Issue 5: Winter 1998

Eurostat Figures on
One Parent Families
Comment from OPEN
(One Parent Exchange Network)

LONE PARENTS NOW 14% OF ALL EU FAMILIES WITH DEPENDENT CHILDREN stated the headline of the Eurostat press release of September 29th. For Ireland, the percentage given was 14 per cent. While this figure is slightly higher than previous findings, it comes as no huge surprise given the increasing level of marital breakdown and births outside marriage in Ireland.

What failed to make the headlines but was noted in the report were the figures on unemployment rates and average incomes. Across the EU in 1996, the lone mothers' unemployment rate stood at 17 per cent. The rate for other mothers with dependent children was 11 per cent and for fathers 10 per cent. Average income of one parent families throughout the EU was just 77 per cent of that of other families with dependent children. The figure for Ireland, at 59 per cent, was the lowest in the EU. This is also no surprise to us. Work in progress at the ESRI shows that the risk of poverty for families headed by a lone mother increased from 17 to 32 per cent between 1987 and 1994.

The Eurostat and ESRI figures clearly highlight that the increase in one parent families with dependent children is being dealt with by governments through ad hoc approaches to childcare and other family friendly policies. As a consequence of this, one parent families - and particularly those headed by women - are being excluded from participation in the labour market and being kept in poverty as a result.

OPEN's Integra project - Moving On Up - is seeking to tackle this situation. It is aiming to provide one-parent families with choices about their economic futures by providing training programmes that they themselves have identified as being of relevance to their development. The training programmes that are being provided are in the areas of: Management; Policy Development; Team Building; Evaluation; Computer Skills; and, Media Skills. The participants in Moving On Up are lone parents working in organisations and groups that are members of OPEN. By providing training in these areas OPEN is seeking to increase the capacity of OPEN and local leaders to engage with policy issues while at the same time enhancing the employment prospects of participants.

Other actions being taken by Moving On Up to influence policy in Ireland and the EU are:

commissioning research on family friendly employment policies within the retail sector in Ireland;

establishing a Policy Advisory Group comprising policy makers and lone parents which will attempt to mainstream the learning from the project;

participating in a research project with lone parent organisations in eight other EU Member States on discrimination against lone parents in EU policies.

One of the early lessons from Moving On Up is - in common with other Integra projects - that given appropriate supports and interventions, lone parents, in spite of educational and other disadvantages, willingly participate in training, education and work to improve their own and their children's lives. The promotion of policies that recognise the diversity of family type and properly support family life should therefore be of the highest priority at national and EU levels. These policies need to be implemented in all areas including social, educational and employment provision.

Further Information: Eurostat Statistics in Focus, Population and Social Conditions 9/98, Lone-Parents: A Growing Phenomenon.
Click on the September press releases to read it.
www.europa.eu.int/en/comm/eurostat/serven/part6/6date98.htm