Search

There is a trend in the UK toward an increasing proportion of lone parents supported by the state, and state provision encourages fecklessness on the part of teenage girls and men leaving families with no support. Many men are unable to support a family due to changes in wage structures. The UK government has tried to force men to be responsible for their children through the Child Support Agency, but there are not enough funds without support from other taxpayers, and the problem is likely to get worse since incentives still exist to breed fecklessly.

Payments from absent fathers have risen considerably since the introduction of the UK Child Support Act. The act is intended to cover all separated and divorced couples with children, as well as single parent families receiving benefit. Cases have occurred where fathers have made a supposedly clean break, signing over the house to their former partners, only to find representatives of the child support agency requesting further payments. A test case by a father requesting that a share of the house, relinquished in a divorce settlement be returned to him could result in many more absent fathers making the same request.

Single parents comprise 70% mature men and women who were married and have divorced, separated or been widowed and 30% young single mothers. Although about 8,000 teenagers become pregnant every year, the fastest-growing group of single parents is those aged 20-24. Only 45,000 of the 845,000 lone parents living on Income Support are 16- to 19-year-olds. Most would prefer to work when the children were old enough or if they could get child-care support. Fathers who desert these families are often unemployed.

Single mothers and female-headed households are more prevalent in the 1990s because of the high number of unemployed men. One in five men aged 16-19 with no qualifications is unemployed, but likely to father children. Teenage girls from deprived areas are six times more likely to have unwanted pregnancies. Men have a new sense of responsibility for their children, providing them with emotional nurturing and a male role model. Women work because they want some financial independence; 70% of married women are employed.