Here we another example of those umpteen thousands of studies government departments do on women and in this case single mothers..

Apart from having their own departments and their own National Health schemes both of which are absent for Men and Boys. We have this..

Research The psychological health of sole mothers in Australia

The priorities....ofcourse.

AbstractObjective: To determine the psychological wellbeing of sole mothers in Australia.


Design: Cross-sectional analyses of survey data from The Australian Longitudinal Study on Women’s Health.


Participants: 9689 younger women (aged 22–27 years) surveyed in 2000 and 12 338 mid-age women (aged 47–52 years) surveyed in 1998.


Main outcome measures: Demographic characteristics and economic status; prevalence of suicidal thoughts, self-harm, and psychoactive medication use; depression (Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale) and psychological health (the Mental Health Component Score of the Medical Outcome Short Form Health Survey [SF-36]).


Results: Among the younger women, sole mothers were more likely than other women to have experienced suicidal thoughts (odds ratio [OR], 2.18; 95% CI, 1.45–3.27) and self-harm (OR, 3.25; 95% CI, 1.97–5.38). Among the younger and mid-age women, sole mothers were the group most likely to have used medication for depression (ORs, 2.75 [95% CI, 1.76–4.30] and 2.29 [95% CI, 1.56–3.37], respectively). They were more than twice as likely to have experienced depression, and had significantly poorer psychological health (P


Conclusions: Economic status partly accounts for the relatively poorer psychological health of sole mothers. Sole mothers are more likely than other women to experience debilitating psychological health problems.


Sole motherhood has been associated with poorer psychological health and higher stress,1-3 which have in turn been partly attributed to lower economic status associated with sole mothers.4,5 This is of particular concern in Australia, where 27% of 18 year olds have spent some time living in a family with a sole mother.6

Evidence for psychological health problems among Australian sole mothers has been limited to studies of income-support recipients. For example, among recipients of the Parenting Payment (an income- and assets-tested payment to assist people caring for children irrespective of their marital status), sole parents were more likely than partnered parents to have experienced emotional problems.7 Another study found a relationship between receiving income support, including sole parent benefits, and having poor mental health scores.8 However, no research has been conducted with a representative, community-based sample of Australian women.

Sole mothers with lower socioeconomic status have been found to have poorer psychological health than sole mothers with higher socioeconomic status.1,4,9,10 Furthermore, when socioeconomic status was controlled for, the association between sole motherhood and poorer health was found to decrease.3,5 Socioeconomic status might therefore act as a partial mediator in the relationship between sole motherhood and poorer health. In Australia, sole mothers are financially worse off than other women,11,12 but the relationship between economic status and psychological health is currently unknown.

Here, we examine the association between sole motherhood and psychological health using data collected as part of The Australian Longitudinal Study on Women’s Health (ALSWH), also known as the Women’s Health Australia project.

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Thanks for this research.