The role of social support networks in everyday coping strategies of single mothers: a multilevel analysis

There is a strong research evidence showing the crucial role of social support networks in defining successful coping strategies by female-headed families, especially in South European Countries. In such a context, single mothers are more vulnerable to the risk of social isolation due to the lack of childcare, the limited rights to even a low subsistence income and the labor market rigidity -which discourages women’s participation in the work force. The present contribution aims at analyzing social support networks of single mothers by considering the role of kinship and friendship ties as essential sources of support and generators of social integration. An ego-centered network approach is adopted to reconstruct social support networks of a sample of single mothers in Naples. The pattern of relationships on which social support networks are based, within and across family boundaries, are analyzed by means of multilevel logistic regression models. More specifically, we aim at understanding: i) on which kind of social support networks single mothers rely for daily living; ii) which characteristics of ego and alteri explain the presence of non-kin among alteri in the personal networks; iii) which factors affect the strength of ego-alteri ties in terms of closeness and of importance.