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Western countries differ greatly in the extent to which single mothers participate in the labor market. Using LIS data for 15 countries, I propose & estimate a simple structural model of labor supply that incorporates the main variables that influence the work decision for single mothers. The results suggest that a large part of the cross-country variation in the employment rates of single mothers can be explained by their different demographic characteristics & by the variation in expected income in the in-work vs out-of-work states. Women with higher expected earnings are more likely to work. Higher in-work benefits encourage employment. Single mothers with higher income from other sources, including child support, are less likely to work. Even after demographic & income variables are controlled for, the country dummies remain significant. This indicates that other variables not explicitly incorporated in the model, such as child care arrangements or social & cultural backgrounds, may also play a relevant role. 10 Tables, 1 Appendix, 24 References. Adapted from the source document.

ABSTRACTAlthough teen pregnancy is on the rise in Canada, and while adolescent mothering in general has received considerable recent attention from researchers, there is a paucity of information about the particular experiences of young women who become mothers while in government care. Emerging out of a study guided by a grounded theory methodology to address this knowledge gap, this paper examines the experiences and perspectives of government‐based social workers who work with young mothers in/from care. Our findings indicated that social workers reflect prevailing middle class values, including norms about 'good' and 'bad' parenting, and centred around the belief that adolescent pregnancy is, in and of itself, bad. One of the most significant ramifications of workers' values was their belief about the inevitability of 'the cycle': of children in care begetting children who ultimately came into care. Ironically, though workers and young mothers were both preoccupied by the concept of 'the cycle', and each were determined to break it, the two groups had very different ideas about what the cycle was all about and what perpetuated it. Unfortunately, this disjunction in perspectives, along with major recent shifts in the direction of child welfare policy and practice and related constraints in the resources at workers' disposal, conjoined to create significant barriers to what workers and young women both recognized as supportive practice with youth in care.