a “single parent status” envisaged in a bill in preparation

This transpartisan bill, which several deputies are preparing, aims to establish new specific rights for single parents and to “fight against the precariousness of single-parent families.”

It is a transpartisan bill. Deputies from several political parties (LFI, Renaissance, PS, Liot, MoDem, communists, ecologists) have decided to unite to have a law adopted which aims to “fight against the precariousness of single-parent families”. The project, certain measures of which could be examined in May, provides for the creation of a “single parent status”with new specific rights for single parents, such as the payment of family allowances from the first child.

It mainly targets single mothers, since when we talk about single-parent families today, 83% of cases are women. They make up the bulk of the queues for food aid. The number of single-parent families is estimated at between 1.5 and 2 million, that is to say twice as many as 30 years ago. A law seen as the beginning of reparation for single mothers who, because they live outside social norms, whatever the reason, must endure, in addition to precariousness, at worst judgment. and dishonor, at best indifference and lack of support. And it’s not from yesterday.

A very long journey

Already in 1556 an edict from Henry II ordered single women and pregnant widows to declare their “state” to royal officials, failing which they risked banishment or flogging. Isolated mothers today, “unmarried mothers” as they said in the 19th century, the incarnation of sin, of the simple fact of living without a husband, single mothers will have had to wait until 1912, that is to say yesterday, for a law forces fathers to recognize their paternity, which will not have been enough to get them out of poverty. That of Fantine forced to entrust Cosette to the Thénardiers, and to whom, wrote Victor Hugo “the acrid and cold contempt of passers-by penetrated the flesh and the soul like a kiss”.

It remains to be seen, as we learned on Monday April 1 in the newspaper The world that around forty single mothers and their 76 children would soon be evicted from their homes in Blois by decision of the departmental council, whether or not this idea of ​​specific rights will achieve consensus among the deputies, and in society, because it does not It’s never too late for history to retrace its steps.