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

Continuity and Change

Volumn 2, Issue 3, 1987, Pages 387-422

  Millar, J ^b  

^a UNIVERSITY OF LEICESTER   (United Kingdom)

^b UNIVERSITY OF ULSTER   (United Kingdom)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 84974022253     PISSN: 02684160     EISSN: 1469218X     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0268416000000710     Document Type: Article

References (33)

1. D. Thomson, ‘The decline of social security: falling state support for the elderly since early Victorian times’, Ageing and Society 4 (1984), 451–82. See also his excellent discussion, ‘Welfare and the historians’, in L. Bonfield et al. eds., The world we have gained: histories of population and social structure (Oxford, 1986).
2. See in particular W. G. Runciman, Relative deprivation and social justice (1966); and P. Townsend, Poverty in the United Kingdom (1979, London, 1983 ed.), 31: ‘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 R. Leete, ‘One-parent families: numbers and characteristics’, Population Trends 13(1978), 4-9; and J. Haskey, ‘ One-parent families in Great Britain’, Population Trends 45 (1986), 5–13. See also Townsend, Poverty in the United Kingdom, ch. 22, on ‘One-parent families’, 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.
5. M. Anderson, ‘What is new about the modern family: a historical perspective’, in British Society for Population Studies, The Family (London, 1983), 4.
6. Derived from Office of Population Censuses and Surveys, Census Historical Tables, 1801–1981, England and Wales (1981). See also D. E. C. Eversley, ‘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).
7. See K. D. M. Snell, Annals of the labouring poor; social change and agrarian England, 1660–1900 (Cambridge, 1985), 322–34, 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 R. Wall, ‘The age of leaving home’, Journal of Family History 3 (1978); R. Wall, ‘Leaving home and the process of household formation in pre-industrial England’, Continuity and Change 1 (3) (1986), paper presented to the Anglo-Hungarian Conference of Historians at Szecseny, 1986; M. Anderson, Family structure in nineteenth-century Lancashire (Cambridge, 1971); and R. Davies, Community, parish and poverty; Old Swinford, 1660–1730 (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Leicester, 1987).
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); A. J. Kahn and S. Kamerman, Income transfers for families with children (Philadelphia, 1983).
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 J. Eekelaar and M. Maclean, Maintenance after divorce (Oxford, 1986), 19.
11. And see C. Delphy, Close to home: a materialist analysis of women's oppression (London, 1984), 100.
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).
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 D. Marsden, Mothers alone (London, 1973); M. Finer, Report of the Committee on One-Parent Families, Cmnd. 5629 (1974); R. Layard et al., The causes of poverty, Royal Commission on the distribution of income and wealth, background paper No. 5 (London, 1978); Townsend, Poverty in the United Kingdom; E. Evason, Just me and the kids (Belfast, 1980).
16. Finer, Report on One-Parent Families, para. 5.36.
17. According to evidence from the Office of Population Censuses and Surveys, General Household Survey, Preliminary Results 1984 (1985), the proportion of lone mothers in employment fell from 48 per cent in 1980–2 to 39 per cent in 1982-4.
18. P. Whiteford, A family's needs: equivalence scales, poverty and social security (Australia, Department of Social Security Development Division, 1985).
19. Thomson, ‘Decline of social security’. For county agricultural wage data see, for example, Snell, Annals of the labouring poor, 30. 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 P. Slack, ‘Books of Orders: the making of English social policy, 1577–1631 ’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 30 (1980); B. Sharp, ‘Popular protest in seventeenth-century England’, in B. Reay ed., Popular culture in seventeenth-century England (London, 1985), 278-9; R. B. Outhwaite, ‘Dearth and government intervention in English grain markets, 1590-1700’, Economic History Review 34 (1981); A. M. Everitt, ‘The marketing of agricultural produce’, in J. Thirsk ed., The agrarian history of England and Wales, 1500–1640 4 (Cambridge, 1966), 580–6.
23. For further details of such payments being made under the Old Poor Law, see Snell, Annals of the Labouring Poor, ch. 3, and the references contained there; F. H. Erith, Ardleigh in 1796 (East Bergholt, 1978), 6-22; F. G. Emmison, 'Relief of the poor at Eaton Socon, Bedfordshire, 1706-1834', Bedfordshire Historical Record Society, 15 (1933); M. F. Lloyd Prichard, 'The treatment of poverty in Norfolk, 1700-1850' (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Cambridge, 1949); Davies, 'Community, parish and poverty', 148–50, 210, 224, 232, 247. For a discussion of parish doleing customs, an important additional source of income, see the interesting account in B. Bushaway, By rite; custom, ceremony and community in England, 1700–1880 (London, 1982), 87, 180–90, 257–8. 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. A. L. Bowley, ‘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); A. L. Bowley, ‘The. statistics of wages’, part IV, ‘Agricultural wages concluded. Earnings and general averages’, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society 62 (1899).
25. D. Davies, The case of the labourers in husbandry (Bath, 1795).
26. A. Young, A six months tour through the north of England (1770, 1771, London, 1967 ed.), vol. 1, 235, 238; vol. 2, 6, 64.
27. W. Marshall, The rural economy of Yorkshire (1778, 1796 ed.) 1, 387-92; 2, 32, 35, 59.
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. 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 M. Clark, ‘The unemployed on supplementary benefit: living standards and making ends meet’, Journal of Social Policy 7 (1978); L. Burghes, Living from hand to mouth (London, 1980); R. Berthoud, Study of the 1980 reform of Supplementary Benefit, Working Papers (London, 1983); S. Baldwin and K. Cooke, How much is enough? (London, 1984); E. Evason, On the edge: a study of poverty and long-term unemployment in Northern Ireland (Belfast, 1985).
33. In particular see M. Blaug, ‘The myth of the Old Poor Law and the making of the New’, in M. W. Flinn and T. C. Smout eds., Essays in social history (Oxford, 1974); M. Blaug, ‘The Poor-Law Report re-examined’, Journal of Economic History 24 (1964); D. N. McCloskey, ‘New perspectives on the Old Poor Law’, Explorations in Economic History 10 (1972-1973).