英语essay范文

Introduction

There are 1,250,000 lone-parent families in the UK, and 19 percent of all these families have children(Millar, 1999). The quantity of single parents have almost increased two-fold since early 1970s and this growth is part of widest patterns of change in family structure. Here are so many reasons for this, for example, the rising in extramarital births, the increasing in cohabitation, the rising in the divorce, and the rising of remarriage and cohabitation after divorce. (Millar, 1999). In 2000, it may be that less than 50% of all children in the United Kingdom will have spent all their lives in a traditional two parents family with both their real parents (Kiernan & Wicks, 1990 cited Millar, 1996). The essay will analyse several of the main factors which have affected the changing of the lone mothers families in the UK. And both the troubles and fortunes that received by lone mothers. There are three main parts to explain the changing of lone parents families in Britain: the changing policy; the ascending economy; the changing sociology ( social value).

The Three Main Factors—Policy, Economy, and Sociology, for the Increasing of the Lone Mothers Families in the United Kingdom

Since 1971 to 1990 the number of divorced and seperated female with children increased from 290,000 to 650,000; the quantity of single mother rose from 90,000 to 390,000. The numbers of lone fathers have also raised from 70,000 to 110,000, but they still very much in the small number ,at nearly 10% of all single parents. Hence most lone parents are women and only over 50% are female who are divorced or seperated from their ex-hunsbands (Haskey, 1993 cited Millar, 1996). Nevertheless, the rise in the numbers of single mothers families itself has not significantly increased the concern of the government. In recent three decades, the reason why the quantities of lone parents in the UK has been rising is that their dependence on state benefits has been increasing and the rates of their

employment have been decreasing. Poverty has risen and partly single mothers live on incomes probably fewer than the average for other households with children. However, during this time policy for long parents has been ‘in the doldrums’(Bradshaw, 1989 cited Millar, 1996).

The Changing Policy

In the late 1980s, while, the government began to pay more attention to those lone parents families. The social security system as a whole had been reviewed in the middle 1980s and legislation introduced in 1986( Millar,1996). After this review was completed ,according to Millar (1996), policy attention changed, especially to lone parents. In the middle of 1980s the Lancashire Country Council established a welfare rights service which offering expert advice and guidance on the maze of benefits and allowances available to people across the country (Cosslett, Easton & Summerfield,1996). Lone mothers in the UK got tremendous benefits from this service, and various poster and press advertising campaigns have been launched to ensure that mothers are aware of the benefits avialable to them and how to apply for them.

Finance is another of the essential reasons. Because the income support for long parents had been increasing rapidly throughout the 1980s and because of this, in real terms social secutrity spending on lone parents increased three times between 1981 and 1988(DSS, 1990 cited Millar,1996). The key economic objective for conservative government in the 1980s was the control of public expenditure. Therefore these increasing cost lead to the concern.

One of the Conse rvative social policy’s central tenets in the 1980s was that the government offered too much support, offering a large number of welfare, and this means that the people and households were not responsible for themselves anymore(Millar,1996). As there was an increasing numbers of lone mothers families who relied on the government to offer them an income. In order to lighten