‘When flexibility meets rigidity’: sole mothers' experiences in the transition from welfare to work

Abstract

This article examines the dynamics of flexibility experienced by sole mothers involved in a welfare-to-work program, and the strategies they use to retain their identities as caregivers and family providers. Based on individual interviews with 120 work-tested sole mothers on social benefits in New Zealand, we make three arguments. First, despite the constraints experienced by these mothers, welfare rules permit considerable flexibility in fulfilling work requirements. Second, this flexibility can contrast sharply with sole mothers' experiences in the labour market, where slightly higher income is traded for conformity to the rigidities of the low-waged part-time workplace. Third, sole mothers' lack of resources and strongly-held moral codes about ‘good mothering’ make them vulnerable to work/family tensions but also make them less valued employees in the current labour market. As labour markets and welfare regimes are being restructured in similar ways in ‘liberal welfare states’, these New Zealand findings are relevant to other countries such as Australia, Canada and the UK.