Women have entered the workforce in greater numbers worldwide. They are increasingly expected to earn wages, but are still primarily responsible for raising children. While all parents confront the tensions of this double burden, the situation is especially complex and acute for the lone mother, simply because she has no other adult who shares responsibilities, and no access to a male wage. Without strong family networks, decent part-time employment opportunities, extensive and high quality care for children of all ages, or government income support, lone mothers are much more likely to live in poverty and cannot compete with married parents for the resources they need to raise children.
The essays in this volume address these dilemmas and at the same time pay attention to important differences among lone mothers. How can governments help lone mothers without undermining their ability to enter the workforce? Should the state indefinitely support lone mothers? How should we measure the success ofa policy? What roles do ethnicity, race, religion, class, and sexual orientation play? The authors in this volume speak from many perspectives and study a variety of places, including Sri Lanka, the US, Germany, England, and Norway, allowing the reader to draw powerful conclusions by comparing across different policies and contexts.
This book was previously published as a special issue of the journal "Feminist Economics,"

Women have entered the workforce in greater numbers worldwide. They are increasingly expected to earn wages, but are still primarily responsible for raising children. While all parents confront the tensions of this double burden, the situation is especially complex and acute for the lone mother, simply because she has no other adult who shares responsibilities, and no access to a male wage. Without strong family networks, decent part-time employment opportunities, extensive and high quality care for children of all ages, or government income support, lone mothers are much more likely to live in poverty and cannot compete with married parents for the resources they need to raise children.
The essays in this volume address these dilemmas and at the same time pay attention to important differences among lone mothers. How can governments help lone mothers without undermining their ability to enter the workforce? Should the state indefinitely support lone mothers? How should we measure the success ofa policy? What roles do ethnicity, race, religion, class, and sexual orientation play? The authors in this volume speak from many perspectives and study a variety of places, including Sri Lanka, the US, Germany, England, and Norway, allowing the reader to draw powerful conclusions by comparing across different policies and contexts.
This book was previously published as a special issue of the journal "Feminist Economics,"

One of the fruits of the revival of socialist economic theory over the past decade has been a wide-ranging debate about the validity of Marx's labour theory of value. At the heart of the discussion stands the theoretical work of Piero Sraffa and the conclusions drawn from it by such economists as Ian Steedman. Initially confined to a relatively narrow circle of specialists, the controversy about value theory has since spread to wider circles of the left. But although general awareness that the stakes of the dispute are of concern to all socialists is now extensive, understanding of the issues involved has remained more restricted than need be. This volume presents, for the first time, a comprehensive yet accessible overview of the discussion. The essays discuss not only the value debate itself, but also its relevance to such issues as capitalist crisis, the theory of exploitation, and historical materialism. Comprehensible to the non-specialist, but without sacrificing rigour or oversimplifying the issues, the articles assembled here offer a definitive summary of the current state of one of the crucial aspects of Marxist thought.