Vulnerable lone mothers embedded in the Danish social welfare system – their voices, their experiences, their life struggles – form the heart of this book as we attempt to document their daily life struggles in the context of the Danish social and political system. By presenting qualitative case studies of lone mothers and examining their narratives of experience, we develop an analysis of welfare policies and practices that is at once localized, and embedded in a specific Danish context, yet reaches beyond with implications for both Europe and the United States.

Lone mothers and their children have historically been constituted as a ‘problem’ constituency – variously demonized, stigmatized, and marginalized. While lone mothers have fared better in countries such as Denmark, where universal family support policies are present, their lives nevertheless are qualitatively ‘less than’ their fellow citizens, and our study investigates both why and how. For if pulling up the blinds on Danish universalism reveals bleak and grim family worlds for many vulnerable lone mothers, what lessons can be learnt by other countries contemplating or implementing welfare reforms?

Lone parenthood, and specifically lone motherhood, has taken very different pathways in Europe, Britain, and the US, and many feminist social policy analysts have argued that single motherhood is a litmus test of gendered social rights (Hobson, 1994). While welfare state regimes differ markedly from the ‘residual’ in the US to the universal in Scandinavia, there are strikingly similar cross-national problems and obstacles confronting vulnerable low-income single mothers with children: lack of access to education and to stable selfsufficient employment, caregiving restrictions related to time and health resources, and a family life frequently destabilized by violent husbands and partners.