The National Childcare Strategy: The social regulation of lone mothers as a gendered reserve army of labour

Abstract

This paper analyses the introduction of the National Childcare Strategy. It argues, in the context of workfarism and through a new evaluation of the ‘women as reserve army’ thesis, that the National Childcare Strategy can be understood as one of a number of administrative mechanisms in New Labour's welfare reform agenda that aims to release lone mothers from social reproduction, in order to increase their effectiveness at competing for paid employment. This approach to the provision of childcare means that the state is heavily involved in subsiding childcare markets, benefiting capital through socialised reproduction, and through the rewards of what can be lucrative childcare markets.

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