The Diversity of State Benefit Dependent Lone Mothers: The Use of Type Categories as an Analytical Tool

This article provides an empirical examination of how lone mothers who receivestate benefits in Germany and Britain create meaning with regards to motheringand state dependency. It uses the concept of individualisation as it requireswomen to negotiate their own lives. But the concept of individualisation islimited as it insinuates a convergence in men's and women's work identities andaspirations and is in danger of reducing women's identity to their ‘family-work’preferences that does not encompass the complexity of their lives.The article has both a methodological claim and a substantive claim:Methodologically, it explores how new type categories can be used as ananalytical tool to help us understand how lone mothers create meaning and tomake sense of the differences between the mothers’ complex identities.Substantively, these type categories demonstrate that there are great variationsand dynamics in mothers’ identities despite their state dependency. Based onlone mothers’ perceived choices and constraints they are categorised aspioneers, copers or strugglers. The pioneers view their situation as anopportunity to construct their lives actively in non-traditional ways. Incontrast, the coper and the struggler types perceive a lack of choices and tendto have traditional gender role values. While copers view their situation astemporary and improvable, strugglers feel overwhelmed by constraints andperceive themselves to have no choices at all. This article discusses theconstruction and the characteristics of these categories while detailed casestudies bring each type category to life and give them more substance. The dataanalysis also shows that besides values, lone mothers’ structural background aswell as the number and age of their children seems to be related to lonemothers’ creation of meaning.