Summary
YOU don't have to be a wild-eyed radical to see that Green MP Sue Bradford has a point: many sole parents would work if they could and to cut their benefit would only make people even more poor than they already are. A new OECD report which calls for cuts to the domestic purposes benefit unless sole parents can show they are "actively" seeking work is much too prescriptive, particularly given the current social circumstances in this country where affordable and accessible child care is a pipedream for so many people and where employment practices tend not to be sufficiently flexible as to let parents, especially sole parents, work hours which may be both part- time and outside the conventional framework. The point, of course, is that children don't keep office hours, they have longer holidays than adults and they get sick.
If the OECD report is right in its contention that half of all sole parents in New Zealand are jobless (parenting isn't a job?), a rate which is high, it says, by international comparisons, then that surely says more about our society than it does about our supposedly feckless and idle sole parent population. Then there is also the underlying assumption that sole parents want to work, or should be made to. As Ms Bradford asked, why shouldn't sole parents be given the option of staying at home to care for their children? After all, we hear an awful lot of rhetoric from the politicians, and other pillars of society, about how important parenting is. If they really meant it, surely they would be advocating for sole parents to be given enhanced economic resources to carry on.See the full content of this document
Extract
Beating Up On; Sole Parents
The politician in charge of all this, Palmerston North MP and Social Development Minister Steve...
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