About the data
Dennis Marsden's Mothers Alone study explored the lives and experiences of mothers - unmarried, separated, divorced or widowed - living alone. The study examined what was poverty and who were the fatherless. It asked about housing conditions, homelessness, diet and nutrition, family relations, marriage and marital breakdowns, and the levels and adequacy of community and national assistance.
This work was developed from a pilot study conducted for Peter Townsend's larger project on 'Poverty in the UK'. Data were collected about children's health and education. This collection has enhanced the original paper copies by digitising them and by adding both notes on methodology and extracts from an interview with the depositor.
How the data were used
Little is known, in specific terms, about unmarried mothers between the First World War and the mid-1990s. Ignorance about the subject has had important ramifications for policy making and for the representation of unmarried mothers. The key aim of this project was to use previously unused data - including the Dennis Marsden study and material on one-parent families in The National Archives.
The findings propose that the growth in unmarried motherhood since the 1970s has a longer history then is generally appreciated and that recent attitudinal and structural aspects of family life are not new. Indeed, since the 1970s there has been a return to much older norms of serial partnerships, complex families, and late marriage ages, though in a different mortality regime and legal and cultural context from that of earlier periods. The work will be published in 2011 as Pat Thane and Tanya Evans 'Unmarried Motherhood in Modern England'.
About the author
Professor Pat Thane and Tanya Evans conducted this project at the Contemporary British History Unit in the Institute of Historical Research, University of London.
To view and download the data GO TO ESDS