A tax on workers to bolster welfare mums won't help growing class of disadvantaged

Tony Abbott's plan to increase paid parental leave ignores the bigger social picture

THERE were three of them: a woman in her late 40s and two women who looked barely 20. They sat having coffee in the cafe in the mall; a few plastic chairs squeezed between the Vinnies op shop and the hairdresser that advertises foils for $20.

They had a twin stroller and two single strollers between them. The babies were mostly confined to their prams with the odd bite of muffin to keep them quiet, while the four-year-old amused himself by trying to open the electric doors but getting stuck outside.

It was confirmed later in conversation that the two younger ones, who each had a baby, were the daughters of the older woman, who as grandma was looking after the child of another daughter who was working.

It was a typical modern grouping of women, but a scenario about which politicians and the professional, glamorous new feminists don't really have a clue.

This is today's fashion in family formation.

Almost 30 per cent of Australian children are born out of wedlock, mostly to 20-something single mums. Many never marry and will probably be reliant on income support for large chunks of their lives. They often have several children by different fathers and grandma gets loaded with the fallout. On the other side of the gender divide, most of the fathers will not or cannot marry the mothers. Many of the girls don't want them as a long-term partner; they are not good prospects as they are often not in full-time employment.

In the long run, if their mothers don't marry, the likelihood of the children living in a stable family with both a mum and a dad with all the emotional, educational and economic advantages that this implies is very small.

Yet what confounds researchers such as Monash University's Bob Birrell and the Centre for Independent Studies' Barry Maley is that public policy and modern culture have conspired to encourage this appalling situation. Even after 40 or more years of research, what we get from the feminist strongholds -- whether the academic heights of the public policy gurus or the trashy lows of glossy mags whose editors parade as new age gurus -- is the heavily loaded message You Can Do it Alone!

Sure, you too may do it alone and be like those other single mums, Elle or Angelina, or you could end up as a Britney without the money.

The flip side of the growing number of exnuptial births is the so-called marriage gap, the modern phenomenon in which girls who have tertiary education and are generally ambitious are the ones who are getting married. This is unlike the past when the home-centred, less educated 20-somethings would have married and had children. In fact most tertiary-educated women are married by the time they are 30 and try to have the first child quickly because their window of fertility is fast narrowing. Importantly, the marriage gap has resulted in two classes of mothers: those who are married and live in stable relationships and those who aren't and probably don't.

There has been optimism that the divorce rate has levelled off, a good thing because it means fewer of those women now marrying will end up single mothers. However, the marriage rate is plummeting, so there will be a disproportionate number of children on the bottom end of the economic scale.

This is, and will continue to be, a huge drain on the welfare system. According to The Australian's social affairs writer Stephen Lunn, women receive two-thirds of income-support payments -- mostly parenting payments -- and in the future a disproportionate number will not have partners. Government and the opposition should start thinking about the consequences of this.

In his book Battlelines Tony Abbott states the disproportionate numbers of children in the bottom income deciles are the reason behind his maternity leave push: get the people at the top of the tree to have more kids.Unfortunately, we will need a lot more than maternity leave for the ones at the top to fix this problem because the disproportionate exnuptial birthrate at the bottom end of the economic spectrum will make the figures on children in poverty only worse.

There is another part of this seesaw. Larger stable families in the middle who in the past could have had long periods living on a single income can no longer afford to do so. They are taxed as individuals. The so-called family tax benefit part B has been means-tested and there is no real taxation relief for these families, let alone the kinds of freebies that come with a social security card.

Even though Abbott in the past sounded sympathetic to the idea of family unit taxation, it seems clear if one examines his views in Battlelines that it won't happen.

However, no one has thought of any way to substantially alleviate the problems of tax disadvantage with which families have to cope. It seems that luring more middle-income mothers into the workforce is all they can think of. But a second income is often a much resented necessity and not always the career choice it is portrayed as.

Mothers in general just have jobs, not careers, and they are more or less forced into work, especially if families are buying into a home market of rising prices. Salaried women with qualifications can often choose to dip in and out of work.

Meanwhile, the welfare problem is huge and it's going to get bigger. So it is not a case of the married stay-at-home mums v the salaried mums that are the two great blocks of women in two different family types, as is often portrayed in the one-track ideology of the media mentality.

It is the single, welfare-dependent mothers who will never marry and the rest; one group supporting another.

Abbott emphasises that married middle-class women should be able to work and have more children. But the taxes of those married mums forced to work are paying for a growing number of children of single mums.

Abbott should think about that if he wants to have any fresh ideas about family policy.