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London lone parents' choices around work and care
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Annual Review 2006/07
We work to help many different types of family: here one parent talks about her experience of raising a family on her own.
Single mother Felicity Wallis has been divorced and widowed and has three children, the youngest of whom is 14. She's just started a job working 16 hours each week but until recently she was pretty much parenting full time.
'No parent would choose to live in the poverty of Income Support if it could possibly be helped, yet no good parent would abandon their children during the time they are most needing security,' she says. 'I have dedicated everything I have to bringing up my children on my own and have felt that this was the most important service I could do for them and for society as a whole. The price that I have paid for being a full-time parent is that I have no pension and no financial security for the future, but the first 16 years of a child's life are crucial if we want sensible adults in our community. I believe the financial cost of supporting parents to be at home with their children - if they want to be - is minimal compared to the long-term effects of having unhappy and insecure adolescents. At least by spending time together we have been happy, if poor.'
During the year, we carried out research for the London Child Poverty Commission (LCPC) into lone parents' choices around work and care, which will be published by the LCPC on 31 October 2007. The project interviewed working and non-working lone parents living in London. Here is a selection of their comments about the difficulties of balancing work with bringing up children as a lone parent:
- 'I know I found it very isolating once I became a lone parent. I was climbing the walls. That was what motivated me to go out and change my job really. To have the social aspect.'
Irma (working)
- 'Raising a child is contributing to the economy. You know, you are raising a future tax payer, at the end of the day.'
Milly (working)
- 'It was very difficult when my kids were small because I really was working for nothing. I wasn't any better off because of paying nursery fees and childminders' fees.'
Alice (working)
- '[If you're working] you still have to look after your children and make sure they've got everything and done their homework and all that sort of stuff, and then go to work and come back and do all the other stuff. And there comes a point where you can crack a little bit.'
Janet (working)
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