2023-12-19 07:05:06
This is what the celebration looks like for many children of single parents: they have to freeze because their mothers can no longer afford to heat them.
Vienna (OTS) – While the government is satisfied with itself by assuming that it has done enough for single parents with the 60 euro inflation compensation, the reality is different: By 2022, half of all single parents and their children were living in poverty or exclusion , which puts Austria at the top in the EU. But the situation is likely to get significantly worse in 2023: high inflation, especially when it comes to the cheapest food, and rent increases are pushing single parents to the brink of jeopardizing their existence. 60 euros per month is just a drop in the ocean; it doesn’t cover the price increases by any stretch of the imagination.
Sabine is desperate: She works as a secretary, she doesn’t get any maintenance for her two daughters or advance payments because the father of her children is chronically ill and lives in poverty himself. Sabine is one of the “working poor”: she is poor despite having a job. She can only work 20 hours a week due to a lack of full-time childcare places. She’s particularly worried regarding this year’s Christmas: there wasn’t a Christmas tree last year, but this year there won’t be any small presents either. Because of the increased prices, Sabine can no longer even keep her apartment warm. The mold in the bathroom, which she always has to fight with, is happy! The young mother complains: “I don’t know what else I should do without, I’ve saved everything for a long time!”
Sabine is not alone: According to Statistics Austria, one in six single parents cannot afford to cook a warm main meal every other day. What the survey also shows: Not only food, but also housing, heating and electricity costs are increasingly becoming a problem for single parents. Even with the mold, Sabine is not alone: 15% of single-parent households have to live in such precarious conditions that mold and moisture become a problem. The chairwoman of the Feminist Single Parents Association, Andrea Czak, said: “We are receiving more and more inquiries from desperate mothers who no longer know how to cover the costs of everyday needs. Single parents also live under the constant threat of losing custody if they are no longer able to care for their children due to poverty or lose their apartment.”
It has been clear for 46 years that the maintenance advance is not enough
As early as 1977, a few months following the introduction of the maintenance advance, it became clear that only some of the children benefited from it because the requirements were very strict. Above all, there must be a prospect that the state can recover the advance from the person liable for maintenance, usually the father. If this is not the case, for example because the father is no longer able to work, there is no advance payment. The 2021 maintenance survey by Statistics Austria revealed that 36% of children in Austria receive neither maintenance nor alternative benefits such as half-orphans’ pensions or advance maintenance payments. These mothers and their children are completely on their own financially.
Time use study shows: Fathers let mothers serve them
The latest time use study by Statistics Austria clearly shows that single parents do not live in poverty or exclusion because they do not work enough: women, regardless of whether they have or without children, work more than men overall, if you take the total of unpaid and paid work. Fathers even do less housework than childless men: namely only 1:55 hours per day, while mothers do two-thirds of the housework at 3:42 hours. In mathematical terms, fathers do not contribute anything to the additional work done by their children, but actually pass on some of their own housework to their partners. Men in couple relationships without children do 2:07 hours of housework every day, while men living alone only do 2:04 hours.
Single parents are entirely responsible for the unpaid extra work done by their children; they also do 3:42 hours of unpaid housework every day. However, they do not benefit from the higher level of paid work that fathers generally do: only half of the children receive maintenance from their father, and that only amounts to a third of the child’s costs. Single parents are not only primarily responsible for the care work, but also financially for the children.
In addition, mothers do more unpaid work than paid work, while fathers mainly do paid work and are therefore not only in a position of financial power, but also have better security in old age. Spicy: since 1992, the time that men spend on unpaid work has actually decreased by 4 minutes!
Silvia Federici, the Italian author, activist and professor of political philosophy and women’s studies, has been demanding for decades that the care work that goes into raising children, caring for the elderly and those in need and for household and caring activities in the extended family environment should be paid . Federici says: “Reproductive labor is the basis of all other types of labor. And she’s still unpaid. Because it is not visible as work at all: it is not perceived as work. This has left many women impoverished and dependent on men.”
Single parents are willingly and knowingly pushed into poverty and exclusion
It has long been clear that single parents and their children live in poverty because they receive little or no maintenance or replacement benefits. The consequences of child poverty have also been known for a long time: poor health, poorer education and poorer opportunities on the job market. According to OECD calculations, these costs account for around 4% of economic output. Although all parties spoke out in favor of a maintenance guarantee in the 2017 election campaign, nothing has happened since then. In December 2022, Minister Susanne Raab even said that she considered the maintenance advance to be sufficient and that no further measures were necessary. The fact that single parents are forced into poverty is a calculation, says Andrea Czak: “The ÖVP has been preventing benefits for the children of single parents for decades because they want to deter mothers from breaking away from the relationship, even if they experience violence have. It’s regarding a bourgeois worldview of right-wing conservatives who feel threatened by the idea of independent women. They accept that children have to live in poverty as a result, as well as the subsequent costs of child poverty and the resulting loss of higher income taxes and social security contributions. Mothers, as we saw with Chancellor Nehammer, are even mocked when they cannot provide their children with a warm meal. Even if the ÖVP repeatedly claims to represent Christian values: this exclusion has nothing to do with charity!”
The FEM.A association therefore demands:
- The immediate implementation of the maintenance guarantee for children of single parents to combat child poverty: maintenance in the amount of the actual child costs.
- The crediting of the additional care work by children and those in need of care once morest the pension with an assessment basis of the average income of men employed full-time all year round until the youngest child comes of age, also retroactively.
- Payment for care work carried out for children and those in need of care is equal to the average hourly wage of men employed full-time all year round.
About the organization:
The Feminist Single Parents Association – FEM.A is unique in Austria with its advice and services on the topics of maintenance, custody and contact law. It ranges from free webinars with lawyers and psychologists, relief discussions on the free FEM.A telephone, to information on the website, in a regular newsletter, as well as on various social media channels, networking, exchange of experiences and lobbying.
Questions & Contact:
Association of Feminist Single Parents – FEM.A
Andrea Czak, MA
Managing Chairwoman
+43 6991 97 10 306
andrea.czak@verein-fema.at
1702969682
#bitter #reality #single #parents #Christmas #tree #presents #cold #apartment #Association #Feminist #Single #Parents
