Investigating the Welfare Deservingness of Single Mothers: Public Image and Deservingness Perceptions in Hungary

Abstract

The literature on single mothers’ welfare deservingness is dominated by analyses carried out in Anglo-Saxon countries. Those analyses tend to point to an undeserving public image of single mothers. This negative perception is often explained by the identity gap between middle-class voters and poor single mothers, which is partly fuelled by conservative family values in mainstream society. This study investigates the issue in Hungary, where the government has strongly promoted traditional family ideals and significantly increased the support for affluent two-parent families in the past decade. First, the study explores the public image of single mothers based on open-ended and closed-ended survey questions. Second, it measures the perceived deservingness of the group based on five criteria (control, attitude, reciprocity, identity, and need) (van Oorschot 2000) by using the same open-ended question data and a series of other survey data. The results show that single mothers have a coherent deserving public image in Hungary: they have a hard life, do everything to make a living for their family, and lack appropriate financial and emotional support. Results, however, also show that public attitudes are in line with the government’s conservative family policy, and there is, indeed, an identity gap between single-mother families and the public. Nevertheless, this identity gap is not enough to generate negative welfare attitudes towards single mothers because they are perceived as deserving regarding the other four deservingness criteria.

Keywords

single mother public image welfare deservingness family policy Hungary

Introduction

The social construction (i.e., public image) of a group includes stereotypes and also normative and evaluative characterizations.¹ Based on the theory of Schneider and Ingram,² beneficial policies are more likely to target those groups whose social construction is positive, as they are seen as deserving in the eye of the public. Similarly, negatively constructed groups are often targeted by punitive or unbeneficial policies, as they are perceived as undeserving by the public. These public images of groups, furthermore, could be also effectively used in social policy reform narratives to win public support for the change.³ Expansionary reform narratives could highlight the deservingness of positively constructed target groups, while retrenching reform narratives could draw on the undeservingness of negatively constructed target groups.⁴ Therefore, there is an interplay between the social constructions/public images of groups, policies, and reform narratives, within the social constructions/public images of groups that serve as indicators of the social legitimacy of targeted policies and reforms.

Relying on this interplay, the current article investigates single mothers’ public image in the context of the Hungarian family policy reform that started after the election of the second Orbán government in 2010. Hungary serves an interesting case for investigation, as the reform narrative does not frame single mothers as undeserving compared with the widely investigated cases of the welfare reforms of the 1990s in the United Kingdom and the United States,⁵ however, it highlights the deservingness of traditional and better-off families. On the one hand, the promotion of traditional family values is central to the Hungarian family policy reform as its aim is to stop the declining birth rate that in the government’s view was partly, but significantly, caused by the liberalization of relationships.⁶ On the other hand, family policies were also detached from social policies in 2011, in order to target those families who could raise children “responsibly.”⁷ This two-layered reform narrative, therefore, builds on the deservingness of traditional, better-off families, whose beneficial situation in policies is legitimized by their role in (responsibly) achieving the public purpose of increasing the birth rate. Single-parent families are less deserving in this reform narrative as they are not traditional families, and they are also in a disadvantageous situation in the new policy design because they are usually not better-off families—62 percent of single-parent households were affected by poverty or social exclusion in 2015, which was the highest ratio among all types of Hungarian family households.⁸

Our research question is how the Hungarian public sees single mothers and to what extent their public image and perceived deservingness are in line with single-parent families’ low level of targeting in family policies. Besides investigating the public image of single mothers, the article also explores single mothers’ deservingness based on five deservingness criteria, control, attitude, reciprocity, identity, and need, developed by van Oorschot.⁹ This approach is different from the public image one, as it does not investigate the stereotypical image of groups, but focuses on their perception regarding five criteria that proved to be relevant indicators of welfare deservingness. The empirical research especially examines the perception of single mothers,¹⁰ as in Hungary more than 90% of single parents with children under the age of nineteen are mothers.¹¹ The research furthermore analyzes public opinion data, as it aims to investigate the link between public opinion and policy, and it does not explore single mothers’ public images and perceived deservingness in media or public discourses that might differ from public views.

The following sections review the theory of deservingness perceptions and earlier research findings of single mothers’ public images. The article then presents the current policy situation of single-parent families in Hungary as a factor that could also shape perceptions. The second part of the article analyzes single mothers’ public image and perceived deservingness by using a series of survey data. The final section of the article discusses and concludes the main findings of the research.

A Theoretical Framework for Investigating Single Mothers’ Welfare Deservingness

As the introduction highlighted, the deservingness of groups could be investigated by analyzing their social construction.¹² There is, however, another approach in social policy that focuses on the perception of groups especially based on five deservingness criteria. According to the “CARIN” deservingness theory of van Oorschot,¹³ there are five dimensions that affect the perceived welfare deservingness of a group. CARIN is the acronym of control, attitude, reciprocity, identity, and need. Control is important, as those welfare recipients who are perceived as responsible for their neediness are usually seen as undeserving by the public. Attitude is about the perceived gratefulness of the recipient towards the received support, while reciprocity incorporates the perception of the recipient or target group contributing to the work of the welfare system. Identity refers to the social distance between the target group and the public, while need simply refers to the perceived neediness.

The two approaches are, however, interrelated as the stereotypical characteristics of a group could reflect on the deservingness criteria.¹⁴ While previous studies applied the social construction approach to investigate single mothers’ welfare deservingness,¹⁵ I will use this interrelation in the latter part of the literature review to summarize how the CARIN criteria could be applied in the case of single mothers. First, however, I present public images of single mothers to see how they were constructed in other welfare contexts.

Single Mothers’ Public Images and Welfare Deservingness in the Literature

Available literature mostly focuses on public discourses and media images of single mothers, while research on public opinion is rare. This section, however, also covers available research findings of public opinion. First, the section presents well-documented images from the 1990s United States and United Kingdom, where the topic received higher attention because of neoliberal welfare reforms. Second, it briefly summarizes available evidence from other countries.

The Welfare Queen (US)

US president Bill Clinton signed the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act in 1996. This legislation had two main purposes: to promote employment among single mothers and to promote two-parent families.¹⁶ After the promulgation of this reform, public assistance ceased to be an entitlement for single mothers.¹⁷ The related literature¹⁸ argues that the success of the welfare reform was supported by the strong negative image of the target group, reinforced by political elites. The social construction of the “welfare queen” originated from the 1960s¹⁹ but became more prevalent in the public discourse in the 1980s—based on Ronald Reagan’s story of a woman on welfare—who had eighty names, thirty addresses, twelve security cards, and four imaginary deceased husbands. This story was founded on Linda Taylor’s case, who was convicted of welfare fraud in 1977, as she cheated on the system with her two aliases. Reagan aggravated the circumstances and created a very strong, still present stereotype of the welfare queen. This concept represents single mothers living on welfare as manipulative, cheating, undeserving, and lazy African American mothers, who have children in order to avoid work.²⁰ Foster²¹ describes the welfare queen image as a construct of class-based racial and sexist assumptions: welfare queens are from the underclass, who constitute the culture of poverty, who violate the dominant sexual norms by rearing children alone, and who are lazy black people. This class-based representation of single mothers evolved as a result of the influence of Murray’s underclass theory.²²

Several studies have shown that the welfare queen trope was extremely dominant in media discourses as well as in legislative debates prior to the reform.²³ Later, the media representation of single mothers’ welfare decreased, although their image still contained stereotypical characteristics—such as lazy, black, and hyperfertile—in the late 2000s.²⁴ Some articles investigated how these negative stereotypical images of single mothers influenced the welfare attitudes of the public. The results of Gilliam’s²⁵ video-vignette experiment showed that people more likely opposed welfare spending and more likely perceived poverty as personal responsibility in the case of black single mothers, compared to white single mothers. According to the results of a national telephone survey of 2002, 57 percent of the American respondents agreed that welfare encourages women to have more children,²⁶ while the results of a nationwide public opinion survey from 2010 indicate that Americans still underestimate the ratio of working single parents and overestimate the share of teenage single mothers.²⁷

Single Mothers as a Social Threat, Social Problem, and Teenage Mothers (UK)

The problematization of lone motherhood as a threat to the traditional family was prevalent throughout the 1980s in the United Kingdom,²⁸ and the social threat discourse became prominent in the late eighties and early nineties under the Tory government.²⁹ This discourse also featured Murray’s underclass definition,³⁰ and it blamed the moral and cultural characteristics of the social group for their disadvantageous position. It emphasized the significance of traditional gender roles, and it stated that the lack of a male breadwinner causes welfare dependency. It declared that lone mothers reproduce the underclass, and are a social threat to the society and for the welfare state. Single motherhood was seen as a rational choice by the mothers, who find state benefits a better economic solution than marriage and paid employment.³¹ As the Labour government came into power in 1997, the discussion had changed: within the social problem discourse, lone mothers were seen as victims of the circumstances. The image of the lone mother who did not like to work disappeared and the public started to see them as individuals, who had to face some very significant barriers to find paid work.³² Politicians understood welfare cuts affecting lone mothers as an incentive to live in a traditional family and to participate in the labor market. The new government promoted the view that people should work to get out from poverty, and activation programs aimed to help lone mothers’ participation in the labour market.³³

However, the stereotypical image of the white “feckless” British lone mother from the working-class, who became pregnant at the age of seventeen, and had children by several men³⁴ was continually reinforced through government rhetoric and media representation.³⁵ A media analysis shows that the public image of single mothers in the British press was the same in 2013 as in 1993: They were depicted as white teenagers from the lower classes who were economically dependent on the state. The only difference was the absence of the unmarried characteristic in 2013.³⁶ Evidence from 2013 shows not only that the media presented single mothers as teenagers but that the public still overestimated their share among single mothers by about twenty-five times, as their official share was only 2 percent, and the median age of lone mothers was 38.1 years.³⁷

Single Mothers’ Images in Other Countries

In Scandinavian welfare states, the 1990s public discourse around lone motherhood focused on equality, as single mothers were framed no different from other mothers.³⁸ However, recent research from Denmark³⁹ reports increasing fear of Islamic single mothers’ welfare fraud at the state authority level. Regarding Germany, the research of Klett-Davies⁴⁰ provides evidence. She found that the most dominant public discourse was the social problem characterization of 1990s Germany, similar to that of the United Kingdom during the late 1990s. A report from 2012 states that the popular discourse in Germany still portrays lone mothers not as a stigmatized but as a marginalized and isolated group: they are in a disadvantageous situation in the labour market, they do not get enough help from the state, and they are encouraged by the state to find a new partner.⁴¹ Furthermore, in the former socialist German Democratic Republic (GDR), single mothers were perceived in the public discourse as “super-women,” who did everything alone: work, child care, and household tasks. This positive image was supported by the fact that the system identified both coupled and single mothers as workers.⁴² The ideal of the good mother was the working mother in socialist Hungary as well. However, it was challenged from 1967 by the newly introduced maternity leave, which provided the alternative of paid work for mothers.⁴³ In addition, Tóth’s analysis of a women’s magazine from socialist Hungary also shows that the representation of single mothers had continuously changed from the 1950s in a more favourable way because of the socialist ideology of equality.⁴⁴ However, both in the former GDR and in socialist Hungary, the traditional family remained the ideal.⁴⁵

These research findings show that single mothers were mainly constructed negatively in the 1990s United States and United Kingdom, while the constructions became more positive later in the United Kingdom, and there are also more positive images in other countries. The next section presents how these images reflect on the deservingness criteria.

Public Images of Single Mothers and the Deservingness Criteria

According to the stereotypical image, “welfare queens” are from the underclass, who reproduce the culture of poverty, who violate dominant sexual norms by rearing children alone, and who are lazy blacks. By this token, identity is especially relevant in this context, as it incorporates classist, sexist, and racist stereotypes.⁴⁶ Furthermore, the cheating character⁴⁷ reflects on the attitude dimension, as it demonstrates that single mothers on welfare do not respect the welfare system and the support that they get. The reciprocity criterion is also present in the script as it defines women as mothers who receive support from the state, but do not contribute to the work of the system because of welfare dependency, while the belief that single mothers choose to have children alone in order to get benefits from the state refers to a high level of control over the situation. As Table 1 shows, the welfare queen stereotype is an extraordinarily negative public image, as it contains negative elements according to four dimensions of the CARIN criteria. In the stereotypical British single mother image, the teenage characteristic⁴⁸ is strongly connected to the belief that lone mothers are economically dependent on the state. These two beliefs suggest a low level of deservingness based on the reciprocity criterion, as they were not able to contribute to the work of the society previously due to their young age, and they will not be able to contribute in the future, because of welfare dependency. As the welfare queen and British single mother stereotypes are constructs of the social threat discourse, these both emphasize underclass position, the culture of dependency, the promiscuity of the mothers, and single motherhood as a rational choice to get benefits. The social problem discourse, which was prevalent in the late 1990s in Britain, and Germany as well,⁴⁹ represents a more positive image of single mothers: They are victims of the social order (low level of control) who need help (high level of neediness). However, it still portrays single mothers negatively according to the identity criterion as it implies that mother-only families are not ordinary families because of the lack of a father.

Table 1

Perceived Deservingness of Single Mothers in the Different Images and Discourses

Signs:(+) = deserving characteristic(−) = undeserving characteristic	Welfare queen (US)	British single mother (early 1990s)	Social threat discourse (US & UK)	Social problem discourse (late 1990s UK & Germany)
CONTROL	(−) they are lazy, choose to have children in order to get benefits	(−) choose to have children in order to get benefits	(−) choose to have children in order to get benefits	(+) victims, they want to work but poverty trap and childcare costs prevent them
ATTITUDE	(−) welfare fraud
RECIPROCITY	(−) welfare dependency	(−) had not reciprocated due to the young age, will not reciprocate due to welfare dependency (teenager)	(−) welfare dependency
IDENTITY	(−) a minority group, African-Americans (−) they are promiscuous(−) underclass	(−) teenager(−) they are promiscuous (−) underclass	(−) they are promiscuous(−) threat to society(−) underclass	(−) incomplete families, lack of fathers
NEED				(+) need help, poverty(+) economically and socially disadvantaged

Note: The table is based on the cited literature about single mothers’ public images, however, the author analysed the images according to the CARIN criteria.

Images from other countries are not well-documented in the literature, but the Scandinavian equalizing image of lone mothers shows that there is no social gap between single-mother families and the public. This positive identity, however, seems to be threatened by the growing connection between single motherhood and minority status in Denmark. Furthermore, the socialist image of single mothers concentrates on the working characteristic, which suggests positive scores on the reciprocity criterion.

Based on the socialist image of single mothers, we could assume that single mothers’ social construction is more positive than negative in Hungary, however, the preference given to the traditional family might cause negative perceptions in the identity criterion similarly to the social problem discourse. The next section reviews the current policy situation of single parents as a factor that could also shape public opinion.

Policy Context of Single Parenthood in Hungary

Family Mainstreaming Policy

The Orbán government declared support for a family mainstreaming policy in 2011 as it believed that the declining fertility rate is partly, but significantly, caused by the liberalization of relationships.⁵⁰ Gender mainstreaming (i.e., the principle of considering both genders’ interests in policy making) was gradually substituted by family mainstreaming (i.e., the principle of considering families’ interests in policy making). While the original concept of family mainstreaming is a supplementary model of gender mainstreaming and focuses on the interests of all families, in Hungary, family mainstreaming is used as an alternative model of gender mainstreaming that is narrowed down to the support of traditional family values in policies.⁵¹ The most salient example of these policies is the new family definition. Since the promulgation of the Fourth Amendment of the Hungarian Fundamental Law in 2013, the law defines marriage as a relationship that can only come into existence between a man and a woman. It also states that family is based on marriage and/or the relationship between parent and child.⁵² According to this definition, homosexual couples cannot establish a family, or marry; in addition, cohabiting, but not married, couples (with or without children) do not form a family,⁵³ while the status of single parents and their children is also debated.⁵⁴

In this policy setting, the Hungarian government does not discriminate against single parents directly, instead, it propagates the traditional family. Recently, the government has started to emphasize that it does not neglect lone parent families. Because of this effort, single-parent families have an advantage when applying for public crèche services from 2017. Additionally, the government founded a center for single parents in 2018,⁵⁵ where they can get help regarding different issues, for instance, legal or nurturing problems. One center in the capital city does not seem to provide significant help for single parents in the countryside and in the process of poverty reduction, but can rather be regarded as a symbolic step. Meanwhile, the government launched a National Consultation on Family Subsidies in November 2018.⁵⁶ Citizens received the questionnaire via mail, and participation was voluntary. The consultation contained ten yes-or-no questions connected to family policy, for instance, about population growth, full-time mothering, or conditionality of family supports on working status. The survey also contained a question that was strongly connected to single parenthood: “Do you agree with the principle that a child has the right to a mother and father?” In a related interview, Katalin Novák, the Minister of State for Family and Youth Affairs, emphasized that the government would like to protect children, and this question aims to highlight children’s rights instead of their parents’. She also suggested a higher level of deservingness for divorced single parents compared to never-married single mothers, when she remarked that, in her opinion, the two situations are different, namely, when a married couple has a child and afterwards they divorce, is in contrast to a situation when a woman establishes a family alone. However, she would also encourage divorced parents to raise their children in collaboration.⁵⁷

The Benefit Structure of Single Parents

The Orbán government also distinguished social policy from family policy, by declaring in the 2011 Family Protection Act that family policies should support the responsible upbringing of children. Since then, family policy benefits have been targeting families in better financial condition.⁵⁸ The family tax allowance system is available for those families who pay taxes and whose tax is high enough to validate the discount. Citizens with low earnings can validate a smaller advantage on the basis of their health care or pension contributions. As a result of this perverse redistribution, families with the highest salary earn the highest tax benefit, while poor families are almost completely kept out of it.⁵⁹ The tax allowance system leaves lone parent households in a disadvantageous situation, as dual-earner households usually have a higher level of income. Szikra⁶⁰ claims the tax advantage strengthens mothers’ dependence on their partner, and she is concerned that women are more likely to stay in a bad relationship to validate a higher tax advantage. In line with the introduction of the new tax allowance system, the Orbán cabinet has devalued universal and means-tested benefits with the aim of discouraging poor and Roma families from having more children.⁶¹ The universal family allowance had lost more than 25 percent of its value between 2008 and 2017⁶² as the government decided not to index it with inflation. Single-parent families get an increased amount of family allowance,⁶³ although it is only 12 percent higher than the original amount. As this is the sole universal benefit for lone parents in Hungary, the devaluation process affects single-parent families negatively.

Meanwhile, one of the Hungarian opposition parties, LMP, submitted a law proposal urging an increase in single parents’ family allowance. The Committee of Social Affairs of the Hungarian Parliament disclaimed the proposal three times. After the first proposal in 2016, governing party members of the committee justified their decision by arguing that an increased amount of family allowance for single parents would provide an opportunity for welfare fraud, as married couples would resort to divorce to validate a higher family allowance.⁶⁴ The Committee did not provide special justification in 2017,⁶⁵ but the Prime Minister once responded in the Parliament that they are likely to support anyone who works.⁶⁶ This comment also highlights the major changes of the Hungarian welfare system in recent years, as the country has oriented towards work-based welfare.⁶⁷ The committee rejected increasing the family allowance for single parents once again in 2018.⁶⁸ In the last two cases, LMP proposed differentiated raising of the family allowance, whereas the single parents’ amount would have been increased by a greater degree compared to the amount of two-parent families. Consequently, the committee rejected increasing the amount of the universal family allowance for all families and not just for single parents.

To sum up, single-parent families are not excluded from benefits in the current family policy system, but they also do not form a group that the Hungarian government targets with extra benefits, despite their high risk of poverty or social exclusion. The lack of targeting could be explained by ideology, as single-parent families do not fit the traditional family model. Based on this policy setting, the public could see single mothers as undertargeted and needy if their perception is positive/deserving. The public, however, could also give legitimation to this policy if they perceive single mothers as undeserving. The following empirical section addresses this question.

Data and Methods

I started the research with an exploration of the public image of single mothers. For this purpose, a questionnaire was designed, containing both open-ended and closed-ended questions. Questions were divided into two parts, as was the quota sample of one thousand respondents. Consequently, each question was asked on a five hundred respondent–sized quota sample. Quotas were based on gender, age, settlement type, and region. Data were collected in November 2017 by a Hungarian market research company (NRC), and the questionnaire was part of a bigger online survey. The answers to the closed questions were weighted by age, gender, region, settlement type, and education.

Each question block started with an introduction: “In the following part we ask some questions about family life, more concretely about single parenthood.” And open-ended questions were the first ones in both question blocks, in order to avoid any suggestions. In the first version, respondents had to complete the following sentence “Single mothers’ life is . . . , because . . . ,” while in the second version the sentence was as follows: “Most single mothers are . . . because . . . .” Respondents had to explain their answers in both cases. The open-ended question method was selected as it is a valid and frequently used tool to measure stereotypes.⁶⁹ Fiske and Neuberg argue that questions that expect free associations are better than closed questions, as “using any single category is inherently likely to be less accurate than using the individual’s whole range of noticeable attributes.”⁷⁰ Another advantage of the question format is that respondents are not influenced by existing categories.⁷¹ Nevertheless, limitations of the method need to be considered, as open-ended questions are usually answered by a lower share of respondents, because people have to express their opinions in their own words.⁷² Considering both the limitations and advantages of the method, open-ended questions still serve as a good basis for investigating the public image of single mothers, as wrongly formed answers of the closed questions might not explore the real public image of the group. However, I used some closed-ended questions as well, in order to explore more concretely beliefs about the connection between single motherhood and poverty.

Regarding the statement about single mothers’ characteristics, more than half (55.2 percent) of the respondents failed to answer, while there was a remarkably lower share of nonresponse rate (36.8 percent) in the case of the question dealing with single mothers’ lives. In both versions, there was a significantly higher response rate among women, the members of the younger cohorts (age between eighteen and thirty-nine), and people with a higher level of education. Although answers could not be stated as representative of the whole population, still more than 550 respondents provided first insights about single motherhood—among them were 236 men and 315 women, 109 people with a low level of education, and 200 people above the age of fifty years. Furthermore, the opinions of the different subgroups do not differ to a great extent from each other. On the whole, 319 answers contained relevant information regarding lone mothers’ lives, while 232 respondents provided meaningful associations about the majority of single mothers.

In the second step of the research, I focused more concretely on single mothers’ perceived deservingness. I analyzed the open-ended questions further to explore how the answers reflect on the CARIN criteria. The analysis provided insight about how the deservingness criteria could be operationalized in the case of single mothers. Based on these results, a set of statements were designed, in order to measure these perceptions among the public. The level of agreement was measured on a 4-point scale with the following options: 1 = not agree at all, 2 = somewhat disagree, 3 = somewhat agree, 4 = absolutely agree, 0 = do not know / would not like to answer. The following three statements were part of a national representative personal interview survey: “Most single mothers are responsible for remaining alone with their child/children” (control), “Most single mothers demand too much support from the state” (attitude), and “Most single mothers work hard to make a living for the family” (control & reciprocity). Data were collected by the Hungarian firm Sonda Ipsos in January 2019. The sample contained one thousand respondents. The results regarding these questions are representative of the Hungarian population.

Three other questions were asked of a quota sample, which was drawn from the respondent panel of another polling firm (NRC). Quotas were based on gender, age, settlement type, and region. Data were collected in November 2018. The questions, part of a bigger online survey, were the following: “Single motherhood is not an uncommon situation” (identity), “Most single mothers have a bad financial situation” (need), and “It’s a role of the state to support single mothers” (overall deservingness). The results of this survey are not representative of the Hungarian population; however, those could be treated as good estimations: the three questions from the representative survey were part of this data collection as well, and there are no significant differences between the results of the two different data collections. Furthermore, the database was weighted by age, gender, region, settlement type, and education. Table 2 summarizes the main characteristics of the data collections.

Table 2

Summary of the Data Collections

Time of the data collection	Research question of the data collection	Question type	Sample
November 2017	How is the public image of single mothers in Hungary?	Open-ended and closed-ended survey questions	(Weighted in the case of the closed questions) quota sample; 500-500 respondents
November 2018	How deserving are single mothers in Hungary based on the deservingness criteria?	Statements with 4-point scales + do not know / would not like to answer option	Weighted quota sample; 1000 respondents
January2019			Representative sample; 1000 respondents

Besides using descriptive statistics, the effects of respondents’ demographic variables on single mothers’ perceived deservingness will also be tested to see if there is any significant difference between the perceptions of these groups.

Results

The Public Image of Single Mothers in Hungary

Table 3 shows the categories of answers about single mothers and their life. The answers were categorized thematically. Looking at the results, we can see one salient trait: the public believes that being a single mother is a hard task. It was the most frequent answer in both versions, 64.8 percent of all associations reflected on this aspect. Table 4 shows that half of the respondents explained lone mothers’ hard situation with the reason that they must solve everything alone, and they need to work in place of two parents. The remaining part of the answers emphasized more specific reasons, such as financial problems, the lack of the partner and father, or lone mothers’ disadvantageous situation in the society and specifically in the labour market.

Table 3

Free Associations regarding Single Mothers and Their Lives

Single mothers’ life is . . .	%	N	Most single mothers are. . .	%	N
hard, very hard	89,7	286	in a hard situation	30,6	71
sad, bad, worthless	2,5	8	courageous, strong, heroic, honourable (and other positive characteristics)	13,8	32
usual, not special	1,6	5	busy, tired, overdriven, work a lot	12,9	30
good, happy, easy	1,9	6	lonely, depressed, stressful	7,8	18
ambivalent (easy & hard; good & bad)	1,3	4	poor, have bad financial conditions	7,8	18
incomplete	1,3	4	negative characteristics (such as grumpy, unbearable)	6,0	14
other	1,7	6	divorced	4,7	11
Total	100	319	deserted (their partner left them)	3,9	9
			lucky, happy	2,2	5
			other	10,3	24
			Total	100	232

Source: Data collection of November 2017.

Table 4

Reasons behind Single Mothers’ Hard Life

Why is it hard to be a single mother?	%	N
they must solve everything alone	51,0	182
financial reasons	14,3	51
lack of the partner, father	10,1	36
they have a disadvantageous situation in the labour market or in the society	4,2	15
they need to raise their children alone	3,9	14
lack of free time	2,5	9
they are not able to give everything to the children	0,6	2
missing explanation	4,2	15
Total	100	357

Source: Data collection of November 2017.

Going back to Table 3, it is also noticeable that there are some other stereotypes that are connected to the belief that single motherhood is not an easy task. Around thirty respondents replied that single mothers are honorable and strong for raising their children alone, and another thirty answers emphasized that lone mothers are tired because of the high volume of work they do. Eighteen respondents described single mothers as poor, and another eighteen wrote that lone mothers have emotional problems. Only fourteen respondents wrote explicitly negative characteristics.

Results of the closed questions also show that the public believes that single mothers face a lot of problems. Table 5 presents that most respondents believe that the lack of free time (75.9 percent) and problems regarding finding a new partner (69.8 percent) somewhat or to a great extent characterize lone mothers’ life. Furthermore, most of the respondents believe that psychological (63.1 percent) and child-rearing problems (61 percent) and poverty (60 percent) characterize single mothers’ everyday life. A remarkably lower share (34.7 percent) agree that single mothers face social problems such as social exclusion or discrimination, and also a lower share of them associate single mothers’ life with positive characteristics, such as security (31 percent) and calmness (24.2 percent). The public also believes that single-parent families are more endangered by poverty than two-parent households. Given the figure of two-parent households’ poverty or social exclusion risk (27 percent), respondents had quite a good estimation: the mean of their responses is 60 percent, while the actual risk was 62 percent at the time of the data collection.⁷³

Table 5

Answers of the Closed-Ended Questions

(Scale: 1=not at all, 2=very little, 3=somewhat, 4= to a great extent) To what extent single mothers’ life is characterized by . . .	Somewhat or to a great extent (%)	Do not know (%)
lack of free time	75,9	13,7
problems regarding finding a new partner	69,8	15,6
psychological problems (e.g. loneliness, depression)	63,1	18,8
child-rearing problems	61,0	16,5
poverty	60,0	21,1
social problems (e.g. social exclusion)	34,7	16,1
security	31,0	18,4
calmness	24,2	16,7
	Mean (SD)	Do not know (%)
Out of 100 single-parent households how many are concerned in poverty? (two-parent families: 27)	60,0(20,26)	26

Source: Data collection of November 2017 (N=491).

The associations, and the results of the closed questions, represent a coherent positive/deserving public image of single mothers: they lack financial and emotional support, and they do their best to make a living for the family.

Perceived Deservingness of Hungarian Single Mothers

To arrive at a more detailed view about single mothers’ deservingness, the associations were coded according to the CARIN criteria. I used five questions for the categorization, each investigating one criterion: Are single mothers responsible for remaining alone with their children? (control); Are they compliant and grateful for help received from the state? (attitude); Do they provide anything in exchange for help received from the state? (reciprocity); Are they one of us? (identity); and Are they in a needy situation? (need)

Using this categorization, 330 of the 551 responses (60 percent) contained a reference to at least one of the CARIN criteria. Figure 1 shows that as the public image research suggested, need was the most prevalent criterion in the associations. Almost a third (28.3 percent) of the responses reflected on the needy situation of the mothers. Besides mentioning financial problems and poverty, in general, answers also emphasized that one salary is not enough to make a decent living for a family with a child or with children. Furthermore, in 5.2 percent of all answers, respondents claimed that the government does not support lone mothers sufficiently, though there is a negligible share of respondents who believe that they receive too many benefits. A considerably lower share (6.7 percent) of the answers reflected on the mixed reciprocity and control criterion. These answers highlighted the opinion that mothers need to work a lot to make a living for the family. On the one hand, it refers to the control over their situation as they try to do their best to make a living for the family. On the other hand, it also reflects that they contribute to the functioning of the welfare system, as they have paid work. However, the associations were coded under this category only in case of direct reference to working status. I measured the control category with explicit statements reflecting on single mothers’ responsibility for remaining alone with their children. Overall, 7.4 percent of the responses contained reference to this aspect. Eighteen respondents emphasized the innocence of the mothers, by stating, for instance, that they are victims of violence, or their partner left them alone with the child. Almost the same number of respondents expressed that single mothers are responsible somehow for their situation by associating simply to divorced status, implying the shared responsibility of the parents, or by stating explicitly that it is a consequence of the mothers’ or the parents’ irresponsible behavior.

Figure 1

Number of associations referring to the CARIN criteria

The least frequent CARIN criterion was attitude. One answer referred directly to welfare fraud by stating that single mothers are usually single just on paper to be eligible for benefits. Two other associations judged single mothers as exploiting their ex-husbands. These two were also coded under the attitude criterion, as it framed them as too demanding.

Thirteen associations referred directly to the positive identity of single mothers, by claiming that they are no different from other people or that they could raise their children as well as two parents. However, 20 percent of all associations contained a reference to traditional family values. Some of them explicitly claimed that the liberalization of relationships is the reason for single motherhood, while a great part of the associations within this category (36 percent) referred to the traditional roles of the father and the mother in the family, noting that the mother needed to fulfill both. Additionally, 28 percent expressed concern about the missing partner of the mother, while 27 percent missed the father from the family. The emphasis of these values reflects on the identity criterion: the more the society accepts that single motherhood is an alternative to the traditional family, the smaller the social gap that exists between single mothers and society.

On the whole, the associations suggest a high level of deservingness of single mothers based on need and the mixed reciprocity and control criterion, along with a lower level of deservingness based on the identity criterion. There is no exact clue about the control over single motherhood status and about the attitude criterion. However, the results of the survey questions directly investigating the CARIN criteria underline the findings of the public image research. As Figure 2 shows, almost 90 percent believe that most single mothers work hard to make a living for the family (control and reciprocity), and almost 80 percent agree that most single mothers have a bad financial situation (need). Nevertheless, regarding the other three deservingness perceptions, the public is more divided: 66 percent do not believe that the majority of lone mothers are responsible for their situation (control), and 60 percent do not agree that lone mothers demand too much help from the state (attitude). The most divisive statement was the one measuring identity: only half of the respondents agreed that single motherhood is not an uncommon situation; referring to a social gap between the public and the target group. However, as 80 percent of the public agree with the general statement: “It’s a role of the state to support single mothers,” it seems that the identity gap between the traditional family and the one-parent family does not generate enough of a low level of deservingness of single mothers.

Figure 2

Perceived deservingness of single mothers in Hungary

Deserving According to Whom?

The perceptions of single mothers are quite positive in the eye of the general public; however, as previous studies⁷⁴ have also shown, subgroups of the public can perceive deservingness of policy target groups differently. Therefore, Table 6 shows how the demographic variables of the respondents influence the perceived deservingness of single mothers based on the five criteria and the overall deservingness variable. The results are quite diverse between the six models; however, some common patterns could be observed. First, the results show that in two cases (attitude, identity), people with a high level of education perceive single mothers as more deserving than people with a low level of education. Despite single motherhood is more common among low-educated mothers in Hungary than among mothers with a higher level of education,⁷⁵ the higher-educated perceive single mothers as more deserving based on these two criteria. The other pattern that prevails in more than one model is that the youngest age group is more likely to find single mothers deserving compared to the older ones. This pattern could be explained by the connection between age and traditional family values. A previous Hungarian study⁷⁶ has found that age increases the likelihood of having more traditional family values, except for people under the age of twenty-five years, as their attitudes were more traditional than those of people between the ages of twenty-five and thirty-four years. Nevertheless, as the age categories were grouped differently in this analysis, and the youngest group encompassed people between the ages of eighteen and twenty-nine years, it could be assumed that the attitudes towards single mothers’ deservingness are influenced by the general pattern that older people have more traditional family values.

Table 6

Binary Logistic Models of Single Mothers’ Perceived Deservingness

	Control		Attitude		Reciprocity & Control		Identity		Need		Overall deservingness
	Exp(B)	p-value	Exp(B)	p-value	Exp(B)	p-value	Exp(B)	p-value	Exp(B)	p-value	Exp(B)	p-value
Female	1,326	0,064	0,842	0,255	0,948	0,822	1,908	0,000	1,137	0,560	1,513	0,075
Age (ref. cat. 18-29 years old)
30-39	1,035	0,892	0,576	0,030	0,827	0,618	0,920	0,703	0,128	0,001	0,677	0,292
40-49	0,978	0,934	0,713	0,201	0,825	0,624	0,864	0,549	0,090	0,000	0,343	0,006
50+	0,819	0,362	0,518	0,003	0,896	0,741	0,876	0,563	0,099	0,000	0,796	0,561
Education (ref.cat. Low level)
Medium level	1,237	0,230	1,406	0,047	0,683	0,140	1,328	0,108	1,469	0,147	0,696	0,160
High level	1,000	0,999	1,712	0,013	0,991	0,979	1,964	0,001	1,380	0,304	0,748	0,349
Settlement type (ref.cat. Capital city)
Other city	0,508	0,003	0,305	0,000	0,333	0,014	0,777	0,206	1,110	0,712	0,862	0,604
Village	0,617	0,057	0,250	0,000	0,323	0,017	0,713	0,138	1,660	0,129	1,209	0,577
Involvement (ref.cat. Does not know single mother)
Knows personally single mother	1,061	0,721	1,526	0,009	1,067	0,798	0,595	0,006	0,729	0,243	0,723	0,261
Single mother herself or was raised by a single mother	1,302	0,279	2,438	0,000	1,117	0,761	1,124	0,611	1,733	0,142	0,999	0,998
N	919		917		952		926		899		915
Nagelkerke R²	0,03		0,12		0,02		0,10		0,12		0,05

Source: Data collections of November 2018 and January 2019.

Note: The answer categories of the statements were recoded into binary ones in a way that 0 is the not deserving answer and 1 is the deserving one.

Income was not added due to incomparable measurements of the two applied datasets.

Weights were applied for the analyses.

Coefficients that are significant at the 5 percent level are marked bold.

While age and education level show clear patterns regarding more than one deservingness criterion, the effects of the other demographic variables are quite varied between the models. However, it is worth highlighting the results of the identity model, as respondents were the most divided regarding this statement. Gender influences deservingness only in this case, as women are more likely to believe that single motherhood is not an uncommon situation compared to men. Results also show that people with a high level of education are more likely to agree with this statement than people with a low level of education. One possible explanation of these results is that the statement used for measuring the identity criterion is more connected to gender equality than the others. Therefore, those groups are more likely to agree with this statement, who support gender equality more: women and people with a high level of education.⁷⁷

Conclusion and Discussion

The results of this study show that single mothers have a coherent positive (deserving) public image in Hungarian public opinion: they are imagined as poor mothers, who work a lot to make a living for their families, and who lack financial and emotional support. This image is similar to the social problem discourse that was prevalent in the late 1990s in the United Kingdom and Germany. In Hungary, however, they are seen as working mothers.

The positive public image in Hungary could partly be explained by the institutional design of single mothers’ benefits: they were never targeted with selective benefits, but their subsidies were always embedded in the broader family allowance system. Working single mothers were eligible for the family allowance from 1959⁷⁸ and they received an increased amount of allowance from that time.⁷⁹ The family allowance was conditional on working status under socialism; it became universal after the regime change,⁸⁰ and was means-tested for only a short period between 1996 and 1997.⁸¹ Both the design of single mothers’ benefits, and the legacy of the socialist regime, where single mothers were identified as workers, explain the missing link between single motherhood and welfare dependency. As a consequence, single mothers achieve a high score on the reciprocity and control criteria. The positive image of single mothers in Hungary is also supported by the results, as it is not connected to special identity categories such as class, minorities, or age groups.

There is one criterion that slightly modulates the positive image: identity, measured as a gap between the traditional family and the single parent one. A great part of the associations noted that the traditional family is the preferred family type, as the partner of the mother and the father of the child is missing from the family, and the public was most divided regarding the statement measuring identity: Only half of the respondents believe that single motherhood is not an uncommon situation. There are, however, two perceptions that have a high level of acceptance: the large majority of the respondents believe that single mothers have a bad financial situation (need), and that they work hard to make a living for the family (control and reciprocity). On the whole, the identity gap between the traditional and nontraditional family is not enough to generate negative welfare attitudes towards single mothers: More than 80 percent agreed that it is the role of the state to support single mothers. These findings highlight that while the public opinion is in line with the government’s conservative family policy, they also find single mothers deserving of state support.

While the family mainstreaming policy only started in 2011, it is not surprising that this research has found similar family values among the public, as Hungary is one of the most traditional countries in European comparisons regarding the preference for marriage. In 2002, 53 percent of Hungarians agreed that married people are generally happier than unmarried people, compared to Scandinavian countries where the share of people who agreed was around 16 percent.⁸² There was a slight decline in the following years; however, 42 percent of the Hungarian population still agreed with this statement in 2013.⁸³ Furthermore, around 90 percent of the population believed in 2016 that a child needs both parents to live a happy life.⁸⁴ In spite of this, the attitudes of the Hungarians regarding divorce are more similar to attitudes in Western Europe: 58 percent believed in 2002⁸⁵ and 71.7 percent in 2016,⁸⁶ that divorce is usually the best solution when a couple cannot seem to work out their marriage problems, even if they have children. These attitudes also explain the results: While Hungarians believe that marriage is the best form of relationship, and that a child needs both parents to live a happy life, they still accept divorce as a solution to marriage problems. Consequently, single motherhood is not demonized, and most of the public do not believe that single mothers are the ones responsible for remaining alone with their children. These findings suggest that the preference for the traditional family does not lead to negative welfare attitudes towards single mothers not just because single motherhood is not stigmatized in the welfare context but also because of the incoherent family values of the population.

To sum up, these results show that a low level of state support towards single-parent families could not be legitimized by the public’s preference towards the traditional family in those social contexts where family values are not entirely conservative and where the perception of single mothers is positive regarding other aspects of welfare deservingness. These findings also seem to explain the Hungarian government’s policy regarding single parents. While targeted benefits towards single parents do not fit the government’s family mainstreaming policy, the government also could not simply cut back these benefits because of positive public attitudes towards single mothers. Therefore, the government has instead gradually devalued these benefits and introduced new ones without targeting, as this is a less salient strategy, which requires a lower level of social legitimization.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

The author is grateful to Béla Janky, Wim van Oorschot, Dorottya Szikra and the anonymous reviewer for their valuable feedback on earlier versions of the article.

Funding

The present publication is the outcome of the project “From Talent to Young Researcher Project Aimed at Activities Supporting the Research Career Model in Higher Education,” identifier EFOP 3.6.3-VEKOP-16-2017-00007 co-supported by the European Union, Hungary, and the European Social Fund.

ORCID iD

Boglárka Herke

Notes

Boglárka Herke is a PhD candidate at the Doctoral School of Sociology, Corvinus University, Budapest. In her PhD thesis, she investigates further the perceived welfare deservingness of single mothers in Hungary, by using other survey data and a vignette-based factorial survey experiment. Recently, she joined the Institute for Sociology, Centre for Social Sciences, Hungarian Academy of Sciences Centre of Excellence.