Being a mother is the most important job in the world. I don’t say good mother, or indifferent mother, or bad mother. What kind of mother a woman is is up to her.

A child needs love, assurance and security. They are the most important elements. Possessions, clothes, a nice home, etc, make life easier but don’t necessarily make anyone a better mother. Or father.

A good education is important. By that I don’t mean an elite school or the best uniform and equipment. I mean being educated with a willingness to learn.

When a child, or children, has only 1 parent the job is so much harder. Harder still when that parent relies on Centrelink. In this country we now take a punitive approach to sole parents based on a popular prejudice around single mothers.

There is a stereotype of a single mum who gets pregnant to different men simply to receive payments from the government. This has come about due to popular television current affairs programs picking soft targets for their programs and showcasing some of those who claim to have done this.

It is nonsense. Women who have had children from different fathers represent around 3% of sole parents. Any woman who deliberately seeks to have babies to get payments would have rocks in her head. It is far more likely that a woman would see herself as used by men she trusted and show a bit of bravado and pretend she was in control all along.

People are entitled to start new relationships. The women I have met who have different fathers to their children have usually been victims of violence or partners who had no sense of responsibility and simply buggered off and left the woman stranded.

The vast majority of sole parents do it hard. They are there because of divorce, separation or death. It is not the kind of lifestyle someone volunteers for.

A sole parent is then victimised by the government. There is an allowance for sole parents, mostly women, a “Parenting Payment Single”, which is minimal but only lasts until the youngest turns 8. Then its onto Newstart, which is at least $85 per week less. When the youngest turns 6 the parent needs to start logging 15 hours per week on the “mutual obligation”. This continues until the children mature.

This is not enough for a single adult, let alone one with small children.

This is Australia’s way of making sure the next generation of children being raised by a parent on welfare stays in the system. Far from providing opportunity, or as PM Scott Morrison says ” If you have a go in this country you’ll get a go. That’s what fairness in Australia means. ” How do you have a go when you forced to stay in poverty?

The current system was bequeathed to sole parents by Labor in 2011 (Treasurer Wayne Swan). For some strange reason they let themselves fall victim to the stereotype of sole parents, especially single mothers, as being bludgers on the system. Shame on them.

I identify with sole parent families- because that was my family. My father died when I was 4. In some ways it was good that there was only one of me. More children for my mother would have been much harder.

My father had been an invalid since just before I was born so my mum was bother carer and mother of a newborn. Life was tough in the days before carer’s pensions. When Dad died there was the widow’s pension. A bureaucratic bungle of over-payment meant that the pension was halved to recoup the over-payment. That was unliveable. We lived in 2 rooms rented an the rear of a house already.

So it was factory work and a latch-key kid at age 11. Did I stay out of trouble? Of course not. Bad company and bad decisions put me at risk. But I recovered after a serious scare and knuckled down to my school work and did OK.

The point of this is that we shouldn’t abandon children at a crucial time of their lives because we think their parent should work harder. Raising kids is bloody hard work. It doesn’t just happen. Rather than taking a punitive approach to the parent we should take a village approach to the children. We are all responsible. We should all pitch in, including the government we elect.

Help sole parents wherever you find them. Help out at your local school and make sure the kids who are missing out because of rotten governments get a hand up.