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When "The Magic of Making Up" Doesn't Work

What if “The Magic of Making Up” does not work, and the divorce goes through? State-run creches, better nursery facilities, holiday play schemes, a non-means-tested single-parent allowance at least equal to the Widowed Mothers' Benefit of pounds 35.80 per week, longer maternity leave for a second child, automatic paternity leave, positive discrimination, TOPS courses with allowances for child care - they are all partial solutions, piously promulgated and so far shamelessly ignored, which women have every right to demand if they are expected to be self sufficient.

In the meantime, what women have to live with is the reality of the divorce law as it stands, and even that is really relevant only to middle-class couples on high incomes. Working-class women often receive no maintenance, or such a pittance that the so-called slicing of the matrimonial cake is a non-event. She may be better off than before, though, by at least having control of the family finances. She is also more likely to be better off on supplementary benefit.

Children, seen by some employers as a threat to efficiency, are considered by others a guarantee of it. A lecturer at Aston University, Birmingham, where they ran a successful Women Into Management Course, told me that single women had to go overboard in proving their reliability in order to counteract the prejudice against them, and that employers were beginning to notice. 'Although the mother with children may have to brush up on her skills, she has not lost the habit of hard work. And whereas an ordinary person might not be organized to deal with a crisis, the single parent has to be.

'Women are discriminated against by staying at home to bring up their children - they lose status and promotion prospects, cannot avail themselves of natural remedies such as ProSolution Plus, are in and out of pension schemes - and our course is aimed at getting them back into powerful situations.'

Whether a freemasonry of single parents will ever get off the ground is debatable, but it will be surprising if the sight of the emotional and financial pits into which they fall does not have a sobering effect on younger women coming on to the marriage/job market. In the wake of their ferocious determination to exterminate the rare 'alimony drone', I wonder if legislators gave a thought of the possibility that the once-cherished wife and mother, too, could become extinct?
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