Research into lone parents

A University of Stirling academic has called on the Government to increase payments for unemployed single parents in order to bring about improvements in child wellbeing.

Dr Morag Treanor, senior lecturer in Sociology, also said there is a need to support lone parents into stable employment that enables them to earn a decent wage.

Writing in the newly published book, ‘The Triple Bind of Lone Parents’, Dr Treanor challenges existing research that promotes lone-parenthood as having a negative impact on child wellbeing.

Dr Treanor analysed data from Growing Up in Scotland (GUS) with a nationally representative sample of more than 5,000 children born in Scotland in 2004-5.

She found that the wellbeing of children in single-parent families is more determined by income and material deprivation than by lone-parenthood or changing family formations.

She said:“Lone parents are disadvantaged by inadequate resources, inadequate employment and inadequate policies. Our findings show how inadequate resources and inadequate employment, rather than the status of lone parenthood and family transitions, are associated with poorer levels of child wellbeing. This exonerates lone-parents, in Scotland at least, from the blame and shame associated with the lower wellbeing of their children, and points the finger of blame instead to inadequate policies for lone-parents.”