Join us on twitterThe other day a single mother contacted Sole Parents’ Union. She was in tears, distraught because she had been visited by her state’s child welfare authorities. And nothing says “bad mother” like a visit from child welfare organisations.
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When it comes to raising kids, it seems the old saying applies “you’re damned if you do, and damned if you don’t”.
The Australian Institute of Family Studies is holding their conference in Melbourne this week.
Of course, as happens with research into families, much of this revolves around divorce and sole parenting.
But here’s the interesting bit. Research shows that women – mothers – are financially worse off after divorce.
So what’s new I hear you say. You already knew that. Many of the women who contact us are living that reality every day. And trying to raise their children.
Yet a lot of changes to family law, and child support in particularly, have been made on the basis that it’s fathers, at least non-residential ones, who are financially devastated.
One study by Belinda .. of the University of Melbourne concentrated on property settlements. A second study Relationship breakdown and social exclusion: a longitudinal analysis, by Matthew Gray, Lixia Qu and David Stanton is particularly interesting.
It shows that women are much poorer, but men are more emotionally fragile after a marriage breakdown. Again, many of you are probably going “der”.
But here’s the particularly interesting bit. Within fours years men on the way to recovering emotionally and their finances have improved considerably. Women’s incomes have gone backwards.
And of course, if the people looking after the kids don’t have any money, then the kids suffer.
I was watching a movie yesterday, and one of the characters was a social welfare worker who helped the mentally ill, and single mothers. “What??” I thought “How come we get automatically dumped in with the mentally ill?”