Framing and reframing social policy paradigms: the case of lone parents

This chapter looks at a group that is a focus of new public policy controversy, that of lone parents, and identifies the way in which the public response to this group has been framed and reframed over time. It discusses the historical paradigms that have guided policy and practice towards unmarried mothers and illegitimate children and considers their new reframing and relevance with regard to debates and policies towards lone parents. The chapter also considers the internal and external forces pressing for change and how they are used by organized groups or social movements that challenge the “normatively secure” taken for granted consensus about values, means and ends and the counter movements that these initiatives stimulate. The welfare reform policy in the United States illustrates the power of the “anti-dependency” paradigm as the overwhelming dominant theme for dealing with lone mothers. Illegitimacy was a particularly divisive issue within the Republican Party.