Friday, 21 March marks the eighth year of Single Parents Day being celebrated in the UK. But frankly, I’m not feeling particularly celebratory - especially given the news about disability cuts, which will disproportionally affect disabled single parents. It’s not that single parents don’t deserve recognition; I consider myself medal-worthy for getting my three boys to school/ nursery on time (most days). But as single parent family poverty rates edge closer to 50%, I fear celebrating the strength of single parents’ risks distracting attention from the real problem: structural inequalities.
Single parent discrimination is so deeply ingrained that it’s rarely even mentioned outside of single parent circles. Yet when Single Parent Rights – the campaign group I founded – surveyed over 1000 single parents, up to 80% reported experiencing discrimination. While those on the lowest incomes face the brunt of it, single parentism affects people across all income levels.
One glaring example is how child benefit eligibility is calculated. It’s based on individual rather than household incomes, allowing two-parent families to earn twice as much as a single parent before losing their entitlement. The Government explored potential changes to this, but in the October budget last year, they concluded that altering the system while ensuring “no families would lose out” would be too expensive. What they really meant was that fixing the system without creating new ‘losers’ would be too costly; single parents were already losing out: and they still are.
At the other end of the income scale are those impacted by the benefit cap, a policy that often leaves families struggling to even afford the basics. The cap limits the amount of means-tested support a family can receive if they don’t meet the earnings threshold of £793 a month. While it’s sold to voters as a policy that incentivizes work, 69% of those affected by the cap are single parents who face higher barriers to work than other groups and 26% of those have a child under two. Worse still, mothers on maternity leave aren’t exempt from the benefit cap, even though they are prohibited from working. To add insult to injury, the earnings threshold itself is discriminatory: single parents must meet the full threshold on their own, while couples can combine their incomes to meet it.
The discrimination doesn’t stop at specific policies within the social security system. The entire system fails to acknowledge the realities single parents face, whether they are sole carers, or share care with another parent. The system assumes one child: one home. This is despite around half of children with separated parents having regular overnight stays with their ‘other’ parent. Even in cases of equal shared care, only the parent claiming child benefit is entitled to means-tested benefits, which can lead to some parents – especially single dads – struggling with high housing costs or unsuitable accommodation that negatively impacts their child’s well-being.
Childcare support is a similar story of exclusion and discrimination. In 2007, 45% of Government childcare spending was on low-income families; within ten years, this had fallen to 17%, and it continues to decline. Single parents with higher childcare needs and lower average incomes are doubly penalized.
For single parent families where an adult or child is disabled things get even worse. Those who can’t meet the childcare earnings threshold due to a disability, or being a full-time carer, are excluded from the Working Families childcare offer despite couples in a similar situation being entitled. This creates a situation where single parents living with a disability lose out on up to 30 hours of funded childcare support which, if they could only magic up a partner in work, they’d suddenly be entitled to. Let me be clear though. The problem isn’t couples receiving this support, it is that single parents aren’t afforded the same.
While the unfairness of child benefit eligibility rules has garnered widespread media attention, single mums on maternity leave facing destitution due to the benefit cap, and skint single dads stuck in a houseshare with their young child, don’t receive the same attention. The lack of empathy towards single parents on lower incomes has roots going back to Victorian-era workhouses. Successive Governments have tightened single parent work requirements, perpetuating single parent stigma, which continues to seep into popular culture today. In her latest movie, Bridget Jones expressed her relief at not raising alcoholic delinquents once she’d joined the ranks of the employed. But unlike Bridget, the majority of the 1.8 million single parents in the UK with dependent children can’t magic an affordable nanny out of thin air. The ongoing rhetoric from the Government on the need to push people into work, without ensuring the systems are in place to support them, is likely to only add to such attitudes.
The policies I’ve highlighted are just a fraction of the inequality single parents face across the UK. And it’s not just Government policies that are at fault. Private businesses, rental agencies, and – in some cases – public sector services also discriminate against single parents. That’s why, this year, single parents don’t need empty gestures of recognition—we need tangible, lasting change. To make that happen, I founded the campaign group Single Parent Rights. Our first step is to ensure single parents are included in the UK Equality Act as a protected characteristic, compelling policymakers to consider our needs and prevent policies that neglect or punish us.