Growth of extended 'man-free' families who rely on state handouts
4th March 2010 | Dailymail.co.uk
Single motherhood has stretched through the generations to produce extended families without men.
Grandmothers, mothers and daughters now live without husbands or fathers and rely on the state for support, a study found yesterday.
Three-generation single mother families where no one works and which contain no men are now common, according to the analysis by researcher Geoff Dench.
The spread of the extended single-parent family was tracked through the findings of the British Social Attitudes survey which has followed families and their opinions each year for almost 30 years.
It showed that more than half of grandmothers who do not have a husband or male partner themselves are likely to have daughters who are also single mothers.
The 53 per cent recorded in 2008 was up from 44 per cent over a decade.
Great grandmother Jane Hutchinson and her daughter Pauline (pictured top left with Kayleigh and baby Sarah) were both lone parents through unhappy circumstance. But Pauline's daughter Kayleigh chose single motherhood after getting pregnant as a teenager.
Kayleigh Watson spent several months trying to have a baby and at the age of 17 gave birth to Sarah. A second baby, Emma, arrived two years later. Now 21 and living on benefits in a council house, Kayleigh, from Newcastle, said: 'People always seem to imagine that teenage pregnancies must be disastrous accidents.
'It might shock some people, but by the time I was 16, I wanted a baby of my own so much that I was prepared to be a single mum.'People might say "Oh, she just had a baby to get a house", but I never even thought about getting benefits.'
The father of Kayleigh's children, David, still lives nearby and helps look after his daughters. Initially, Kayleigh's mother and grandmother were devastated to learn of the first pregnancy. Pauline Watson, 47, works in sales. She 'married for life' at the age of 20 but her marriage fell apart in the 1980s and she looked after her daughter alone. 'Having known the heartache of single parenthood, it was the last thing I wanted for my own daughter,' she said.
Jane Hutchinson, 79, Kayleigh's grandmother, became pregnant at 16 by a local car mechanic and was sent in shame to a home for unmarried pregnant girls. Three years later she married and had three children including Pauline, but later divorced. She said: 'When Kayleigh announced she was having a baby and had already wilfully split from the father, I was shocked and disappointed.
'I do feel women don't try hard enough with their relationships. I also feel that too many young girls simply see getting pregnant as a way of gaining a council flat and benefits. Maybe I'm old fashioned but I still feel babies need a mother and father.'
The findings, published by the centreright Centre For Policy Studies think-tank, added to growing concern over 'broken Britain' and the links between broken families, benefit dependency, poverty and crime.
They follow a report by Mr Dench last week which showed that 57 per cent of single parents have never lived with a male partner and so had made lone motherhood a lifestyle choice. One in four families is now headed by a single mother.
Mr Dench, a fellow of the Young Foundation research group, said: 'This has far-reaching effects.
'A lone mother with conventional parents has a lot of contact through them with mainstream society.
'But three-generational lone mother families - extended families without men - are developing a new family sub-culture which involves little paid work by mothers or grandmothers.
'They are taking support and services from other sectors without contributing very much in return,' Mr Dench said, adding that such families were 'in the last analysis parasitic on the rest of society with more conventional families'.
According to the study, 15 per cent of grandmothers were without a husband or partner in 2008 compared with 9 per cent in 1998. Among grandmothers under the age of 55, more than a quarter lived alone.
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In the case of lone grandmothers, 53 per cent had daughters who were themselves single mothers.
The report said: 'If more than half of the daughters of lone grandmothers are now lone mothers themselves, then to put it bluntly we are now in a phase of growth.'
More than half of single mothers whose mothers were still alive lived on state benefits, the report found.
Mr Dench said: 'Single mothers do not seem very interested in working.
'Traditionally they would not have been able to do this without finding male partners and motivating them to help as family providers.
'But the welfare state has changed all that, by stepping in as a direct provider itself, rendering many potentially helpful men redundant in the process.'
Children of single parents are statistically more likely than others to suffer poor health, do badly at school, fall into trouble with authorities and the police, and become unemployed or single mothers themselves.
Despite the new evidence that the majority of single mothers have chosen that status rather than being plunged into it by divorce, separation or widowhood, Labour's Deputy Leader Harriet Harman said yesterday that it would be cruel to bring in tax breaks for married couples.
She told the Commons that Tory plans for marriage tax breaks 'will not encourage one single couple to get married or to make them happy in their marriage'.
She added: 'But it does send - and I think this is why it's cruel - because it sends a very clear message to children in families where the parents are divorced. It says to them: "There's something wrong with your family therefore there must be something wrong with you".
'And that's another reason why we will never introduce it.'
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