Single parents and post-separation families: Challenges and opportunities in times of crisis
This year Anti-Poverty Week 2023 (15-27 October) is continuing and extending its campaign to end child poverty in Australia. To achieve this requires a strong focus on supporting families of all kinds. In today’s post Dr Alice Campbell (@ColtonCambo] of Life Course Centre (@lifecourseAust) examines the challenges and opportunities in supporting single parenting, co-parenting and post-separation families.
Poverty and single parent households
While the COVID-19 pandemic dominated our attention over the past few years, other crises have raged in the background – from the climate crisis and associated extreme weather events, to the cost-of-living and housing crisis. We are also in a domestic and family violence crisis, with profound impacts on families and the children growing up in them. This is especially the case for vulnerable families who do not fit the normative nuclear family model.
Today, almost one in five Australian children live in a single parent family. These children have a poverty rate of 44%, which is more than three times the poverty rate of children living in couple families (13%). Another 9% of children live in blended or step-families. Yet, as a society, we seem to give little thought to how to support these diverse and often vulnerable families during increasingly precarious times.
In June this year, the Life Course Centre sought to shine a spotlight on this issue by hosting a special collaborative workshop ‘Single parenting, co-parenting, and post-separation families: Challenges and opportunities in times of crisis’. The Melbourne workshop brought together community members, academics, policy makers, industry partners, and advocates and included research snapshots as well as lived experience and stakeholder panels and open discussions.
Workshop attendees agreed that the recently enacted changes to Parenting Payment Single (PPS) announced in the 2022-23 Budget, which will allow single parents to remain eligible for this payment until their youngest child turns 14, will have a significant, positive impact on the social and economic wellbeing of single parents and their children. But many challenges still remain.
Child Support Challenges
There was a consensus among our workshop attendees that the current child support scheme is failing too many single resident parents, who are overwhelmingly women. These failures are a key contributor to the high rates of poverty experienced by single mothers and their children, which have not improved over the past decade.
First, the current system contains too many loopholes for payers. Numerous sources of income are not included in child support calculations, such as overseas inheritances, tax-free scholarships, money withdrawn from superannuation, and the income of new partners. Family trusts and cash in hand work can also be used by some payers to hide income/wealth and reduce child support liability. This can result in a financially comfortable paying parent providing minimal support to a financially struggling receiving parent who is caring for the children.
Second, the maintenance income test can be a source of great stress for receiving parents, with small amounts of child support substantially reducing Family Tax Benefit (FTB) entitlements. In private collect situations, FTB can be calculated on the assessed amount of child support rather than the actual amount received, which is often much less.
Third, the current child support scheme assigns overwhelming responsibility to receiving parents, who carry an immense mental load in a situation that is largely out of their control. They must check they have been paid the correct amounts, provide proof, return money or risk incurring penalties. In contrast, payers can avoid lodging tax returns and withhold child support payments with impunity.
Last, survivors of domestic and family violence face unique barriers to accessing child support. They are often advised, or choose, not to pursue child support entitlements, prioritising the safety of themselves and their children over their economic wellbeing. For those who do pursue their child support entitlements, the scheme can be weaponised by perpetrators who withhold payments as a means of exerting control.
Our recent research highlights how gender-based violence functions as a mechanism for increasing women’s risk of deep multidimensional disadvantage over their life course, and the need for a concerted and systemic approach to address this ‘gender trap’.
Data Opportunities
The current paucity of reliable data on child support means that what happens in practice remains something of a ‘black box’. Little is known about the 50% of families who opt for private collect arrangements. Anecdotal evidence suggests these parents are often not receiving the financial support for which they are eligible. Many parents fleeing a violent relationship are likely to fall into this category.
Longitudinal data on child support is needed to better support policy development in Australia. One option is for the household panel study – the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) Survey – to include a module dedicated to child support in their annual data collection. This could be modelled on the UK’s Understanding Society study, which collects comprehensive data on child support. In addition, a dedicated longitudinal study of post-separation families in Australia should be established.
Faced with the challenges of poverty and violence, single parents are some of the most resilient and resourceful among us. They shouldn’t have to struggle every day just to survive. It’s time we provide them and their children opportunities to thrive.
This post is part of the Women's Policy Action Tank initiative to analyse government policy using a gendered lens. View our other policy analysis pieces here.
Posted by @LifeCourseAust