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Lone-parent families and the Welfare State: past and present

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2008

K. D. M. Snell  and
J. Millar
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Continuity and Change , Volume 2 , Issue 3 , December 1987 , pp. 387 - 422
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1987

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References

ENDNOTES

1 Thomson, D., ‘The decline of social security: falling state support for the elderly since early Victorian times’, Ageing and Society 4 (1984), 451–82CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also his excellent discussion, ‘Welfare and the historians’, in Bonfield, L. et al. eds., The world we have gained: histories of population and social structure (Oxford, 1986).Google Scholar

2 See in particular Runciman, W. G., Relative deprivation and social justice (1966)Google Scholar; and Townsend, P., Poverty in the United Kingdom (1979, London, 1983 ed.), 31Google Scholar: ‘Poverty can be defined objectively and applied consistently only in terms of the concept of relative deprivation—Individuals, families and groups in the population can be said to be in poverty when they lack the resources to obtain the types of diet, participate in the activities and have the living conditions and amenities which are customary, or are at least widely encouraged or approved, in the societies to which they belong. Their resources are so seriously below those commanded by the average individual or family that they are, in effect, excluded from the ordinary living patterns, customs and activities.’

3 For a discussion see Leete, R., ‘One-parent families: numbers and characteristics’, Population Trends 13 (1978), 4–9Google Scholar; and Haskey, J., ‘One-parent families in Great Britain’, Population Trends 45 (1986), 5–13.Google Scholar See also Townsend, , Poverty in the United Kingdom, ch. 22, on ‘One-parent families’Google Scholar, and ibid., 783, on the need for discussion of the history of social policies for one-parent families.

4 Haskey, , ‘One-parent families’, 5–13.Google Scholar

5 Anderson, M., ‘What is new about the modern family: a historical perspective’, in British Society for Population Studies, The Family (London, 1983), 4.Google Scholar

6 Derived from Office of Population Censuses and Surveys, Census Historical Tables, 1801–1981, England and Wales (1981).Google Scholar See also Eversley, D. E. C., ‘The family and housing policy: the interaction of the family, the household and the housing market’, in British Society for Population Studies, The Family (1983).Google Scholar

7 See Snell, K. D. M., Annals of the labouring poor; social change and agrarian England, 1660–1900 (Cambridge, 1985), 322–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar, where the percentage of children leaving home at different ages for apprenticeship is given, as well as the mean age for all children quoted here. For further discussion of the age of leaving home and life-cycle practice, see Wall, R., ‘The age of leaving home’, Journal of Family History 3 (1978)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Wall, R., ‘Leaving home and the process of household formation in pre-industrial England’, Continuity and Change 1 (3) (1986)Google Scholar, paper presented to the Anglo-Hungarian Conference of Historians at Szecseny, 1986; Anderson, M., Family structure in nineteenth-century Lancashire (Cambridge, 1971)Google Scholar; and Davies, R., Community, parish and poverty; Old Swinford, 1660–1730 (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Leicester, 1987).Google Scholar

8 In some of these communities, simple family households were less numerous than they were in England, although it is unlikely that this seriously affects the comparisons. However one should be aware that in certain populations complex households may well have been an important resource for the lone parent, particularly when her dowry was being reclaimed.

9 E.E.C., Lone parents and poverty in the E.E.C. (Copenhagen, 1982)Google Scholar; Kahn, A. J. and Kamerman, S., Income transfers for families with children (Philadelphia, 1983).Google Scholar

10 Indeed it was not until the 1839 Custody of Infants Act that mothers were given their first legal right to custody of their children. See Eekelaar, J. and Maclean, M., Maintenance after divorce (Oxford, 1986), 19.Google Scholar

11 And see Delphy, C., Close to home: a materialist analysis of women's oppression (London, 1984), 100.Google Scholar

12 We are grateful to Michael Anderson for providing the census material, and to Kevin Schurer for his valuable assistance in computation.

13 Department of Health and Social Security, Social Security Statistics, 1985 (1986).Google Scholar

14 It should perhaps be noted that the evidence from Corfe Castle suggested that most of the lone-mothers there were widows.

15 See for example Marsden, D., Mothers alone (London, 1973)Google Scholar; Finer, M., Report of the Committee on One-Parent Families, Cmnd. 5629 (1974)Google Scholar; Layard, R. et al. , The causes of poverty, Royal Commission on the distribution of income and wealth, background paper No. 5 (London, 1978)Google Scholar; Townsend, , Poverty in the United KingdomGoogle Scholar; Evason, E., Just me and the kids (Belfast, 1980).Google Scholar

16 Finer, , Report on One-Parent Families, para. 5.36.Google Scholar

17 According to evidence from the Office of Population Censuses and Surveys, General Household Survey, Preliminary Results 1984 (1985)Google Scholar, the proportion of lone mothers in employment fell from 48 per cent in 1980–2 to 39 per cent in 1982–4.

18 Whiteford, P., A family's needs: equivalence scales, poverty and social security (Australia, Department of Social Security Development Division, 1985).Google Scholar

19 Thomson, , ‘Decline of social security’.Google Scholar For county agricultural wage data see, for example, Snell, , Annals of the labouring poor, 30Google Scholar. These data indicate that in 1833, 1837 and 1850, the mean agricultural weekly wage for these three southern counties combined was 10.5, 10.1 and 8.2 shillings respectively. These sums were 93 per cent, 99 per cent and 86 per cent of the average county agricultural wage for these years.

20 The examinations used for this purpose relate to many rural parishes in Yorkshire, for the most part different from, although near to, the parishes used to obtain transfer payments. The results were very similar to those obtained for larger areas of eastern England. Source survival is such that it is impossible to find examinations which cover significant numbers of those single-parent families whose incomes from the poor law are under discussion. But there is no reason to suppose that figures derived from the settlement records will be unrepresentative of these families.

21 Borthwick Institute of Historical Research, York, PR. MIL. 11–18; PR. NEW. 16–23, 24–6; PR. S/R. 5–7; PR. K/U. 12–16; PR. GOOD. 6–9, 10–13; PR. M/W. 21; PR. SCA. 15–32.

22 The frequently reissued Book of Orders was mainly concerned with public dealing in grain and regulation of the market, but it also had a section urging the setting of the unemployed to work on raw materials, the cost of which was funded by the rates. For discussion of the policy measures it contained, see Slack, P., ‘Books of Orders: the making of English social policy, 1577–1631’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 30 (1980)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sharp, B., ‘Popular protest in seventeenth-century England’, in Reay, B. ed., Popular culture in seventeenth-century England (London, 1985), 278–9Google Scholar; Outhwaite, R. B., ‘Dearth and government intervention in English grain markets, 1590–1700’, Economic History Review 34 (1981)Google Scholar; Everitt, A. M., ‘The marketing of agricultural produce’, in Thirsk, J. ed., The agrarian history of England and Wales, 1500–1640 4 (Cambridge, 1966), 580–6.Google Scholar

23 For further details of such payments being made under the Old Poor Law, see Snell, , Annals of the Labouring Poor, ch. 3Google Scholar, and the references contained there; Erith, F. H., Ardleigh in 1796 (East Bergholt, 1978), 6–22Google Scholar; Emmison, F. G., ‘Relief of the poor at Eaton Socon, Bedfordshire, 1706–1834’, Bedfordshire Historical Record Society, 15 (1933)Google Scholar; Prichard, M. F. Lloyd, ‘The treatment of poverty in Norfolk, 1700–1850’ (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Cambridge, 1949)Google Scholar; Davies, , ‘Community, parish and poverty’, 148–50, 210, 224, 232, 247Google Scholar. For a discussion of parish doleing customs, an important additional source of income, see the interesting account in Bushaway, B., By rite: custom, ceremony and community in England, 1700–1880 (London, 1982), 87, 180–90, 257–8Google Scholar. Some items given to the poor were recorded in churchwardens' accounts, but information from such accounts has not been used to supplement the calculations made from overseers' accounts in these Yorkshire parishes. And of course details of further sums provided by parochial charities have usually not survived.

24 Bowley, A. L., ‘The statistics of wages in the United Kingdom during the last hundred years’, part 1, ‘Agricultural wages’, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society 61 (1898)Google Scholar; Bowley, A. L., ‘The statistics of wages’, part IV, ‘Agricultural wages concluded. Earnings and general averages’, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society 62 (1899).Google Scholar

25 Davies, D., The case of the labourers in husbandry (Bath, 1795).Google Scholar

26 Young, A., A six months tour through the north of England (1770, 1771, London, 1967 ed.), vol. 1, 235, 238; vol. 2, 6, 64.Google Scholar

27 Marshall, W., The rural economy of Yorkshire (1778, 1796 ed.) 1, 387–92; 2, 32, 35, 59.Google Scholar

28 Contemporary Poor-Law practice frequently aimed to put forward the possibilities of partial or entire self-sufficiency for those who were parochially dependent - for example, in the provision of raw materials for cottage-industrial employment, or of livestock -and there appears to have been no notion that those who worked for financial rewards were thereby disentitled to relief. Today, benefits (with the exception of Child Benefit, Housing Benefit and Family Income Supplement) are generally paid as a replacement for earnings, to those who are not employed. Modern social security practice of course discourages Supplementary Benefit recipients from working. Such a policy finds few counterparts in early nineteenth-century practice. It is of considerable interest to evaluate this change, to understand the historical shifts in terminology involved, and to ask why it has come about.

29 The documentation analysed here for Terling and St Andrews, Worcester, is available among the listings held by the Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure.

30 For further discussion of the rural ‘foraging’ and open-field economy see Snell, , Annals of the labouring poor, ch. 4.Google Scholar As far as the parishes used here are concerned, enclosure was not a major consideration in the early nineteenth century. Only Seaton Ross was enclosed after 1800.

31 For the parishes studied here, calculations were also made on the relative value of relief to the elderly in the past, and the results are within the same range as Thomson's findings for the 1830s.

32 See Clark, M., ‘The unemployed on supplementary benefit: living standards and making ends meet’, Journal of Social Policy 7 (1978)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Burghes, L., Living from hand to mouth (London, 1980)Google Scholar; Berthoud, R., Study of the 1980 reform of Supplementary Benefit, Working Papers (London, 1983)Google Scholar; Baldwin, S. and Cooke, K., How much is enough? (London, 1984)Google Scholar; Evason, E., On the edge: a study of poverty and long-term unemployment in Northern Ireland (Belfast, 1985).Google Scholar

33 In particular see Blaug, M., ‘The myth of the Old Poor Law and the making of the New’, in Flinn, M. W. and Smout, T. C. eds., Essays in social history (Oxford, 1974)Google Scholar; Blaug, M., ‘The Poor-Law Report re-examined’, Journal of Economic History 24 (1964)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; McCloskey, D. N., ‘New perspectives on the Old Poor Law’, Explorations in Economic History 10 (1972–1973).Google Scholar