“You Just Have to Look at It as a Gift”: Low-Income Single Mothers’ Experiences of the Child Support System

2014 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 88-108 ◽  
Author(s):  
Deborah A. Harris
Keyword(s):  
Single Mothers ◽  
Support System ◽  
Low Income ◽  
Child Support ◽  
Mothers Experiences

Micro-aggressions, single mothers and interactions with government workers: The case of Australia’s child support bureaucracy

2017 ◽  
Vol 53 (3) ◽  
pp. 622-636 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kristin Natalier
Keyword(s):  
Single Mothers ◽  
Cultural Change ◽  
Child Support ◽  
Human Services ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Social Hierarchies ◽  
Power Differentials ◽  
Government Workers ◽  
Welfare Discourse ◽  
Mothers Experiences

This article analyses single mothers’ experiences of Australia’s child support bureaucracy, shifting the focus beyond problematic individual interactions to the discourses that shape them. Drawing on data from semi-structured interviews with 37 Australian single mothers, I argue that women’s interactions with Department of Human Services – Child Support (DHS-CS) are expressions of gender-focused micro-aggressions. These are interactions that express and reinforce social hierarchies and power differentials in sometimes subtle and often taken-for-granted ways. I argue these interactions are structured by the dominant gendered welfare discourse that constitutes the welfare mother and legitimates masculine financial discretion. Thus, any attempt to address client concerns about the failings of DHS-CS, and by extension other government bureaucracies, must extend beyond ‘training’ and administrative processes, and engage with the more challenging strategies of socio-cultural change.

scholarly journals When poverty knocks on the door: Sharing the story of low income single mothers in Kelantan

2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Zarina Md Nor ◽  
Nur Zhafirah Mohamad ◽  
Suresh Kumar N Vellymalay
Keyword(s):  
Single Mothers ◽  
Low Income ◽  
Child Support ◽  
Single Mother ◽  
Child Poverty ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Number Of Children ◽  
Low Education ◽  
Preliminary Study ◽  
Socio Economic Factors

Single mother households are often associated with financial hardships as they have lost financial support from the spouse upon divorce. This preliminary study presents the story of hardships among 12 selected single mothers with children in Kelantan. A survey questions has been distributed and the descriptive data has been collected and analyzed with their consent. We find that demographic and socio-economic factors play important roles in the financial wellbeing of the respondents whereby the low education attainment seems to cause the respondents to have low paying jobs exacerbated by more than average number of children in the households and an absence or irregularity of child support payments from their former husband. Hence, the findings further highlight the additional burden faced by the single mothers due to unavailability child support payment for various reasons. It is important to note that the income of all of our respondents fall under the minimum wage of the country therefore they are considered poor and very poor from per capita point of view. Poverty and hardships come hand in hand therefore public assistance in the form of cash and housing arrangements have somehow reduced the burden of single mothers in this study. Consequently, we believe that this brief study has invoke more questions that warrant further studies on many topics involving single mother households such as child support, child poverty and financial and economic wellbeing of single mothers households in Malaysia. So where do we start?

scholarly journals Gendered Emotional Support and Women’s Well-Being in a Low-Income Urban African Setting

2018 ◽  
Vol 32 (6) ◽  
pp. 837-859
Author(s):  
Sangeetha Madhavan ◽  
Shelley Clark ◽  
Yuko Hara
Keyword(s):  
Single Mothers ◽  
Low Income ◽  
Emotional Support ◽  
Living Arrangements ◽  
Gender Norms ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Single Women ◽  
Gender Composition ◽  
Support Network ◽  
Data Set

In most contexts, emotional support is crucial for the well-being of low-income single women and their children. Support from women may be especially important for single mothers because of precarious ties to their children’s fathers, the prevalence of extended matrifocal living arrangements, and gendered norms that place men as providers of financial rather than emotional support. However, in contexts marked by economic insecurity, spatial dispersion of families, and changing gender norms and kinship obligations, such an expectation may be problematic. Applying theories of emotional capital and family bargaining processes, we address three questions: What is the gender composition of emotional support that single mothers receive? How does gender composition change over time? Does the gender composition of emotional support affect the self-reported stress of single mothers? Drawing on data from a unique data set on 462 low-income single mothers and their kin from Nairobi, Kenya, we uncover three key findings. One, whereas the bulk of strong emotional support comes from female kin, about 20 percent of respondents report having male-dominant support networks. Two, nearly 30 percent of respondents report change favoring men in the composition of their emotional support over six months. Three, having a male-dominant emotional support network is associated with lower stress. These results challenge what is commonly taken for granted about gender norms and kinship obligations in non-Western contexts.

Child Support and Subsequent Nonmarital Fertility With a New Partner

2016 ◽  
Vol 38 (2) ◽  
pp. 151-176 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yeongmin Kim ◽  
Maria Cancian ◽  
Daniel R. Meyer
Keyword(s):  
Low Income ◽  
Child Support ◽  
Negative Relationship ◽  
Nonmarital Fertility ◽  
Multiple Partner ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Parents And Children ◽  
Subsequent Fertility ◽  
Policy Experiment ◽  
Multiple Partner Fertility

When a parent has another child with a new partner, a significant effect on parents and children is likely, making factors associated with multiple-partner fertility of interest to policy makers. For single mothers, one potential policy-relevant factor influencing their subsequent fertility with a new partner is child support income. However, the direction and magnitude of any effect is not well-established. This study documents the simple negative relationship between child support and nonmarital fertility with a new partner in our sample of low-income unmarried mothers. We then take advantage of a policy experiment that resulted in randomly assigned differences in child support income to investigate its effects. We find no support for a negative causal relationship between child support receipt and nonmarital fertility with a new partner, instead finding suggestive evidence that mothers with more child support income are slightly more likely to have a subsequent nonmarital birth with a new partner.

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