Book Reviews
Going it alone? Lone motherhood in late modernity
By Martina Klett-Davies
ISBN: 978-0-754643-88-3 2007 166 pages Ashgate Publishing Ltd, Aldershot
Reviewed by Helen L Cameron
School of Social Work & Social Policy, Magill Campus, University of South Australia, SA
Klett-Davies provides a scholarly examination of the ways lone mothers receiving state benefits create an identity and a life, despite their troubled relationships with the state, their discomfort about ongoing financial dependency and their frustration about negotiating the mixture of desire and pressure around paid employment. The experiences of seventy lone mothers on state benefits illustrate the concept of individualisation through the author's formulation of a series of questions, problems and contexts. At basis, the author suggests that identities are no longer determined by consensual moral standards, but instead are a matter of personal choice - a kind of ongoing project. Her questions, as paraphrased here, form the basis of the study. How do lone mothers negotiate their lives as mothers and as dependents? Can state-dependent lone motherhood be a liberating experience? How much can individualisation explain the identities of state-dependent lone mothers? In general, through Klett-Davies' analysis, gender and traditional parenthood are challenged to take on new meanings.
There are eleven chapters with the first six of these defining and analysing the theoretical and political territory in which the identities of the mothers in the study are expressed. British social discourses - with lone mothers are seen as threats and as problems - are compared with German alternative forms that include seeing sole motherhood as escaping patriotism. In Chapter 3, individualism is analysed and critiqued for its fit in the lives of the British and German women in the study and Chapter 4 examines welfare state ideologies and social policies that define aspects of the existences of lone mothers. Chapter 5 focuses on the mothers' experiences of paid employment, their shifting patterns of employment and their constant pressure to juggle child care and paid work.
Chapter 6 contains an explanation of how three typologies of sole mothers, as applied in the next few chapters, were developed as research tools. In the next three chapters, Klett-Davies presents these three categories based on her extensive research with the women. In Chapter 7 the ‘pioneers' are described. These mothers see their situation as a chance to construct their lives actively in terms of educational or personal development. In Chapter 8 the ‘copers' are defined as viewing their single mother identify as temporary and improvable and in Chapter 9 the ‘strugglers' are described as feeling overwhelmed by the situation and seeing very few personal choices within it. Chapter 10 however, discusses the ‘borderliners' - mothers who do not fit neatly into any of the other three categories. These chapters bring these lone mothers into focus and to illustrate the concept of individualisation. Chapter 11 is a synthesis of all that has preceded it.
This is a scholarly but readable book and provides an important study of the changing roles of sole mothers in modern society. It is an interesting read for all with experience of sole motherhood or interest in their lives in current society. It defines some directions for helping these women to negotiate the territory before them and so contains some important ideas for all professionals whose work involves sole mothers.
References
Mission Australia (2004) Fact sheet. Poverty: children and young people in Australia, http://www.missionaustralia.com.au/.Viewed June 2006.
Senate: Community Affairs Reference Committee (SCARC) (2004) A hand up, not a hand out: renewing the fight against poverty, Report on poverty and financial hardship, Chapter 10: ‘Women and sole parents', pp.211-240.
