Abstract:
This research uses mixed methods to test whether and how a ‘wellbeing approach’ to public
policy and budgeting represents progress for the material outcomes of single-parent families
in New Zealand. The research synthesises single-parent families’ lived experience literature
concerning the impact of ‘liberal welfare state’ and neoliberal policy-making conditions on
family and welfare policy and material outcomes from the last two decades, and compares
this with the ideas underpinning the implementation of a ‘wellbeing approach’ by the New
Zealand government and Treasury, brought forth in a critical discourse analysis of budget
documentation. The analysis reflects how the principles and intentions underpinning the
objectives of the ‘wellbeing approach’ present many opportunities to enhance single-parent
family material outcomes. At the same time, the comparison exposes how the
implementation fails to overcome many of the ideas and developments evident in New
Zealand welfare and family policy lineage that limit recognition of and responses to the
realities and challenges single-parent families face in the wake of historical-institutional
neoliberal policy influences and ‘liberal welfare state’ policy practices. Furthermore, several
aspects of the New Zealand government's ‘wellbeing approach’ are found to reinforce
ideological expectations linked to neoliberal policy-making that have typically
compromised single-parent family material outcomes and reproduced negative social stigma
that worsens these outcomes.
