Currently, lone mothers and their children make up almost twenty percent of families with dependent children in the UK, a threefold increase since 1970. Yet, while they are often cited by politicians as both a symptom and cause of social breakdown, relatively little is known of the causes, consequences and conditions of lone motherhood in Britain and throughout Europe. [This book] provides accounts of historical patterns of mothering and ideologies of the family with cross-national comparisons of policies and experience of lone motherhood in developed and developing countries.