Document Type

Book Chapter

Publication Date

2020

Journal Title or Book Title

The Palgrave Handbook of Family Policy

Version

Publisher's PDF

Publisher's Statement

© The Author(s) 2020 R. Nieuwenhuis and W. Van Lancker (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Family Policy

DOI

10.1007/978-3-030-54618-2_13

Abstract

Family dynamics are changing and single-parent families are becoming more common across countries. In their flagship report “Progress of the World’s Women, 2019–2020,” UN Women (2019) demonstrated that, contrary to popular belief, couples with children do not constitute a majority of all families, but rather there are many different types of families. Single parenthood is considered a “new social risk” in poverty and inequality (Bonoli, 2013). Therefore, policy makers and legislators have designed targeted policy specifically for single parents, such as targeted child benefits to single parents. In addition, legislation and social policy have been designed and implemented specifically for single parents, such as child support and family law such as child custody and shared residence. This study takes a different approach, based on the universalist argument that without adequate social protection that benefits all families, those families that are more vulnerable are often hit the hardest. We focus on family policies, and specifically we examine whether and to what extent single parents benefit from the same family policies that are available to all families with children.

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Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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