The literature on single mothers’ welfare deservingness is dominated by analyses carried out in Anglo-Saxon countries. In these countries, politicians gained social legitimacy for the cut-back of single mothers’ benefits by framing them as immoral and lazy welfare recipients. In contrast, this dissertation investigates single mothers’ perceived welfare deservingness in the 2010s Hungary, where single mothers were not the primary subjects of the government discourse, but where the government strongly promoted traditional family ideals and decreased the level of targeting towards single parents. The dissertation uses a complex research design to explore the social legitimacy of these changes, and investigates not only the public attitudes towards single mothers’ state support, but also the factors that could shape it. First, it reviews the historical-institutional design of single mothers’ state support in Hungary, and compares it with the characteristics of the American and British systems to reveal how the different designs have paved the way for connected reforms and discourses. Second, with critical discourse analysis, the thesis investigates how the discourse of the Hungarian government frames single-parent families’ deservingness. Third, based on survey data, it explores the public image and perceived deservingness of single mothers. Fourth, it investigates the role of the deservingness criteria (control, attitude, reciprocity, identity, and need) in single mothers’ perceived deservingness with regression analysis of statements and a vignette-based survey experiment. The results show that single mothers’ state support enjoys a high level of social legitimacy in Hungary that could be explained by several factors. First, compared to the Anglo-Saxon countries where single mothers were perceived as non-employable citizens and were included in assistance-based benefits in most of the 20th century, in socialist Hungary, and also after the regime change, single mothers were perceived as working mothers, and their ...
