‘the Impossible Choice You Have to Make’: A Qualitative Analysis of Low-Resourced Single Parents’ Work-Family Practices and Experiences in Dual-Earner-Dual-Carer Sweden

The ability to combine paid work and family life in a gender-equal way has been a longstanding policy aim in Sweden, arguably with gender equality within dual-earner-dual-carer families as the focal point. Despite the well-documented gendered dimension of single parenting, less is known about what this focus on gender equality means for single mothers. This study explores how low-resourced single mothers meet family needs in the Swedish context, using low-resourced coupled parents as a comparison group. A total of 31 single mothers and coupled parents (17 single, 14 coupled), recruited through community organisations in four Swedish cities, participated in seven focus groups during May-July 2023. While scholars have recently suggested that separated parents now drive rather than stall gender equality in Sweden (Eriksson & Kolk, 2024), I suggest that the opposite may be true for low-resourced single mothers. The findings show that the experiences of low-resourced single mothers can be better characterised through gender inequality. This conclusion is supported through three interrelated themes: (1) The policy expectation of co-parenting imposed unique pressures on full-time single mothers, including financial losses stemming from policies that either assume shared parenting arrangements or do not compensate for their absence, (2) like coupled parents, single mothers did not share family responsibilities gender-equally, but trade-offs were especially pronounced for single mothers who had few opportunities for sharing responsibilities, and (3) single mothers expressed a felt under-recognition of vulnerabilities associated with single parenting from society and the welfare state. Together, these insights further our understanding of the disadvantages faced by single mothers in a dual-earner-dual-carer policy context that favours gender-equal behaviour.