Lone Parents and the Home

Abstract

The ‘home’ has become synonymous with the ‘family’ of husband, wife and their dependent children. In this conventional family the traditional role of ‘mother’ is that of the ‘expressive follower’ who caters to the needs of the children and her husband, the ‘instrumental leader’ (Parsons and Bales, 1955). It is the wife who ‘makes’ a home which becomes the centre of family life. These home-making activities give her a large degree of autonomy in the home but they also confine her responsibilities to it (Oakley, 1974; Pahl, 1985; Pahl, 1988). The home also forms the centre of the one-parent family but all the tasks of home-making and providing for the family are taken on by one individual. It is this socially constructed idea of the home as the centre of the family that is referred to as ‘home’ in this chapter as distinct from the physical space of the family’s accommodation.