We have been contacted by a number of single parents about the bias and anti-single mother reporting in a BBC article about and as a result we have complained to the BBC. We also encourage others who agree that the article is one sided and damaging to make their own complaint.

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Dear BBC,

I’d like to complain on behalf of Gingerbread, the single parenting charity, and single parents across the country. We were incredibly disappointed by the article ‘Boys growing up without dads are in crisis, report says’ by Charlie Jones for BBC Essex.

This article is one-sided and biased in its reporting. It focussed entirely on the negative impacts on boys who are brought up by single mothers. The Centre for Social Justice’s report ‘the Lost Boys’, which was the focus of the article, was more wide ranging in its analysis and we would expect a more nuanced and balanced approach from a piece on the BBC’s website.

While children growing up in single parent households may experience poorer outcomes than those in two parent households, evidence shows this is overwhelmingly caused by reduced income and poverty. Not the make up of their household. The CSJ report itself recognised the challenge single parents face because they must make ends meet on a single income. The links between poverty and poorer outcomes for children are well established.

We do not seek to deny the importance of positive male role models, nor indeed some of the wider arguments made by the report on the impact fathers can have on their children.

However, the BBC’s reporting on the CSJ report was overly simplistic and as a result stigmatised single mothers and families without fathers. Articles like this push a damaging narrative that belongs firmly in the past and we expect better of the BBC. Families come in many shapes and sizes. It’s incredibly disappointing that the BBC chose to focus on a single aspect of a wider reaching report and in the process devalue single parents.

Yours,

Sarah Lambert

Head of Policy and Campaigns, Gingerbread