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title = "The Knowledge"
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First read in 2018. Brought to the bonfire in Mošorin, 2023.

In the UK, poor people who live in public housing are demonized. When parents don’t live together, they are represented as “broken families.” The supposed negative effects on children are used as a metaphorical stick to beat their parents. Much of the stigma concerns single mothers and their relationships with the fathers of their children. As a single mother living in public housing, it then becomes extremely important to know “what to say” and how to answer questions from social services and the state. Sociologist Lisa McKenzie calls it the art of “getting by.” She explains: “Being able to negotiate your way around the welfare system and knowing how to ’answer questions’ is part of your education.”[^1] It is women, generation to generation, who pass on “the knowledge” for “how to answer questions.” Mandatory questions in “welfare interviews” with social services determine the financial support that will be received by the mother, so it is important to get them right. The point is, there are a number of reasons why women are reluctant to share the name of the father with official institutions, partly having to do with financial reasons, and partly with the personal safety of some or all people concerned. As a consequence, many women “have had to say at benefit agency interviews that they do not know who their child’s father is – he was a one-night stand, and they can’t remember his name.” In one instance, a woman told the social worker that she had a one-night stand with “a hunchback with one eye”!

[^1]: McKenzie, Lisa. *Getting By: Estates, Class and Culture in Austerity Britain*. Bristol University Press, 2015, 57.