 Hi everybody, welcome to the virtual conference or imagining our work from below organized by the Society for the Study of Social Problems through its two committees that address transnational initiatives, that is the Transnational Initiatives Committee and the Adult Virtual Transnational Initiatives Committee. This conference is hosted by the Orphalia Center for Global International Studies of the University of California at Santa Barbara. Thanks for being here today. Today we host session six single parents the global north and south, of which I am the organizer. Let me introduce myself briefly. I'm over in Atari. Currently, I'm a research fellow with the University of South Hampton in the United Kingdom. And I'm a former Marie Curie, I'm sorry. I'm turning today. I'm a former Marie, so those can really search fellow at the University of Hamburg in Belgium. Moreover, I'm one of the members of the Transnational Initiatives Committee of Triple SP. Before starting with, I would like to remind you some general rules and guidelines for the webinar. Please keep your microphones muted to avoid equally so if you're not talking. If your experience has been with issues, try turning off your camera. And this session will be recorded. If you do not agree with the recording, you should leave the virtual room now. In the chat box, you will find two items. Both of these links are posted on the front page of the conference as well. In the first link, you can add your name to the triple SP Transnational Initiatives Committee guest book if you want to receive future announcements about the committee conferences events. And you can provide also with the second link feedback about the conference if you like to meet. In the next live session will last one hour and a half. In this session we also six presenters. And I try to give an overview about the presenters. I'm sorry for the pronunciation and you should correct me about the wrong pronunciation. This is from your mother tongue language. So our first presentation is from Farzaneh Ejazi, Shai University, Iran, the study of single parents in Iran. The second presentation is from Shuwaz Ribaduri, a Java group, University India, interpreting the biased notion of gender and underlying class struggle through single mothers lives in the pandemic time. So we have a third presentation from Djagriti Ganglopayit, Manipal Academy of Higher Education India, single parenting, challenging traditional familiar norms in urban India. Then we have Simon Kezi from Melbourne, MIT University with the presentation single mothers and resistance to welfare to work, a board is in account. Then we have a presentation from Dries Van Gas and Nina van Heikert, University of Frankfurt in Belgium, institutionalism at work, gender perception of the work life conflict in single parenthood. And then we have a last presentation from Erin Gaye, the University of Wisconsin Medicine from the USA. This is from the months of Manchuria Street, Alpha, Black and House of Mothers reclaimed and redefined the right to housing in Oakland. Erin is not present today, but her presentation will be soon available on the website of the conference. This live session is not a traditional session at all with full presentation and so on, but is a session that aims to be a discussion among presenters. So I would ask you for giving a short presentation of your research in five, 10 minutes, and then we can start a discussion freely. And for questions and comments you can use the chat box so you can raise your hand and join the discussion. So, and I think that we can start with this brief presentation. I would ask, because I see Dries, would you start Dries? Yeah, of course. Thank you so much. Just to break the ice. I'm just trying to have my power point, not to share but have my own structure to talk a little bit about my research. So my paper I would like to present here, we uploaded it to YouTube as well for anyone who wants to listen to it afterwards. It's called institutionalism at work, about the gender perception of the world life conflict in single parents. I'm a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Frankfurt and I conducted my PhD research specifically on single parenthood. And within this PhD research, I had a paper specifically dealing with single models perspectives in work life conflict. After their divorce, in which we saw that there was like conflict was actually a role conflict between either the aspirations. The mother said her social role as a mother and think they want to accomplish a mother that were actually they couldn't attain to their constraints and they either needed to negotiate within themselves, whether they had to adjust there, which we call the moderate ideology what they want to, what they aspire to be as being a parent, or they need to look for more flexible work arrangements, or working less which is actually financially less stable and it's this strength between on one hand trying to financially take care of the family and on the other hand, yeah fulfill your social role or your aspirations as being a parent that we call this like the role strain problem of work life conflict. And in Belgium, the divorce system and the judicial system is actually a system in which nowadays shared custody is. This is like the normal trend. It's what divorce lawyers speak out when people divorce, which also means that a lot of fathers actually are in similar situations because they are part of single parents. And in the next paper I wrote the last year, I focused specifically on Park. And what was very interesting is that the work life conflict single fathers and work life conflict of single mothers while they were both role life conflicts and social role conflicts by your role and parenting, your role as a employee or worker. They were also intrinsically different, because there were always expectations from towards fathers towards mothers, and the motherhood role is much more socially defined than the fatherhood role. The father that tried to be an involved father and make adjustments to the work context was actually labeled as a deviant employee, someone swimming upstream. And that's kind of what we try to do in this paper is to compare these these gender discourses, which in the motherhood we see that they struggle or struggle is is about the aspirations of being a good mother. And this really resonates in the interviews we did with with single mothers as well so the qualitative research. While on the other hand, we see with men, there is no different narratives. These narratives go way beyond the for example, for example, single mothers are much more financial frail than single fathers, because there are gender inequalities there. This also shows that, yeah, there needs to be done a lot of work to, to make this this field in combination of work and family between single fathers and single mothers, more equal. And that's kind of what we try to tackle within our with an okay. And what we did is we collected 63 in depth interviews with single fathers, we collected 200 interviews with others. And we use this in a ground theory analysis. Actually, these were two separate papers one of our models, but in this paper comparison. And we try to look into gender discourse. And what we see is actually it's always looking for that balance between parenthood aspirations and work aspirations. And while the narrative of single mothers who try to look for balance is much more like I need to be easier on myself this is maybe that way of calling it but but like, I need to lower my own aspirations of being a mother which is actually quite challenging. While for fathers it's like I want if I want to be involved father I need to change or combat with the expectations. So my, my work context towards you and my true interest to working. And this, this, this research papers is very much work in progress so we're still looking for ways how to frame this correctly how to make the same work for results section section of course theory we also have a little bit of the theory yet results yet. But, yeah, because it's into this this field of gender and gender expectations I think it's, it's also quite different. What's also important to the state is that we also see differences in the narratives when there was when there are differences in gender equality or gender equality free divorce so when for some couples, these these battles were already not pre divorce because they're quite generally for the vision and work. And for example, manuals already taking care when, when they earn divorce, but there are also differences in different social levels. There are aspirations as a mother or father or at the work the expectation or sorry, certainly with the expectations at work. It's not as easy or social levels and some social groups see more opportunity to choose, which is very important for single parents or just there. And work life corporations to their own needs. So, I don't know if I want much overtime, which time I still have. But this isn't much the paper we wanted to present. Thank you. Thank you. I think that we can start with the yes all the shortened presentation of the papers and then we can have a discussion. So because I prepared some questions for you. I'll use my questions later. So I will leave the floor to Faradane. If she can hear me. Yes. Yes, thank you. Thank you. Yeah, thank you. Please. Actually, in Iran, there's lack of statistical data about single parent and actually, it's a new topic for me, because I researched about the cyber, cyber space and education, as I said before. But in Iran, married couples are less suffer from discrimination than single parents. And according to some static this, there is social harm to children whose homes conflicts or conflicts, or lost one of their, one of them family, and who are single or have no family. The growth of a single parent families in Iran is so dangerous and could even increase social harm in the future. Families headed by women are even more vulnerable. The father must have authority in every day every family male authority can prevent children from many injuries. And the main conclusion actually the increase in divorce and mortality has increased the number of single parents families in Iran. Especially in the COVID pandemic. And this trend is increasing day by day. And if there is no social support for these single parent families, the family single parents will be below the poverty line actually. And men and women are complementary and the absence of one of them will prevent one of the parents from playing the role in the process of socializing their children. Children suffer from an emotional vacuum due to the absence of one parent. And if the parent is the only mother and wants to prepare for the financial needs of the children, the woman must automatically play the role of the man of the family and therefore cannot care about the children's training. The financial single parent in Iran has some effects on parents and children. Already the situation of the economy in Iran holds divorce the COVID-19 and employment have an impact on single parents in Iran. Based on Iranian reports before the COVID-19 pandemic in 2016, 7.2% in Iran were single parent families. 17% of single parent households in the country have a male head and 83% of these households have a female head. It shows living for women in Iran will be so difficult. And but actually the general population and housing census in Iran was initially conducted once every 10 years. But from 2006 onwards, it was decided to conduct the sense of once every five years, which wasn't done last year for some reasons. One of the reasons actually COVID-19 pandemic. According to Iranian news, at least 51,000 children in Iran have lost their parents due to COVID-19. And these children are facing economic hardship and psychological problems based on the functionalist story the social needs of children aren't provided in single parent family. And the divorce and mortality have increased the number of single parent families in Iran. And we are in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic and aren't able to predict predicts exactly what happened next. Here we could create practical solutions. And in Iran welfare should use a practical and effective policies for children who lose their parents in the COVID-19 era. The government must create solution for single parents in the COVID-19 era because they are more under economic pressure. And counseling should be increased in Iran to reduce the phenomenon of divorce. I can't hear you. Thank you. Yeah, sure. I'm sorry. Thank you for your short presentation. Yeah, I prepared some questions for you and but for the moment I will leave the floor to Yadriqi. Okay, so women have always been experiencing like sexual oppression, economic exploitation, every kind of like cultural subjugation like which proves like how we equally distributed our capital is like be it societal, be it cultural, anything. Yadriqi always has a tendency to see a woman as a vulnerable entity who always needs beautiful assistance from a man. So, and this kind of inconsistent circulation of capital like turns out to be exceptionally recognizable during a crisis, a crisis like pandemic, a crisis like any kind of crisis. So, pandemic like COVID-19 has actually contributed to this inequality, like through various factors. And during this time, like, every the nature of living of every individual become very exhaustive like so single fathers also suffered I'm not saying that they had like they never suffered. But I'm just trying to point out one thing here like they never endured the same as a single mother because finding a job with the liability of the children is more like a valorous deed for men. Whereas single mother have always been told that in order to get rid of, you know, the stress, the mental pressure, all the denigratic opinions that they were receiving. They need to go back to their partners, precisely, taking down paid work as their destiny. So, I have interviewed four single mothers, like coming from four different backgrounds, like the respondent, one of my respondent is a government employee. She is economically in a very good position. The other two respondents of mine is not that in a good position. They and the respondent A of mine, the first respondent of mine also had, you know, a very, she belongs to a very culturally and economically. Economically, it's sound background, she she belongs to a very sound background. And the other respondents are not from, they don't belong to a very cultural and chronically sound background. And the fourth respondent of mine was in domestic worker. And, like, I have seen that after inter upon interview, all of them I've seen that during this chaotic period, gendered with gender and class, there are other things also matter like education, job type interpersonal relationships, etc. Like both of the cases of floor middle class and domestic worker have shown one similarity that mental health was never a point of discussion in their life. Like, second factor the education if we talk about education in both cases, either they're a high school degree holder or completely unlettered. And both of them suffered financially, more than the other two like the first respondent who were who belongs to more sound background, culturally and economically. So both of their cases show one more similarity that they were very much forced to go back to their partners, no matter how abusive they are. And no matter what happened with them. So my data also shows one other one more thing that upper middle class single mothers never faced the issue of hunger. The government employees or huge business business owners were not that affected. On the other hand, small business owners like food sellers take your service owner face the downturn. Like their interpersonal relationships, those who have supportive family and friends have a different story to share than those who are abundant by their family. So irrespective of class, education, job type, etc. single mothers have struggled and faced challenges due to pandemic. And with a child to look after and parenting became undoubtedly difficult and unemployment left them with a whole void of uncertainty. Now, like mothers who didn't lose their jobs also had to juggle between work from home and childcare as schools and daycare services were closed at that time, at that point of time. It was difficult and stressful for a lot of them. A lot of respondents felt it would have been different if they had partners to share their mental stress. Like though women irrespective of their position are largely responsible for domestic labor and childcare, married women were less likely to suffer during this pandemic period. So during this time a lot of single mothers suffered because of the constant nagging of their parents or relative to how their decision of separating from a husband will affect their lives and their children's rise and etc. So this intersection of gender and class shows a different angle of inequality, like what unlettered women had to bear and how they had to bear the brunt of it, the brunt of the bias notion of gender and class and on another level than the privileged single mother. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for your presentation. Thank you for visiting. So I think I have also some questions for you later. And I think that we can leave the floor for the presentation of her gritty, if she can hear me. Yes, perfect. Thank you. And welcome. Thank you. Thank you for this opportunity. I am very grateful and I think it's a topic that requires much attention. I'm also happy that I'm presenting right after she was free because you know I think I'm talking more about the upper middle class and middle class and this the class dynamics that she was talking about. Of course my field work happened before the pandemic so I will not be able to talk much about the pandemic because I didn't really visit my interviews, but I'll just give some background about single parenting as an upcoming family form and India. And actually, we are governed like particularly the middle class and I'm into an upper middle class by the joint family system. And if anybody reads the scholarship also there is a lot of family sociological literature on different kinship patterns joint family structures, and much later liberal liberalization 1991 when India opened its gates to the market economy, it was only then that the nuclear family system started evolving. And however it is actually looked down upon and that is one of the biggest reasons of courses because in India, elderly care continues to be supported by our children we still haven't thought of policies to support older people who don't have children etc. So which is why the whole emphasis on the family system in India is because it's kind of cyclical in that sense you know my parents take care of children children take care of parents because of that. So currently, nuclear families are quite high and they compose the highest percentage of households in India. So, but that change in itself is viewed negatively. So, single parenting in itself recently in 2019 there are 6.3% single parents and 5.4 single mothers, which is actually quite a higher percentage. And, but the question to ask is that whether they still face stigma, and they're often blamed and women unfortunately and you know I agree with what she was also saying, I'm going to extend my presentation based on that women are often blamed. If they are demoses or if you know they're the desire to become a single parent even if they express that. So, there's definitely a lack of scholarship on this like academic scholarship and there is very few people to stop to Sarah lamb was touched on this topic of single parenting. Ironically, of course, our biggest film industry Bollywood has quite a few films on single mothers recently some films have been made. So, what I found in my data, primarily was that I was covered it mostly metropolitan cities like go cut up and deliver it with face to face interviews went on for quite some time. And I also want to add I myself am a single parent in that sense because I'm in a latch living apart together relationship my husband visits me every three months onwards and so I'm not in that sense technically a single parent my husband is very there, but of course me and my son we live all by ourselves so it was also a semi auto ethnographic study that I did. And I also it was easier for me to frame the questionnaire based on my own experience. The face major biggest point I found was that the biggest problem that they face in India single parents is both like mother and father is the lack of quality support care that is to this expectation that grandparents will take care of the child but one thing that you'll get is that the grandparents are also becoming old, they're also going old, and it is hard for them sometimes to take care of a child. So the institutional support that we have in the form of day care or paid care to being nannies. They are not nurtured well they are quite expensive but they often don't provide good quality care. So that that was one of the biggest challenges. Many of them have 90% of them actually have pets to provide companionship to the child but the stigma is a big major problem and many of them continue to look for support because the counseling options also that are the therapy options that are also there in India are very limited and they really often they face a lot of difficult questions from the counselors and therapists themselves so because there is so little awareness around single parenting generally as a new family form or a structure. And one is so easily questioned about one's parenting skills that the parents themselves find it very difficult to open up about their challenges and they often face questions in their children's school they're often worried about the children's mental health because of a very traditional set up that India is so used to. So these, these were some of the southern cities and the question to ask you that is single parenting really rising yes, I would say yes it is. It is also important that the government takes note of this new form of parenting and provides more support and puts in place more institutional caregiving structures etc so that because most all single parents and if you were also working parents because also a big worry for them so financially none of them particularly single mothers who became widows, a lot of them were widows who I interviewed early on so they really couldn't stop working. And it was also ironical that the mothers had to face this question that you know doesn't the child miss the father but the single fathers had to face a question more that are they good enough mothers you know like because mother in India motherhood is celebrated so much, there's so much emphasis on it's not parenting it's actually mothering that we do. So, so that was the other important finding that I had in this study that father single father and there's actually no scholarship on single father. I also couldn't interview to not more than 10 the number is low but my my final conclusion would be that much more research needs to be done on this topic and this definitely needs scholarship attention policy. Thank you very much for this opportunity. Thank you, thank you because you, I think you raise a lot of topic and you focus a lot, a lot of topic for future research. Thank you, thank you. And I have some questions also for you. And now I believe the floor to what's exactly the presentation of your name. It depends on what country you're from, but in Australia it's Simone and in Italy you probably say Simone or Simone. Yeah, because in my own country would be Simone. It sounds much nicer that way so. Thank you. Thank you so much. I leave you the floor for your presentation. Thank you. Yeah, thank you for inviting me to be part of this session and it's been really interesting listening to all the other presenters and I've realized how vastly different our social and political contexts are from in Australia. This is some of the places that you're from so I thought I should probably give you a little bit more contextual background on single motherhood in Australia. So, like many Western societies, as there was a huge increase in single parented households, beginning in probably like the 60s and the 70s in particular but there were quite a number of single parent parent households and single mothers prior to that. But really the you know the shift to so that at the moment we have 15% of our households are single parent households and 85% of those are headed by single mothers. So single parent households is a big thing in Australia it has been for some time and single mothers have been supported by our social security system since the 1970s. And a certain payment government payment a welfare payment was targeted to support single mothers who were not blamed for becoming single mothers it was a reflection of kind of you know the shift in family formations and you know feminist influences and so in a very liberal democracy. We had quite a strong support safety net for single parent families from that period on so what happened since the 1970s was that there was a growing concern by governments that we had created a kind of system of welfare dependence which meant that single parents who were supported by the welfare system were not moving from welfare into work when their children were old enough to go to school and be independent enough that the parent had the ability to work so the government's welfare to work strategies were very much targeted at providing kind of motivation or incentive for single mothers to work. So basically the start of my presentation was really just at the point of describing a welfare to work policy initiative that had been designed to shift mothers from the single parent pension into the labour market, and to get jobs and so when I in my presentation I talked about that as my social policy reclassification event, and that had implications for the mothers, particularly that I interviewed but also that I connected through through some of my advocacy and activism in the sense that, you know, there was this sense of kind of injustice that occurred because of this shift in social policy, and it did create quite a lot of conflict for the mothers between their role, a role that they had assumed in terms of parenting and being responsible for the welfare of their children and being available to support their children, and rather than being, you know, off at a in an office or in a work environment, and not there to say to care for their children after school or to pay a lot of money to put them into after school programs or childcare, or these kind of things and there was a lot of there was reflection of the idea of the lack of recognition for care work and it's a feminist issue in the sense that, you know, being a parent is a worthwhile social role being a mother is a, you know, it is an important support role that we play in society but it's not valued as much as necessarily having paid employment and so in Australia I suppose you would have you'd say that we have a conflict in perspectives between the forces that say that women and single mothers should be in the paid labour force versus being available to support their children as much as they would like to and so essentially that is the kind of social policy conflict scenario we have in Australia where we have single mothers now pushing back against some of the social policy reforms so that, you know, they're like well coming together to collect the advice to try to change social policy settings so that their mothering and especially single mothering can be that is supported by the society we're in. I know we come from a place of incredible privilege in Australia because we do have a safety net that single mothers can rely on but over time that has been constantly eroded by government policies which make it more and more difficult for single mothers and single fathers too but as they say they're a minority to survive within that framework and to provide the care that they want to children. So rather than go over the detail of my presentation altogether, I thought I'd just kind of summarise and contextualise it a little bit more in the company that I'm in so thank you very much. Thank you so much for your presentation. Thank you, Simone, because I found your work and your article very, very interesting. I met your article during a literary review and I found it extremely interesting also for my for my work. So I think that now we can start our discussion and just to break the ice, I have the questions for you all. And my question is about the definition of single parents, what kind of definition we use in our research because I read different, different contribution I see that sometimes authors use different definitions and for single parenting single parents. And also I see that we have a kind of new trends in single parents definition in Europe. I don't know in our countries but I see that in Europe there is a kind of new trend for definition of single parents. So I would, I would propose this kind of reflections. If you have reflections about this topic, what kind of definition we use in our research for single parents and what kind of definition would be better for our research because we see, we have different contributions, different perspectives and we see those also from Jegrity before. So, just to start the reflection about what is better, the best definition or the suggested definition for our research. Please. I'll start if that's okay. So, you know, I see there's a variation in language internationally with in Australia we still sort of say single parent or single mother in the UK I see so parents so lone parent. And now I'm also seeing sort of one parent one, one household one, one person household sort of like one headed household so I people are trying to make a distinction between, you know, especially in societies where we have non traditional family types quite a lot growing, but between sort of single income headed families, which I think is where the most of the poverty tends to be concentrated because in Australia there's a lot of divorce as I think there's something like 40% of marriages and in divorce, and even more if you talk about de facto relationships in which they've been children so I think we're starting to see a little bit more of a shift towards and so in Australia we have a very shared care system so if a family splits up with parents bit up the children can be across two households. So the care burden is not as heavy because you because the child or the children will be in another household for part of the time. So I think this, at least in sort of the West, this is probably some of the distinctions we're starting to make about single parent households and the effects of basically time use stress, well being and income levels so anyway I'll just start that off there. Thank you, thank you. If I might add. I think there are a lot of nuances that we can make. For example, if you study loads of these nuances are countries specific or case specific, depending on why you want to research or what what the country is working on. For example, if we in Belgium, the research on single parents there is always question like, how much custody should the single parent have to be rated as a single parent. We'd say that the single parent someone was the sole custody of their children for 100% and their ex partner or the biologically different parents because they have no custody on them. Yeah, then we narrowed the population very much down, but we see that there is a lot of shared custody so depending on what we want to study do we want to study for example also taking to kind single fathers as an example. So we actually need to to be a little bit more nuanced in this custodial arrangements. And on the other hand, we also see just like Simone said like, there are a lot of different terms that we need to use when we want to study different things. We are currently working on research proposal on single adults at ourselves, for example, because these include single parents, of course, in different ways. There are also single parents by choice. There is different family forms and alternative ways to start a family. But another group that's that's frail and prone to social risks and social vulnerability is our singles or single households with one adult in its own. And we often ignore it because they don't have their responsibilities and often we do our research from the perspective of the child and the one being of the child actually would see that being a single is often is more common in our more life than single as well so we want to include them as well in our study. And that's why we use, for example, single adult households that research proposal. But if we want to do it more child centered or more care centered, we need to look at single parent household households or children that grow up in households with a single adult. So, I think there are a lot of nuances that we can make, depending on our country context, depending on what we want to study, and that we need to be sensible and we choose our own concepts. Thank you. Thank you, Drace. And they are our reflection from the other participants about definitions. Yeah. First of all, the dimension of a healthy family and the parents is both together actually we know that. But in Iran, when in single parents, when we talk about single parent, a children live with their mother or father when they lose one of them. But actually, I can see some children or kids can live with their grandfathers or grandmother actually, but for kids, it's a great leave together with both of parents. Actually, Iran, women when they lose their husband have has more financial hardship, and they suffer from, they suffer from psychology problem. That's it. Thank you. Thank you for the night. They are our contribution of reflections about definition from the other participants. So in particular, yeah, thank you. I'll just add the vision to do research on single parenting in India was that there is no research on single parenting that's that there are very traditional family structures like joint nuclear with lack of scholarship. So, and particularly with regard to class like upper middle class and middle class, it's now the focus is mostly on nuclear family system. That is why particularly focused on single parenting to add to the scholarship because I think scholars need to take note of that. That is why that was the reason. Thank you. Thank you. And I guess I, there are, I don't know if there are other options. Yes, I have nothing to add, but I would like to answer the question Jagathi ma'am asked in the common box is very unfortunate that I haven't found a proper structure in our Indian society which walks in the favor of domestic workers, like single mothers who are domestic workers. Either they have to take their child with them to their workplace, or they had to leave them, they have to leave them, you know, like at home. And, and there is another thing that home has not been seen as a site of work and labor, as has been the factory and office. So the gendered notion of work like has made some work appear unproductive like domestic workers are still seen as unproductive labor. No matter how well they cook, how meticulously they clean, they're just invisible. They do the all all the informal work so they're just invisible. So there are lack of legal protection, cover up social security measures, like, and existence of well defined, like, contours of work and rest and the irony is that the state do take part in the like formalization of the workforce. But how that is the irony that domestic workers need to verify their identity in our country in India, and they need to verify their identity and provide informations in local police stations. But employers, they don't need to submit such personal informations and all that. They don't have to provide any kind of personal information or they don't need to verify their identity. So state do take interest but not in the favor of domestic workers, like I call the agencies that were present, the recruiting agencies, they're just breaking down the privatized mode of this domestic organization, organizing of domestic work. And, you know, they are making it some kind of a bureaucratic process, like of hiring and registration, you know, like placement and all that. But abuses involved at each of the states, like from hiring to the placement, abuses is like rampant. So the role of this is in agencies in procuring like young girls from socially deprived communities, caste regions, caste is a, you know, like a very integral part of our Indian community. So all and the regions to through coercions and abuse has been like consistently report and if it comes to a single woman with a child, the intensity of harassment goes to another level. But they even get exploited by their employers, but no one raises a voice against it as the employer holds a superior position. And as far as our Indian law is concerned, the National Commission for Women drafted the Domestic Workers Act in 2008, back into 2008, which some state governments did indeed take the lead in framing laws on the subject. But in 2018, 10 years after the draft was published, it was said that central government was working on bringing out a national policy to protect the interest of domestic workers. And the ironical part is that the thing has been pending for almost four years now. So there's no proper structure, which can be considered as support mechanism for domestic workers, be it single mother, be it single woman, be it married woman, anything, no matter what, what position they hold. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I would come back on the topic of the definition of single parents. And I proposed this kind of reflections because I see for example that in Europe, there are some trends about considering for example the single parents also parents. That at divorce and are co-parenting because in their fractions of the week in which they take care of the children, they are considered single parents. So it's a different and in our research we had for example consideration for lone parents, a definition of not single parents but lone parents. So there are, for me, from my perspective, old and traditional definition of single parents and parenting and new trends. So I was interested in the underlying this kind and stressed this kind of topic because I think that in our research we need to define very well the definition that we use because it's very important and also the underlying that there are nuances in this kind of work of defining single parents and parenting. It's very, very important that we stress this kind of issues and we frame very well the definition and when we review it and also explain our research. Thank you. Thank you for your contributions. And I have just the questions about presenters from India, because I see that for you in India research about single parenting is a new field, a completely new field to consider. But I, from a person who lives in a western country, I was wondering if in a country very, very large like India, there are differences from regions, from different religions, from, for example, minorities. And I was wondering, for example, how different religions can shape the topic of single parenting. Because I see, for example, in my experience and my personal experience and also in my experience as a researcher or single parents, that the topic of religion and culture and contribute a lot about the shape of that single parents and also the trajectory that single parents meet in their life. So I have these questions for you about the idea that you have on the role of religions and belief about single parents. So I think that I can, I can, I guess I can pose the same questions to the other participants because I think that we can develop some reflection about the role of religions and belief on the topic of single parents. If you have something. Thank you everyone. Thank you. I mean, Australia, like, you know, many western countries have like origins in Christian society. So, you know, having children at wedlock was the, you know, the morality that dominated our culture until probably around the 1950s 1960s when there was a lot of change and post war change and then kind of liberalization and feminism. To name a few of the changes that have. And so we've moved far much further towards being a secular society as well so really membership religious organizations has declined significantly and now so religion really plays a very low role in our society now so that whereas, you know, a woman who'd been abandoned by a husband, you know, back in the 1920s was probably considered to have something wrong with her and blamed for this fact that has just changed completely now as I said in the 1970s we used a strong social safety net for single mothers, single parents but it was mainly, you know, intended for single mothers because the government understood that this was a sort of, you know, growing form of family and that it was, and there was a need to support the children of those families in particular. And we had a very kind of radical government in the 1970s, and one of the ministers was a minister for women and she was asked to design policies for women in Australia at that time so you know with that that change while we've had sort of such a radical shift I suppose but you know it's a hundred hundred years on since I suppose that Christianity has played such a strong role in our moral formation of our social policy, not to say it's not still there in some respects there is still some conservatism and not just Christian conservatism either now Australia is a more multi cultural society than it had been in the past. Thank you. Thank you so much for your contribution because I say yes. Thank you. I'm sorry. In Islam and Shia, yeah, in Islam and Shia emphasize that children, kids should live with their parents and families is an essential for all children and kids and that's very important and religion is an essential issue in Iran actually. That's it. Thank you. Thank you for that. Thank you. Because I come from a region of my own country where there is a characterised from a very Catholic conservatory tradition so it's a very particular region so I see that this kind of approach to family and life have shaped a lot the stigma around single parents so I think that is very, very important to consider this kind of perspective of single parenting, single parents. Yeah, I wanted to add something as well. Two things that first is that I think for a large part of Belgium's situation is kind of similar to Australia distance as far as religion in most parts of the population doesn't play a huge role and more really highly secularised country. But I think that our cultural differences in our country, in between ethnic social groups and I think there is a lack of research on the force of single parenthood and ethnic minorities within our country. I think there is more stigma on these alternate family forms within these ethnic minority groups so I think there should be research on it as well to look into which barriers they experience and whether they're staying in unhealthy relationships which I think is the main benefit of being able to de-force and to have this moral acceptance of the force. The other thing I want to add is that there is also, there is an ambivalence on the one hand, there is like the acceptance that we live in, what do we say, the serial monogamy, so instead of staying with one partner, it is okay to leave a relationship when it doesn't work out, when a family is dysfunctional. But on the other hand, while there is acceptance on this one, there is like the structural inequality that's also through our policy system that gives this relative disadvantage for single parents at all. So I think we need to be aware of this and it's actually something we also see in research, we often study the problems of single parents but we barely study the opportunities and resilience and how single parents are able to function as a single parent family system on the road. I think we need to give attention to this aspect of single parents as well. Thank you, thank you, Dries, because Dries come from and works in Belgium and I, yes, I conducted a part of my previous research in Belgium, and I think that Belgium is a very small country, but is characterized from different groups with different social groups with different conventions, beliefs and so on. So it's very, very particular and very, very worth to investigate, absolutely, because you have in a small country, different social groups with the varieties of conventions of beliefs, so it's very, very interesting. So thank you, and I was wondering, our participants have a reflection about this topic, about how religion can shape the stigma around the single parenting, single parents. So I have some questions, specific questions, and I would start, but you are completely free to ask questions to be our colleagues, absolutely. I start just to break the ice, and I have a question for you, Gretchen, about your work, because there is in particular an aspect of your work, very, very interesting that I would call it auto ethnography, because you mentioned this particular personal experience, I'm really interested in it because I have a similar experience and every time I ask myself how can I use this particular and personal experience. So I would ask you, how you use this kind of experience from a methodological point of view, so as an auto ethnography, I don't know. Yeah, no, that is right. Actually, auto ethnography has also been underused in India as a methodological tool. I thought about this research because I myself have been experiencing various problems, challenges as a single mother, like I often when my son is ill, and I can't send him to the daycare, I have to take leave. And I might be teaching on that base, it is very hard. So, basically, when I was drafting the questionnaire because there is no fellowship in India first day, I sort of based the questions that I was asking from that standpoint of you. And because I did ethnographic interviews and because it went on for like an hour or so, even more than that, I often myself was asked questions that you know what about my parenting so I could connect with my sample respondents much more because of my own personal experience that I could also share. So, I could say this was a more qualitative personalized like it was not the very detached form of data collection method that we have been trained to do right from you know when we start thinking of sociology as a discipline so that that is where I blended auto ethnography. Like I could relate to, then sometimes my son he stays with my husband when I had to go for conferences etc. Now with the pandemic it's all online, but I've often left him when he was two years old, the problems that he faced because it's not stereotyping but my husband is not at all trained in housework. This is very gender gender division of labor that exists in India despite educated, we are of course a privileged class but there is this gender division that exists. So, many times I could connect with the single fathers and the single mothers because of my own personal experiences so that is where auto ethnography really was helpful. Thank you, but do you do you use also in your publication this kind of approach so you explain overtly this kind of approach on your personal experience or not. Yes, I do, I do. When I when we publish we explicitly mention about auto ethnography. We also give the site studies which I've used auto ethnography now it is commonly becoming a particularly on scholarship on motherhood. A lot of social existing now started using auto ethnography. So, yeah, so yes when we publish we do mention and we do right. Thank you. Thank you for your reply because I, I will, I'm always yes. About this topic is because it's particular topic I, I thinking and yeah I always think about, for example, the effects on the life of my children. When I use auto ethnography because we know that we live in the work that is not now, but we have a future and so I always think about the impact that the consequences that, for example, information that they put in auto ethnography can have on my next generation also my children so it's just a personal. It's not only meteorological reflection but I think also personal reflection about the future, the impact on the future of my children but also the position that I have in that field because I think that is very important. I acknowledge that position that I acknowledge that position, but it's also important that I question in particular that position because sometimes I have some preconceptions about single parenting because I'm a single parent. But I see that for our single parents, mothers, they experience is completely different from mine. So I think that we need to to questions our positions about other personal experience. So thank you, thank you. Thank you. We have our questions for the other participants. I see that we are losing. Because she has problems of connections, I think. Yeah. Yeah, sure. So, and if you have not our questions, I have questions for for three, so about institutions, because I see that in the title of your paper there is a dimension about institutions. So I was wondering about and so you know that I'm an institutional ethnographer. So the topic of very sensitive about the topic of institutions and I was wondering how we can on how, how you did it. Yeah. How can we make that the topic of institutions that all of institutions emerge can emerge from our work and in your work. That's a very good question. I have to say that I think the ring of a specialism when I had a digital type of thing when playing the preliminary part of because a lot of what we see is about social norms, social expectations. We have our parent thing about, in my case, also work and and we had a question, how do you make this visible in qualitative data? It's a really difficult thing, but we asked questions, we have this large data, because we work with students and we ask questions in the interview, it was like, what is a good parent in your eyes? And also, do you consider yourself as a good parent? Can you accomplish what you think? And the same thing about being an employee, what is in your country? Because some people tend to say like, yeah, just need to go and take care of my job and do whatever they pay me for, and they're so to a job. And other people have this huge sense of responsibility for their organization. And they have to finish certain assignments, because they don't want to hand it over to colleagues and stuff. While some parents are like, yeah, my role as a parent is being there for my children and getting them from school and stuff. And a lot of other want to be stressed much more the involvement and the tutoring, like, yeah, have very strong demands from themselves from what they want to be as parents. So that's one thing, like the inspiration and expectations, you have yourself, like, sort of life. But a lot of some parts of the interview also go on like what interactions with other part of what do colleagues say when you need early from work, because you want to take care of your children, what do your employers say. Or sometimes you see within these aspirations as parent, that these aspirations are also socially critical to create. People tend to say things like, I know it's expected from me or what will the neighbors say when they see that there is a babysitter for third time in a week. And then you see like, hey, it's kind of these expectations and aspirations are actually internalized also from what other people expect. But it's very difficult to make this physical. So that's also I think why why we're a bit struggling in the fight. I think I have a co-author, because she's much more sensible to see these things within the interviews and we chew them and find the right jargon to write them down. Because I'm very quite sure that there's a sense of institutional and social creation of inequality and within these different expectations for men and for women, for mothers and for fathers that we can challenge ourselves. I think this is a circle for a more generation to challenge the expectations society as far as that we have for children as well. But it is, yeah, we are struggling to let it emerge from the data, to find the right words to write it down. I think the paper will be coming and looking forward to finishing it. Okay. Thank you, Dris. Thank you because I, yeah, and yeah, it's a it's a difficult topic because you know that, and we know that it's not easy because and investigated and investigating. And there are all these situations that we have different situations so we can generalize about the situations now, but it's a it's a it's a very it's challenging when you plan a research design so it's challenging. I think that having a theoretical framework about this topic helps a lot because I see, for example, because I come from grounded theory, but I see that investigating institutions the role of institutions in in with the life of parents, and if you put right now, if he has helped me a lot, because this kind of approach that is not mythological only mythological but also theoretical approach helps a lot in, I don't know, interesting in keeping a track of the different parts of the different evolutions of perspective and presentations that and experience in particular that people and minorities have with institutions so I think that we can look beyond the mythological approach and develop some reflection about the theoretical approach on. Yeah, I think that is very important because you see to try to be generated in me a completely change of perspective about how to investigate single parents problems. Thank you for your questions. So, if there are other comments on questions for the other participants and from them, we have still about 10 minutes for our discussions because I think that from your research, many, many interesting topics and aspects of marriage so yeah, I think that we can use these 10 minutes to complete our reflections on just please. Maybe just some reflections, more than questions, but I found it very interesting to the way you spoke about auto ethnography as a single parent and so in my case, I didn't set out to do anything specifically because I was a single parent but it turned out as a coincidence that I was doing my research at a point where there was a social policy change but I have to say, even as, you know, a single parent who I feel, you know, quite empowered I have been employed and managed to study at the same time as probably not looking after my kids as well as I should. But I always felt even in a society like Australia where the stigmatization of single parents has been on the decline. I always felt stigma myself personally about declaring myself as being a single parent and perhaps kind of you know having some sort of bias perspective on the single parent so I still feel like even from the perspective in, you know, bans Western democracy like Australia that there is a stigmatization that is quite internalized. You know, because it is still sort of considered to be some kind of fault of yours that you haven't been able to maintain you know the nuclear family and it's very, you know quite insidious I suppose so. So I just thought I'd reflect on that so despite, you know, like all the liberalization that I've spoken about someone like me still going, you know, I wasn't really that big on outing myself, you know, at the start. And then I did necessarily as part of the reflection in the process of the research. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you, Simon, because I think that there are hidden processes, very hidden processes and perceptions about single parents that are very, I think very, very older and are very hidden in ourselves and in people. So I think that we can pay attention of the hidden processes and representations because they affect a lot I see because there is a different from what the legal framework states. Because what the legal state, for example, in European countries, you have a legal framework that emphasize about, for example, democracy equality gender equality and so on. And I think that on the other side, there are not enough attention about this kind of hidden processes because there are a lot of beliefs and preconceptions about single parents and they're very, very hidden. And I think that in our research we should pay attention of these factors and these are very, very good aspects. So, thank you. And there are our, our contribution or reflection about this topic from the other participants. And maybe want to add that I just found it a very interesting session, and I probably will follow your research papers or some of your research papers in the couple of next couple of days because thank you all do very interesting research. Thank you. Thank you, Darius. Thank you for contributions. Thank you for coming here. I thought the, the amazing contributions I have some of the videos and I really really liked all the presentations and I really look forward to the final papers. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for such a great future account. Thank you. I think that just to, I have some final words and remarks before the end of our discussion. I think that we will have our opportunities to meet again. So we hope that next year and also usually 3.0 SP organizes many events. So we will have opportunities to meet again and to discuss about our research. And I think that if you like the idea you can leave your name on the on the committee on the Transnational Initiatives Committee guest book if you want to receive for example future announcement and participate in these events. And also you can leave a feedback on the link that I included in the chat box. So I, I'd like to thank you for your participation and also I would like to underline that 3.0 SP at the Transnational Initiatives Committees that is open to everyone who like to be involved in organizing events and contributors and also networking because I think that is networking is a very important part of our work as a researcher so please if you like it you can join and contact us when when you prefer so we are absolutely available for you and to discuss future events and opportunities of networking. I would like to thank you again all speed thanks again all speakers and participants for this very very interesting discussion and for your presentation and so soon you will find the video recording of this live session on the session web page that will be available soon and so we can watch again our, our discussion. So thank you again, and I hope that we will meet again in our, in our meetings, in our events. Thank you, thank you. Thank you again. Thank you. Thanks Marina. Bye everybody. Thank you. Bye bye everybody.