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Ben Baumberg Geiger's avatar

A useful comment that someone made in discussion - it's not clear how far people distinguish between conditionality per se, vs. being required to come in for a health assessment. (In fact, you can see this blurring in a paper from Kainde Manji at https://doi.org/10.1017/S147474641600052X).

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Paul Bivand's avatar

Approaching this somewhat crabwise, by looking at DWP and mother's responsibility for children over time. Up to 2008, lone parents could stay at home until their youngest child reached either 16 or 18 (can't easily find which). For dependent partners of JSA claimants, similarly, no suggestion they should work. This is a somewhat traditional (maybe Blue Labour) view of family responsibilities.

There were voluntary programmes and incentives, but no compulsion. This was at the same time that mothers in couples were recording 70% employment rates.

But.... when you break out patterns by qualification, for 2005 ish, they are remarkably similar between lone parents and couple mothers at the same qualification level. Therefore, what DWP did with lone parent obligations was march lone parents towards a graduate style family pattern with mothers expected to work, which was not, at the time, normal for lower qualified mothers.

In the case of sickness, DWP has had a longstanding 'biopsychosocial' view that people adopt a sickness persona, and that they would show improved health if they did not do this.

I think there is some parallel here between the shift in DWP attitudes to mothers at home with kids and their attempts towards a forced march towards biopsychosocial views - when social attitudes generally are (in either case) far more nuanced and differing between groups.

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