The biggest barrier to lone parents returning to education is childcare

WITHIN MONTHS of dropping out of school at the age of 16, Sinéad Kavanagh was asking herself what did she do that for. Looking back, the answer is she was simply “blending in” with her friends who were all leaving before doing their Junior Certificate exams.

“We all went to school and we were all having a laugh, and then we all kind of dropped out and there was no one left,” says Kavanagh, who grew up on Sheriff Street in Dublin.

Once she “copped on”, she went to an adult education centre, Connolly House on North Strand, to do her Junior Cert, which suited her better than school. “I wanted to be more with adults. I didn’t want to be told what to do.”

But, 15 years later she is still struggling to complete the educational journey – from primary, to secondary, to third level – that was so clearly mapped out for her more privileged peers. It is certainly not a lack of ability or determination that has made it a struggle but, as a lone parent of two children, she has extra obstacles to surmount.

She was 24 when she became pregnant with Roslyn, who will be eight next month. She was in a relationship at the time but still living with her parents.

“I was the last among my friends to have a baby,” she explains. “My friends were saying, ‘You will be an old spinster’, and I was thinking I want a baby – I don’t want to be left on my own for the rest of my life.”

The relationship with Roslyn’s father broke up after her birth but has been on and off since. They had a second child, Cameron, two years ago after Kavanagh had moved into an apartment in East Wall, and they remain good friends, with him involved in the children’s lives.

Nearly two years after Roslyn was born, Kavanagh went to the National College of Ireland on a young mothers’ programme. She was one of only four to graduate out of a starting group of 30. “I was really into it. I was 25 but some of them were very young.” She has since spent three years on Community Employment schemes.

Currently on a one-year Access course at the Dublin Institute of Technology in Mountjoy Square, her long-held dream of becoming a social worker is closer to becoming reality.

The “striking” link between low educational attainment and lone motherhood is highlighted in a study of the changing nature of Irish families between 1996 and 2006, published by the Economic Social Research Institute (ESRI) last month. “Although it is not clear which causes which,” it comments.

The likelihood of an adult in Ireland becoming a lone parent has doubled over the decade studied. But with a number of different routes to lone parenthood, it is far from a homogenous group.

Some 35 per cent of lone parents have experienced a broken marriage, while 8 per cent are widowed. That leaves 57 per cent of lone parents who have never married.

Dropping out of school before the Leaving Cert seems to increase the likelihood of becoming a lone parent – or is it a chicken and egg situation, with pregnancy and then being a parent making it very difficult for young people to stay in education?

What the ESRI study can say is that one-quarter of women who have only lower second-level qualifications are lone mothers who have never married by their mid-20s, compared with just 3 per cent of graduates. Its observation that this finding demands further investigation has been welcomed by groups representing lone parents.

There is no policy from the Department of Education and Science around young parents, says Karen Kiernan, the director of One Family, which provides family support services for people parenting alone and sharing parenting of their children. Each school responds in its own way, good, bad or indifferent.

“We know lots of young women who have had to leave school,” says Kiernan. “Sometimes because the school has become a very unpleasant environment for them; sometimes because the school has requested them to leave; sometimes because they are dealing with an unexpected or crisis pregnancy and the changes that is going to wreak in their lives.”

For those who manage to get through pregnancy, the practicalities of staying in school, rearing a child and paying for all of that may become too much, she says.

However, the number of teenagers giving birth has fallen. According to CSO figures, there were 3,087 births to women under 20 in 2001 and that had dropped to 2,426 in 2008 – at a time when the annual number of births to all women had increased by more than 17,000.

Any woman who becomes pregnant at school, university or in the workplace, is up against it for lots of reasons, says Frances Byrne, chief executive officer of Open, the national network of lone parent groups. But if it is a crisis pregnancy and you are on your own, or you’re newly separated, “you have a mountain to climb in terms of putting the supports in place”, she suggests.

“You fall back on family in a way two-parent families don’t. If you are lucky enough to come from a family that is well resourced itself, then you get through those few years.”

That’s the difference, she suggests, between lone parents who appear to get themselves “sorted” and those who fall into the poverty trap. Despite a continuing public perception that lone parent families are well looked after by the State, their risk of poverty has been shown to be four times higher than other types of family.

Although it has become more acceptable to be parenting on your own, both One Family and Open still encounter hostile attitudes towards lone parents. The way society judges you partly depends on how you become a lone parent, says Kiernan, while Byrne fears that a notion of the “deserving” as opposed to the “undeserving” poor will re-emerge during the recession.

Most lone parents are keen to try to pay their way. A One Family study two years ago found that 60 per cent of people receiving the one-parent family payment were working in low-paid, part-time employment, and 85 per cent were working or in education or training.

The maximum weekly rate for the one-parent family payment is €196, plus €29.80 per child, and goes to lone parents earning up to €146.50 per week. If they are earning more than that but less than €425 a week, they can qualify for reduced rates.

The biggest barrier to lone parents continuing or returning to education is childcare. Anybody in their 20s with a child who decides that they have made a mistake in dropping out of education has a pile of problems that a non-parent doesn’t have, says Byrne. The broader issue about early school leaving really needs to be addressed, she stresses.

For lone parents seeking further education, there are very few third-level courses available on a modular or part-time basis, says Kiernan. What’s more, part-time students are not eligible for higher education grants.

“You have to find a way, out of your social welfare payments, to pay for your childcare, your books and your fees, which is incredibly difficult, and then you have got to study and rear your children,” she points out.

It is only thanks to the St Vincent de Paul giving her €200 a month, says Kavanagh, that she can afford the €60 a week creche fees for Cameron. In 2008, she had to abandon a course she had started in Liberties College because she could not afford the €140 a week fees for the creche he was in then. Instead, she did a couple of short courses run by One Family, which provides a free creche.

Out of her one-parent family payment, Kavanagh pays €52 for rent, leaving €200 for herself and the two children. After you get the nappies and food, there is not much left, she says. She does not drink and the last time she had a night out, she says, was in June last year.

If there were to be any more cuts in social welfare payments, “I am back in my Ma’s,” she remarks.

For the time being she is happy living without a partner. “I think it is a control thing – I would rather be on my own.”

Meanwhile, she desperately hopes she will get a place on the social care course in DIT in September. “I am killing myself to get this,” she says.

Studying at home in the evenings is difficult – “the moment I sit down with a cup of tea and get stuck in, Cameron wakes up”. She tries to get most of her work done in the library during the day before she picks him up from the creche in the late afternoon. She then collects Roslyn, who goes to her parents’ home in Seville Place after school.

Kavanagh also does voluntary work one afternoon a week at Pathways, a programme for young offenders, in Granby Row and hopes this will help to show she is “making an effort”.

“I always wanted to be a social worker,” she adds. “I know it is going to be hard. People tried to put me off because of the area I want to get into, child protection. But if people don’t get into it, nothing will be done.”

As for her own children, she is determined that they will realise the importance of education and not make the same mistake that she did.

swayman@irishtimes.com

SNAPSHOT OF LONE PARENTHOOD

• There are approximately 120,000* lone parents in the Republic with at least one child under 20 years.

• Some 9 per cent of these lone parents are fathers.

• Some 35 per cent of lone parents, aged 15-59 years, have experienced a broken marriage, while 8 per cent are widowed; that leaves 57 per cent with a child under 20 who have never married.

• One-quarter of women with only lower second-level qualifications are lone mothers who have never married by their mid-20s, compared with just 3 per cent of graduates.

• By the age of 24, more than 9 per cent of women have a child, yet have never been married and are not cohabiting.

• At the age of 44, about 7 per cent of women are lone mothers as a result of marital breakdown.

• The likelihood of the children of a broken marriage living with their father is roughly one in eight.

*Figures for 2006

Source: Family Figures – Family Dynamics and Family Types in Ireland, 1996-2006, published by the ESRI last month (Feb)