Teenage childbearing: young sole mothers challenge the stereotypes

ABSTRACT

Teenage sole mothers in receipt of welfare benefits are seriously affected by systematic and radical restructuring of Aotearoa/New Zealand’s state welfare system since 2008. With few exceptions, the changes oblige beneficiaries to prioritise obtaining paid work. To address questions of how welfare changes and socio-cultural context in Aotearoa New Zealand are experienced by teenage mothers we conducted a narrative study of 10 young women’s stories of sole mothering as beneficiaries. Purposeful sampling was used to recruit young mothers who were attending, or had recently attended a specialist school for teen parents. Thematic analysis of interview narratives represented experiences of financial and social deprivation, negative stereotyping, stigma and resistance. In contrast to the government’s explicit goal of getting welfare recipients into paid employment, the teenage mothers in our study placed full-time mothering as their principal duty. They also acknowledged the material and social advantages of entering paid employment, and were committed to working but only when their child was ‘settled and ready’ – a decision they understood to be their responsibility.

KEYWORDS:

• Teenage sole mothers
• employment
• welfare-to-work
• negative stereotyping
• stigma

It was in the first decade of the twenty-first century that political language presaged a neo-liberal determination to remodel the welfare system in Aotearoa/New Zealand. Re-naming the Department of Social Welfare (DSW) as the Ministry of Social Development (MSD) marked a shift in the political agenda of welfare away from welfare protection towards increased government intervention. More recently, the National-led government’s clearly stated intention is aimed at reducing welfare expenditure by ensuring that every state welfare beneficiary who could work should and would work. Welfare-to-work policies and welfare cuts in Aotearoa/New Zealand are consistent with economic policies across OECD countries. The 2008 global economic crisis that brought an intensification of neo-liberal restructuring that prioritised economic growth and productivity has reshaped welfare states since the 1990s (Hamnet 2014). Welfare cuts primarily affect women, children and the disabled and increasingly those receiving benefits are socially stigmatised: State benefits are no longer understood as the provision of welfare for those in need, but a cause of individual poverty, intergenerational dependence on state support and bloating costs to Government. This shift in understanding the relationship between the state, welfare and beneficiaries has taken on the status of ‘common sense’ over the last decade (Jensen and Tyler 2015).

Since the early 2000s, governments in Aotearoa/New Zealand have been encouraging more women into paid work, drawing on feminist principles of equal participation in the workforce while aiming for neo-liberal economic priorities (e.g. Kahu and Morgan 2007). In the broader context of welfare-to-work policies and welfare cuts, mothers who are sole parent beneficiaries are significantly affected. Around 50% of mothers spend some time as sole parents and recent statistics show that over 50% of sole mothers are in full or part-time paid employment (Dale 2013). At the end of June 2016, 92% of people receiving a Sole Parent Support (SPS) benefit were women with 20% under the age of 25 (Ministry of Social Development 2016). Young solo mothers have been a particular focus of concern in Aotearoa/New Zealand since the rate of births to adolescents here has been higher than in other OECD countries, except the United States. Although there has been a marked decline in teenage birth rates since 2008, adolescent pregnancy and mothering are still regarded as significant social problems (Pawar et al. 2015). The declining birth rate among young women aged 15–19 has been welcomed by the Families Commission (2015), although there is no research into any negative impacts of teenage birth rate decline (Pawar et al. 2015).

Teenage mothers

Teenage mothering has generated considerable debate and interest among policy-makers, commentators and social researchers. Despite evidence of adolescent mothers’ resilience and decades of critiques against problematising adolescent mothering (Breheny and Stephens 2010; Hall et al. 2014) teenage childbearing continues to be pathologised as poor life choice and a serious problem, risking for the mothers and their children, social, educational and economic disadvantages (Cherrington and Breheny 2005; Breheny and Stephens 2007; Furstenberg 2007; Families Commission 2011; Barcelos 2014).

Normative constructions of teenage motherhood involve prevailing values that are middle-class; prioritising education, career planning and delayed pregnancy in women’s lives (Leese 2014; Mantovani et al. 2015). Young mothers do not conform to these prevailing values and negative stereotypes associate early pregnancy and mothering with ‘family breakdown, welfare dependency, promiscuity and poor parenting’ (Ellise-Sloan 2014, p. 1). Such stereotypes stigmatise (Leese 2014) and even recent trends emphasising the vulnerability of young mothers rather than their deviance, implicate negative stereotypes of their poor decision-making and failure to exercise agency appropriately (Mantovani et al. 2015).

As well as focusing attention on the problems and disadvantages of adolescent mothering, the past two decades have seen a rise in the normative expectations of intensive mothering. Also grounded in middle-class values, intensive mothering involves heightened demands on mothers to care for a wide-ranging children’s needs; cognitive, social, emotional, physical and psychological. Increasingly social research and policy is attending to ‘parents as risk factors in children’s lives’ (Romagnoli and Wall 2012, p. 274). In this context disadvantaged mothers are understood to need surveillance and intervention to minimise risk to themselves and their children. Mothers who are young and poor are regarded as ‘high risk’ merely by membership of the group (Romagnoli and Wall 2012). Yet when young mothers’ experience institutionalised social support, such as parent education programmes, that are framed within negative stereotypes, they may experience stigma and increased maternal stress which turns them away from services ostensibly provided to address their needs (Leese 2014).

Over the past decade researchers have paid greater attention to the experiences of young mothers, to include encounters with negative stereotyping, stigma, increased surveillance by welfare agencies and expectations of intensive mothering (e.g. Yardley 2008; Romagnoli and Wall 2012; Ellise-Sloan 2014; Rudoe 2014). However, little research has centred on how young mothers experience welfare-to-work policies and their intersections with the social expectations associated with young mothering. Our study specifically focuses on young mother’s experiences in Aotearoa/New Zealand’s welfare-to-work policy context.

The current study

This narrative study explores the experiences of 10 young mothers receiving welfare benefits to address the research question: How do teenage sole mothers experience and make sense of mothering in a socio-political environment that prioritises paid employment over mothering care? We chose a feminist narrative approach to enable the young women in our study to tell us their stories from their perspectives, recognising that they had not been invited to contribute to consultation on the welfare changes that significantly affect their lives. Despite increasing critical attention to problematising teenage pregnancy and mothering, it is still the case that expert discourses about young parents serves to silence them (Hall et al. 2014). Our goal is to redress the dominance of expert discourse in literature about teenage mothering by refusing to engage with ‘abstractions that pre-define the pregnant teenager’ (Mcleod 2014, p. 130) or young mother. We recognise that the stories our participants tell do not provide us with transparent access to their experiences. Instead, we treat their stories as representations and following Riessman (1993) acknowledge that our participants’ stories involve multiple levels of representation, from the matters they attend to at the time of the events they are recounting to the way in which readers of our article engage with and make meaning from the analysis we provide. The meaning-making character of narrative is the central feature of our methodological approach, often referred to as ‘experience-centred’ narrative research (Squire 2013). We also conceptualise experience-centred narrative as privileging our participants’ representations of their private lives over the abstract or public discourses more usually associated with expertise (Letherby 2003). We acknowledge that their private stories are set within specific socio-cultural and political contexts. In addition to conducting semi-structured interviews with young mothers we examined media reports on welfare changes affecting adolescent mothers as a major source of information for the participants and the public. We included editorials, responses by columnists, political commentators, opposition members and welfare lobby groups.

Method

Ten young mothers aged 16–20 years who were actively engaged in caring for their child and attending school while receiving a state-provided benefit volunteered to participate in the study. They were recruited through a specialised school providing secondary education for adolescent mothers with whom the first author established a collaborative relationship for the purposes of the research. We purposefully chose to recruit young women attending secondary school since the school provided a supportive environment in which the issues raised by the research could be addressed and because the young women were proactively engaged in education as well as caring for their child. The first author gave a presentation to the class outlining the research, and potential participants were also provided with written information about the study in accordance with a university approved ethics protocol (MUHEC Southern B Application-11/50).

Semi-structured interviews were conducted by the first author with each participant. The interview questions were flexible and open-ended, permitting a focus on experiences of day-to-day coping, adjusting to their new status as sole mothers, and their reactions to a restructured social welfare system in a socio-political climate that explicitly prioritised paid employment over full-time mothering. Two reflexive concerns arose in relation to the interviews: The considerable age gap between the interviewer and the young mothers who were 16–20 years of age; and how best to assure participants were confident that whatever they said, in whatever way they chose to say it, was valued, valid and acceptable. These concerns were addressed by suggesting the participants think of the interviewer as an interested grandmother figure, and by beginning interviews with an open, conversational question that focused broadly on the young women’s experience of becoming mothers. These strategies generated rich, detailed accounts where participants explored, recalled, reconstructed and made sense of their experiences with minimal need for the interviewer to shape or guide the interviews. Several of the participants said they had appreciated being able to talk openly about their lives. Most interviews lasted about an hour, with two extending to around 80 minutes.

Interviews were transcribed verbatim, including questions and comments from the interviewer. Participants chose pseudonyms and identifying information was removed from their transcripts. They were also provided with the opportunity to meet with the interviewer to review and change their transcripts and give approval for extracts to be used as evidence of the analysis. One participant was unable to accept this invitation because of changes in her circumstances so while her transcript was included in our analysis no extracts have been reproduced.

Thematic analysis (Braun and Clarke 2006, 2012) was used to identify themes within each participant’s transcript and subsequently to refine and organise themes across all 10 transcripts. Two broad narrative themes emerged concerning the material conditions of participants’ day-to-day struggles to live on welfare payments, and their experiences relating to social and family support and stereotyping and stigma. In the following sections we provide a summary of the theme concerning everyday material conditions before turning to a more elaborated account emerging from their social experiences. In this section we include two sub-themes: social deprivation, and negative stereotyping, stigma and resistance. In the final section on our thematic analysis we discuss the theme relating directly to neo-liberal ‘welfare-to-work’ policies.

The main themes and the sub-themes emerging in our analysis were closely interconnected. Although it was practical to treat each if it were discrete for the purpose of re-presenting them, events, relationships and responses were often enmeshed in the ways participants’ storied their lives. We acknowledge that by separating the themes for analysis, the complexity and contradictions of living as a young sole mother on a benefit may be oversimplified. We also acknowledge that the separation of themes disrupts the participants’ frequent and repeated references to their children as their highest priority. To ensure that we keep their perspective on mothering foremost, we begin with a three examples of their commitment to doing their best for their child:

Inga:

I think he [son] is going to stay at the top of my priority list for quite a while and probably for the rest of his life.

Capri:

Our babies are our world. Especially my son. He’s my loving heart, that one. He’s my golden star, pretty much. No matter what goes on, that’s me, I’ll be with him.

Jasmin:

The only thing that made me come back to school was my baby because I just want to give her the best future.

Thematic analysis

The material conditions of everyday life

In recounting the everyday realities of living as a sole mother, the most significant and repeated consideration for each participant was that doing their best for their child was incontrovertibly their highest priority. No matter what the circumstances, their baby came first. Yet, a cluster of seemingly insoluble difficulties and constraints emerged as the consequence of having insufficient money.

While three of the participants had some ad hoc support from immediate and extended family members, seven of the young mothers in the study spoke of constant anxiety about their dependence on the welfare. Faye, Capri and Angelina are representative of the everyday inadequacies of welfare payments.

Faye:

It’s hard financially to be renting and supporting a child. Yeah it’s really hard. It’s really stressful. It’s a struggle; it’s definitely a big struggle.

Angelina:

It sucks. I’m left with $6.50 each week, and that’s after [advice about] budgeting.

An ice-cream for Faye’s child was a rare and carefully thought-out treat. Capri’s mother was her only babysitter because she did not need to be paid. Angelina took her son for walks to the park or the river or to visit her cousin because she could not afford other outings. Participants struggled to afford emergency visits to the doctor, especially at weekends when most general practitioners’ surgeries are closed. Bus fares and transport to and from appointments at locations such as the Work and Income (WINZ) office, the nearest hospital or medical specialists were expensive, as were fresh fruit and vegetables, milk and bread, rent, heating and electricity costs. Baby wipes, disposable nappies, new clothes, movies and treats could not be covered by the weekly budget.

Although those with ad hoc family support fared somewhat better in making ends meet, they felt uncomfortable being dependent on others financially. For instance, Holly and her baby had early support from her mother whose home is in another town. When attending school Holly and her son were living with her grandparents and was careful not to impose on them for her own needs.

Holly:

They help me out heaps. If I don’t have enough money to buy baby’s milk and stuff, they’ll buy it … I can’t really buy myself clothes and new stuff that I need. I make sure that baby’s got all his food and clothes and what he needs.

All participants had insufficient money to cover basic needs: food, shelter and clothing, first for their child, then for themselves. The financial stressors and sanctions they experienced also intersected with social sanctions and relationship stressors linked to youthful mothering that breaches contemporary normative expectations.

Social experiences

Social deprivation: Fun, friendships and support

For participants, having insufficient means to meet basic needs meant reduced resources for spending time with friends and stories of ‘not going out much’. Without responsibility for a baby, many of their former friends had some disposable income and more spare time to socialise.

Gigi:

Every now and then that’s fun and of course you need it in a way, ‘cause I’m young and you do need to socialise, but not every weekend. Sometimes it’s disappointing because there happens to be something good on tonight … 

For others, early pregnancy meant the loss of support from friends and significant changes in their social lives. Capri she found it hard because her friends didn’t want to see her, though she also found her way through the most difficult times with family support.

Capri:

That was pretty hard and I got depressed and all that stuff. They didn’t wanna know me, um [long pause] I didn’t have much support really but all I needed was my mum and my dad and my son’s father and his parents and I just kept it at that, and I’m doing pretty good for me and my son.

Participants variously reported that social isolation as a result of insufficient money made life difficult, but with primary responsibility for baby care and study commitments they had neither time nor energy to socialise. Their life-changing circumstances also resulted in reallocating interests, and some participants severed or limited relationships with some peers. Dahlia, for instance, no longer associated with her earlier friends.

Dahlia:

I don’t talk to my friends … I made new friends here [at the teen parent unit]. My old friends were just wanting to party and get drunk and … I’m not into that.

Capri told of a radical change in her social life, drinking and partying with friends after she became pregnant.

Capri:

I feel proud of myself having my son, cos if I didn’t have my son I would be drinking and smoking weed, um sleeping underneath the bridge … I only drink about once a month, most probably every two months on special occasions. When I had my son he made me see everything, everything. I love him so much.

An early pregnancy may have catapulted teenagers into assuming adult roles and responsibilities, but for several of the participants the time spent with friends new or old, was examined through different lenses to recognise that changed realities could bring other and sometimes more-accessible options. Thus not only were they limited by external circumstances, they were also setting new boundaries for themselves, becoming more selective in choosing social relationships and experiencing their social lives differently because of responsibilities for their children.

Gigi:

Of course when I do go out I get really nervous. I get so nervous because I’m leaving her; you know I’m not used to it. I’m leaving her; I don’t know what’s going to happen.

Responsibilities for their children and changes to their social lives shifted the focus and priority of friendships for participants. Dahlia felt she belonged among a new group of friends in the school unit. Their shared experiences and similar goals allowed Dahlia and her new friends to ‘gossip’ and talk about ‘all sorts of things’.

Dahlia:

Like if we’re having boy problems we can always talk to each other in a big bunch, cos we’re all going through the same thing, so it’s good to talk around.

Gigi’s new school colleagues were more like close acquaintances and were seen differently from the friends she had made at her old school, even though she had ‘cut everybody off’ for a while. Now, with some new boundaries around socialising, having fun with her old school friends remained important. She renewed regular daytime contact with her old friends by sometimes taking her child with her:

Gigi:

I keep in touch with my old school friends really well and that’s where, you know, my support comes from.

With their priorities clearly focused on their children, family members became important sources of support for most participants. For Dahlia, it was regular visits from her Nana who understood the difficulties of being a sole parent because Nana dealt ‘with their problems all the time’. Holly also mentioned her grandmother as a key support person. She lives with her baby son in her grandparents’ home. She carefully considered who she felt most supported by and included her mother, grandmother, the baby’s father and his parents. Capri’s parents also provided her support, and in her case her mother best understands her experience of being a sole mother.

Capri:

Yeah. Sometimes I tell her about my struggles and stuff and she’ll give me good advice, just keep my head up and see the sun, and just be there for my son and that’s good advice for me and just look to the future.

Angelina and her baby were living in her parents’ home where she was paying board. Yet the support she received was tinged with blame for her sole mother status.

Angelina:

I’ve got support from my parents but they still say it’s my fault … In a way my parents told me this is what’s going to happen, you got pregnant, yeah, they did warn me but I mean I love kids anyway, so it’s good I’ve got mine now.

Gigi also told us of tense relationships with family members. She experienced ‘huge problems’ with her parents while she was living with her baby’s father, but after returning to her parents’ home their support increased. There are still conflicts but they are not so serious

Gigi:

I’m back, you know living with them, and but it’s still it’s very difficult and you can still feel that there is a bit of tension, like they really hurt me, I really hurt them.

Others had little support from family: Britney, burdened by the sole responsibility of raising her child, made a brief reference to not getting along very well with her mother. Inga received most of her support from her church, but it came with pressure to get married.

Inga:

Yeah, um a lot of the young couples have been getting married lately at church and so there’s been a lot of pressure, oh, you know ‘Are you going to get married? You should get married you know’.

For this study’s participants, adolescent social relationships were restricted. Lack of financial resources prevented enjoying the same kinds of social activities as their friends, yet because they prioritised their responsibilities to their children, they were able to set clear boundaries around socialising. For some, friends were a source of much needed support as were family members especially mothers and grandmothers. But support was unevenly available among the participants, with some having very little. In some cases support from family and friends needed to be carefully negotiated so as to maintain independence and navigate their way through disapproval of their status as sole adolescent mothers.

Negative stereotyping, stigma and resistance

Participants were clearly aware of normative standards of intensive mothering, but emphasised education and career planning. Attending the teen parent unit to continue high school education meant improving employment opportunities to advance their own and their children’s futures, as well as complying with a norm that constructs education as socially and economically valuable. By taking sole responsibility for the care of their children, they were also complying with intensive mothering norms. At the same time, they were obviously flouting norms of delayed parenting for women. Participants’ stories told of experiencing more blame for the breach of normative delayed parenting than praise for their commitment to intensive mothering, education and career planning. They also spoke of feeling judged and stigmatised in public spaces.

Gigi:

They just totally, totally degrade you and you can tell just by people looking at you … There was one person who gave me the most horrible look …  it was like daggers in her eyes … It was the look she gave me.

Holly:

I think they look at us differently … I think they look at us like we don’t know how to look after babies … It’s like they laugh at us.

Inga:

There’s always got to be someone who makes silly comments or someone who makes you feel uncomfortable.

Capri:

Yeah, every time I walk past with my son you hear like other people behind your talking behind your back. There was a couple of old ladies just looking at me and they’re going ‘Oh look at this stupid young mum getting pregnant and having children they shouldn’t have’.

Faye:

I think we are quite stereotyped. I don’t think they should be judging us or thinking low about us, because I think what we are doing is really great.

We heard several accounts of negative stereotyping and feelings of frustration, disbelief and anger when participants’ interacted with some staff in state agencies administering welfare benefits.

Gigi:

They absolutely degraded me. I was just so angry. So what the hell am I supposed to do?

Angelina:

It’s tough. You sort of get targeted in a way. They still won’t help but I’m struggling.

Capri:

It’s horrible. They think we’re stupid. They make you wait for hours.

Holly:

She made me feel like crap.

As with other studies exploring young mothers’ experiences of negative stereotyping and stigma (e.g. Romagnoli and Wall 2012; Ellise-Sloan 2014; Rudoe 2014; Sharpe 2015), we also heard stories of the ways in which participants resisted their stereotypical characterisation. For example, Jasmine told us of how caring for nieces and nephews had prepared her for looking after her premature daughter. For the time she was in the neonatal unit Jasmine would spend long hours with her.

Jasmin:

I would stay with her until twelve o’clock at night, go home and then come back at like six, seven or eight in the morning and just do that every day, which I found really hard.

Jasmin’s anxiety, sacrifice, care and concern for her baby parallel the normative expectations epitomised in motherhood ideals. Stories of child-caring competence were common: Jasmin was proud of organising regular quality time at home with her daughter.

Jasmin:

She is in quite a good routine. Like I’m quite surprised. I think it’s the way I’ve brought her up. She knows her routine.

Faye, Dahlia, Inga, Gigi and Holly all spoke of gaining child-rearing knowledge through hands-on experience with younger siblings. Having learned the ways of caring for a baby, they were able to make normatively appropriate choices themselves and for their children.

Gigi:

I knew what I was doing and that’s kind of what pushed me to the decision to have my daughter.

Holly:

I know that I can look after my own baby.

Inga proactively sought advice from several appropriate sources before making decisions.

Inga:

in the end I think you can decide for yourself, out of the options, which one is better.

As well as testimony of their competence as mothers, participants regarded their schooling and commitment to study as evidence that they were not deserving of the stigma usually attached to young mothers.

Faye:

Look at what we are doing, we are studying, and we are putting our babies first by getting a better education, and getting out of bed every morning with our babies, and getting ready and going to school everyday.

Participants experienced normative expectations of motherhood as ubiquitous and often resisted stereotypes of young mothers receiving welfare by distancing themselves from the negative images of the aimlessness and risk-taking associated with early childbearing and the implied incompetence as mothers. The evoked normative expectations of education and intensive mothering to counter the stigma attached to their status as sole welfare mothers, while effective for resisting stigma, their commitment to intensive mothering and prioritising the well-being of their child meant that negotiating the demands of explicit welfare-to-work policies was complex.

Welfare-to-work: the future

In developed countries it has been commonly assumed that in paid employment sole mothers and their children would be financially more secure. This assumption has been strongly disputed in studies in the USA (Kingfisher 2002), Canada (Quaid 2002), Norway (Dahl 2003), Britain (Dostal 2008) and Australia (Gardiner 1999; Walter 2002) which show that just as welfare dependence traps sole mothers in poverty so does precarious work. Many of the participants believed that the only jobs available to them would be part-time, casual or short-term work, which do not alleviate poverty (Furstenberg 2007). Participants saw prospects for more rewarding work as slim, serving to further foster already existing feelings of financial insecurity and anxiety.

Faye:

I just don’t understand, like they want us Mums to get out there and work, but really everyone’s fighting for a job, so I don’t understand how these jobs are coming up. What jobs are coming up? … If there were jobs of course we’d be looking. But um, where are the jobs?

Angelina:

I’d be bringing in the same amount anyway, close to what I’m getting on the benefit. It still won’t be enough anyway. … 

Committing to intensive mothering meant that participants were concerned that paid employment meant spending less time with their child.

Faye:

Of course I’ve thought about getting a part-time job, but really it would be really hard because my availability isn’t very much and the time that I am available like the weekends I always spend with [daughter] because I think that’s so important especially at the age she is … 

Angelina:

I don’t feel ready to go back to work yet. I’ve been at work. I know what it’s like, I came home tired and stuff. Like coming home [now] there is just me When I know we’re in a good routine and I’ve got something else behind me. I want to spend time with my son, watch him grow up. Time flies by. I’ll miss out on heaps of stuff, but that’s all right.

Capri explained that she loved spending time with her son, who was often sick and ‘in and out of hospital’. If employed she could not be there for him because she would probably use up more than her sick pay and holiday pay entitlement and therefore would not be a very reliable employee. Her awareness of normative expectations requiring employees to be honest, hardworking and dependable and the conflict with intensive mother norms, suggests how the complexity of compliance with norms needed negotiation.

Participants resisted welfare-to-work policies because of their commitment to education for the long-term benefit of their children and themselves.

Capri:

I don’t like being made to go like back to work when I just want to finish off my school year.

Gigi:

They are going to try, you know and force us into the workforce. And, you know that would be very sad if that actually happened this year, well, because I want to finish school and a lot of these girls do want to finish school.

Educational qualifications were important but the inevitability of employment obligations meant sacrificing time with their child. As mothers first paid employment was a sacrifice the young women were reluctant to make, but would do so if compelled.

Faye:

What we are doing is just really good, like good for our children and good for the future, our futures and our education I think that it’s a good thing to go back to work, if you’re ready and your child’s at a good age, but it really depends where the work is … 

Jasmin:

In my head, I’m just like, no, it’s not about the money. So yeah I hope that I can finish all my studying and just give my baby the best future and hopefully I’m a good role model for her and she’ll follow my step, yeah.

In addressing what the future holds, education was emphasised as a way of finding rewarding paid employment that would improve their child’s lives, and their own. Being coerced into finding employment before they felt their children were settled into stable routines led to concern about the government’s ‘one-size fits all’ attitude, dissatisfaction with impositions that denied them choices among their many responsibilities, and some worry that their lives might not be improved by working outside the home. Uncertainty about finding satisfying work was also significant, but this was overtaken by doubts about finding any job at all.

Conclusion

Our study was motivated by our concern with the effects of welfare-to-work policies taken up consistently across OECD countries in the early twenty-first century and with the way in which these policies affect young sole mothers who are already constituted as significant social problems. Despite research evidence of resilience in disadvantaged circumstances there is a clear connection between the ‘common sense’ view that young sole mothers present a serious social problem, and the burden of unsustainable welfare costs that they represent. In view of research that continues to provide evidence of the stigma and welfare surveillance experienced by young solo mothers, our project was focused on their experiences in the contemporary context of welfare-to work policies.

Our thematic analysis identified the stressors of insufficient resources to cover basic material needs, the difficulties participants face in living independently while reliant on family for material assistance. Material poverty also affected the participants’ relationships with friends and exacerbated social isolation that was also related to social sanctions they experienced for their early childbearing. We identified experiences of negative stereotyping and social stigma in public settings as well as in interactions with welfare agencies. In this context, the young women in our study accepted their responsibilities as mothers and prioritised the well-being of their young children while balancing the demands of material disadvantage and social disapproval. While their commitment to intensive mothering served as resistance to the social stigma of early childbearing, it also complicated their experiences of welfare-to-work requirements, which they understood would challenge their mothering commitments without necessarily improving their material well-being. They were aware that the work most likely available to them was precarious and poorly paid, so their material disadvantages would not be significantly relieved and care for their children would be compromised. Their attendance at school and commitment to succeeding in education was their demonstration of an investment in a future that would provide well for themselves and their children.

One of the limitations of identifying themes in our study was a somewhat oversimplified representation of the complexity and contradictions evident in the way that themes were enmeshed in the participants’ stories. We considered the possibility of taking a case study approach to our analysis, to overcome this limitation. However, our concerns about the possibilities that participants’ might be identified in a case study meant that we accepted the limitation. If confidentiality could be preserved, case studies would allow the complexity of particular storied experiences to be explicated in more detail.

Nonetheless, our thematic analysis provides evidence of the complicated intersections of intensive mothering expectations and commitments, social stigma and negative stereotyping, material disadvantage and welfare dependency for young solo mothers. Resistance to their negative social experiences is clear in their commitment to their children, their education and their futures. Welfare-to-work policies do not provide solutions to the complexity of young sole mothers’ circumstances, nor do they address the social and economic disadvantages they are facing.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.