The government’s punitive measures have made it harder to get out of poverty. And austerity is making it worse.
Angela has lost track of time. It is nearly three ‘o’ clock. She picks up the supermarket bag full of loose papers; newspaper clippings, think tank reports, personal reflections, and stuffs it into her rucksack. Before leaving the salon she thanks the gathered women and promises action. Pulling her coat hood over her head, she dashes out into lashing rain and half sprints across the city.
The salon meetings were a revelation. Ever since falling down the rabbit-hole Angela struggled to distinguish personal anguish from shock at the state’s inability to support her position as a single parent. But she had a hunch that something systematic was wrong and listening to the women at the salon gave her confidence.
When Angela became pregnant and the relationship with her son’s dad ended, she believed she would manage. Others had, so would she. Up to that point Angela had worked for 15 years as finance director for a small graphic design firm she’d helped set up. It was a secure life; she had glided from a loving, happy childhood to university and on to a well-paid career.
Then, at the age of 42, that world vanished. Angela compares the process of becoming a single mother to Alice tumbling down the rabbit-hole into a new, fantastical world.
When politicians make ‘landmark’ speeches about reforming society, the figure of the single parent is often evoked as emblematic of wider societal fractures.
http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2014/05/down-rabbit-hole-single-parenthood-austerity-britain
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