Motherhood, family structure and health in Sweden

A large and growing number of Canadian families with children are headed by lone mothers. Research undertaken in Canada, the United States and Britain have found evidence that children from lone-mother families exhibit more difficulties in the context of family life and school than children from two-parent families. For many, these difficulties continue into their adolescence and persist into early adulthood. This paper examines the relationship between lone-mother status, mother and family characteristics, and child difficulties, through an analysis of data from children 6 to 11. The results demonstrate that lone-mother families are poorer, and their children have more difficulties in the behavioral, emotional, social and academic domains. While the analysis shows that lonemother status on its own acts as a significant predictor of all child difficulties, the size of effect is weak. Importantly, the strength of association between lone-mother status and child outcome generally decreases when sociodemographic and personal variables are added to the model predicting child outcome. The evidence suggests that children from lone-mother families probably develop difficulties for the same reason that children from two-parent families develop difficulties, with two important exceptions. First, the presence of hostile parenting in a lone-mother family significantly increases the risk of child morbidity in a way that is not seen for two-parent families. Second, since lone-mother status remains a significant independent predictor of child outcome in the presence of other stronger predictor variables, further work needs to be done to explain the mechanisms through which lone-mother status influences child well-being. These results suggest that policies aimed at healthy child development should be aimed at all families, and not specifically lone-mother families. Given equal access to programs, services aimed at alleviating the factors strongly associated with the child difficulties and/or problems should be aimed at the whole population and should be helpful to both lone-mother and twoparent families. The exception is in the area of parenting, where specific programs aimed at lonemothers may be warranted. Low income, parenting problems, low maternal education and maternal depression are consistently and significantly associated with child difficulties and represent important areas for policy intervention Children and Lone-Mother Families:

Lone mothers are more likely to be unemployed and in poverty, which are both factors associated with a risk of poor health. In Switzerland, weak work-family reconciliation policies and taxation that favours married couples adopting the traditional male breadwinner model translate into low labour market participation rate for mothers. In the case of lone mothers, employment can be associated with better health because it eases the potential economic hardship associated with being the sole earner. However, working can represent an additional stress factor due to lone mothers’ responsibility as the main caregiver. We investigate how family arrangements and employment status are associated with self-reported health in Switzerland. Our analyses on the Swiss Household Panel (waves 1999-2011) suggest that lone mothers who are out of the labour market have a higher probability of reporting poor health, especially those with an upper secondary level of education. Lone mothers reported being in better health when working full-time versus part-time, whereas the opposite applied to mothers living with a partner.

In the UK up to one half of all children will spend at least some time growing up with just one parent resident in the home, either at birth or later as result of separation or divorce. Yet, in spite of its frequency, and a rapid increase in its prevalence, there is little empirical evidence on how the nature of lone-parenthood has changed over recent decades. Nor is there evidence on how the growth in lone-parenthood, to the extent that it is now a social norm, has been associated with a shift in the consequences for children of growing up in a lone-parent family. This study aims to fill these substantial gaps in the literature using data from four major UK birth cohort studies. These follow large samples of children born in the years 1958, 1970, 1990 and 2000 and contain very detailed information on children and their families as well as, for the earlier cohorts, information on outcomes as adults. This data therefore allows the experience of children who have ever lived in a lone-parent family to be tracked over a long period of time. We find evidence of changes in the timing and duration of lone parenthood, with both more children entering lone parent families from birth as well as in later childhood, and an increasing delay to re-partnering. Across cohorts we find the negative effect of growing up in a lone parent family to have declined but we also find evidence of greater diversity of outcomes.

This paper contributes to the understanding of vulnerability of lone mothers in Switzerland. Vulnerability is a dynamic process along which individuals may experience falls and losses of resources, but through which they might also rise and gain empowerment as a consequence of coping and adaptation mechanisms. Vulnerability that originates within one specific life domain (e.g. family, employment, health) can then spill over to other life domains. Lone mothers and their children are often identified as vulnerable populations because of their overrepresentation among the poor and the less healthy compared to the general population. Yet, lone mothers are increasingly heterogeneous in terms of social background and resources, so that durations into and experiences of lone motherhood vary substantially. Such heterogeneity poses new challenges for defining the relative disadvantage of lone mothers and their families which we argue should have to be appraised through a multidimensional perspective. Drawing on a number of quantitative and qualitative data sources we first discuss the transition to lone parenthood and in which ways it is relevant to the analysis of multidimensional vulnerability for lone mothers in the Swiss context. Second, we refer to original empirical results on lone mothers’ labour market participation over the last two decades by focussing on differences by age and educational level. Finally, we discuss various findings on the relationship between lone parenthood, employment, and health from our research project on lone mothers to highlight the conjunctures of disadvantages across life-course domains leading to vulnerability. Switzerland is an interesting case study, because of a welfare shaped around a two-parent and one main earner family model and a gendered unequal distribution of caring and financial responsibility within the family. Weak work-family reconciliation policies discourage mothers’ full-time participation to the labour market. In such context particularly, the transition to lone motherhood might represents excessive strains for parents who have little choice but to take on alone both full care and financial responsibilities.

Journal of Poverty, 2020

Maternal marital status may contribute to health disparities among children; marriage often associates with better outcomes. Using data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, we tested separate structural equation models to compare direct and indirect relationships between maternal economic hardship, parenting stress, and adolescent self-rated health among 3,146 married and unmarried mothers. Although parenting stress did not associate with adolescent health for either group, economic hardship directly associated with poorer adolescent self-reported health for only unmarried mothers, and unmarried mothers had a stronger negative relationship between economic hardships and parenting calling for policies to address these disparities.