Think of all the words that might describe you: ‘girl’, ‘woman’, ‘young woman’ ‘yuccie’ ‘yuppy’ ‘basic bitch’…whatever you might call yourself, there’s a real assumption that girls like us will never, ever be ‘single mums’. Single mums, to us, are all too often the Vicky Pollard stereotype of a one-woman baby-making machine pushing a seven-child-wide buggy. But 63% of Britain’s single parents are in work, and Britain’s rate of teen mums is at its lowest for 70 years.
The stereotype pervades, though, and it’s sadly given lawmakers a stereotype to return to over and over when making new policies that will directly affect struggling families.
There are 1.9 million single parents in the UK and 1.72 million of them are women. And according to Gingerbread, a charity for single parents, most single parents don’t receive child maintenance from their ex-partner. In simpler terms, almost one and a quarter million women UK have kids, dependent on them for food, shelter and parenting, and don’t get any money to do this from the father of those children.
In the old days, the government could provide you with legal aid to pay a solicitor to take your ex to court. But that’s been cut, mean many parents can’t afford to get parental support for their kid. So where do single mums get their money from? Jobs, of course, but it’s difficult for new mothers to return to old jobs, with 50,000 of them forced out of work each year.
In this year’s budget, George Osborne announced his plans for what you and I know broadly as benefits. These included cuts to child tax credits that are keeping many families and most single mums stable right now.
One such mother is Helen Charlton, is a 29-year-old teacher and her two and a half year old son. At the moment, Helen, who teaches history and RE, has just enough to get by – with the help of reduced rent from a local church charity and support from her family. But when the cuts to her tax credits come in, what’s already a struggle is going to get worse.
Her ex-husband walked out when she was 26 and 36 weeks pregnant. Since, he’s only seen their son twice. So Helen’s been left to raise and care for her son alone.
Here’s the maths: ‘My take home monthly pay is about £1600. Of that, I spend £680 on childcare, and at the end of the month I get back £320 in tax credit. If I didn’t get that tax credit, childcare would take up 40 per cent of my income.’
She’s ‘very lucky’, too, that she only works four days a week and her mum looks after him on another day, meaning he only needs childcare for three days a week.
‘Once I’ve paid for rent and childcare, everything else goes on food, clothes, bills and transport. I’m learning to drive, which is quite expensive, at about £100 a month.’
‘It would be such a useful thing for me to do as a mum, but even then I worry about what will happen when I’ve passed my test – and where I’d get the money to buy a car, put petrol in it and insure it.’
While Helen is grateful for the support she gets from her nearby family and church, she admits: ‘If any part of my situation changed, I’d really struggle.’
And that’s the problem, you see. Because right now, hundreds of thousands of parents – single or coupled up – don’t know what’s going to happen to the tax credits that are keeping them afloat.
A spokesperson for Gingerbread, told The Debrief: ‘Our helpline has been inundated with calls from single parents desperate to know how they will be affected by the cuts announced in the Budget. Sadly we’re not able to tell them – benefits are very complex to calculate, and as yet none of the new cuts have passed through parliament and may still change. ‘It’s a very worrying time for single parents and we fear that, in many cases, parents could lose a substantial amount.’
Living in increasingly gentrified east London, where, famously, a bowl of cereal can set you back £3, might be a barrier to Helen’s financial security. But she’s from that area, and relies heavily on the support of her family close by. And anyway, why should she be forced to move from the place she grew up in? ‘If I lived in another part of the country, housing might be cheaper and I’d have a bit more take-home pay. But then I wouldn’t be close to my family and I’d lose a day of childcare. Also I know it’s really good of my Mum to help out but if her situation were to change I’d be stuck again.’
Helen’s understandably frustrated: ‘I really hate the idea of the typical “person on benefits” because I’ve been working since I was 14. I’ve been paying tax for well over a decade. I’ve put into the system and I don’t want to be using it forever. But without child tax credits to pay for childcare I couldn’t work, which seems crazy. I want to work.’
As for Helen’s son’s future, she’s concerned that she won’t be able to give him what she had. Much has been made of the fact that our generation is the first since World War Two that won’t be better off that its parents, but Helen’s experience shows it in action: ‘I do worry about university tuition fees, and being able to put some money aside for him. Hopefully when he’s a bit older and at nursery I can go back to five days a week, go for promotions, earn more – but again, that depends on having child tax credits to pay for nursery.’
‘I have no savings, so I’m just about OK month to month – but if one problem upset the balance I don’t know what I’d do. We’re going on a three-day holiday this summer to my uni city of Sheffield. It’s just me and him in a Travelodge, and I’m so excited. It’s the first time we’ve ever been away together!’
The life of a ‘single mum’ might not seem familiar to you. But Helen – and hundreds of thousands of women like her – have much more in common with you than you'd think. Just a few circumstances stand in the way of us all having to live like Helen does,, in fear that the state she’s paid into for all of her working life will one day no longer be there to support her right to work and be a mum.
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Follow Sophie on Twitter @sophwilkinson
Additional reporting by Daisy Buchanan @NotRollergirl
Picture: Eugenia Loli
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.