When I was growing up in the 1990s, it was teenage, single mothers who were the target of right-wing pundits, wanging on about “broken Britain” and the state of the country. Politicians and moralists wrung their hands over what was to be done with this scourge of single mothers. The fear was that irresponsible, young women were having babies – on purpose – to land a council house and claim benefits forever more. Remember that whole thing? 

In 1993, Panorama ran specials on the subject, asking: “Should the taxpayer foot the bill for women who have babies on benefit?” Religious figures regularly spoke out about the immorality of it all. The environment secretary, John Gummer, went on record in 1993 to say, “at one time, children born to single parents were adopted. It is an option we ought to think about seriously.”

That was the same year the Sunday Express called “lone mothers” an “underclass” and “brides of the state”. They polled their readers about banning benefit payments to single mothers. Of the 754 people who responded, 715 were in favour of such action. Mrs Rosemary Christophers, a mother of five from Ashburton in Devon, said: “Benefits to single mothers should be banned. If people realised they are not going to get handouts they wouldn’t get pregnant.” And Wilma Wilson from Strathclyde fumed: “Women who stand for female rights and declare women can cope without men should be shot.” 

Here we are, some 30-odd years later, and it’s no longer single women having kids that the right is getting all het up about, but rather women who........

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