understanding Lone Motherhood: Competing Discourses and Positions....Pages 23-64 Lone Mothers in Neighbourhoods: Material Contexts and Social Capital....Pages 65-107 Lone Mothers and Gendered Moral Rationalities: Orientations to Paid Work....Pages 108-143 Lone Mothers and Paid Work: Human Capital or Gendered Moral Rationalities?....Pages 144-177 Lone Mothers in Labour Markets: Employment Availability and Geography....Pages 178-210 Lone Mothers and Genderfare: Positioning Lone Mothers in Welfare States....Pages 211-252 Economic Decision-making and Moral Rationalities....Pages 253-280 From National ‘Welfare to Work’ to Local ‘Welfare and Work’....Pages 281-298 Back Matter....Pages 299-333 "Why are British lone mothers less likely to be in paid work than in most other western countries? And is welfare to work the right sort of policy response? This book sets out to answer questions like these through in-depth analysis of how lone mothers negotiate the relationship between motherhood and paid work. Combining qualitative and quantitative data, it focuses on social capital in different neighbourhoods, local labour markets and welfare states, and throughout makes particular comparisons with lone mothers in Germany, Sweden and the USA. In so doing, the book provides a critique of conventional economic accounts of decision-making, and posits an alternative concept of gendered moral rationality which can better account for lone mothers' labour market behaviour."--BOOK JACKET. Why are most British lone mothers unemployed? And is 'welfare to work' the right sort of policy response? This book provides an in-depth analysis of how lone mothers negotiate the relationship between motherhood and paid work. Combining qualitative and quantitative data, it focuses on social capital in different neighbourhoods, local labour markets and welfare states. Criticising conventional economic theories of decision-making, it posits an alternative concept of 'gendered moral rationality', and sets up new frameworks for understanding national policy differences and discourses about lone motherhood. Duncan (comparative social policy, U. of Bradford, UK) and Edwards (social policy, South Bank U., UK) analyze how single mothers in England negotiate the relationship between motherhood and paid work in order to determine why British single mothers are less likely to be in paid work than in most other countries, and whether or not the policy of welfare to work is actually the best response. They critique conventional economic accounts of decision-making, and provide an alternative (gendered moral rationality), which they suggest can better account for single mothers' labor market behavior.