Single parents, gender, conciliation and contributory social protection: Where is the discrimination?

Abstract

The article focuses on the possibilities of exercising the rights to reconcile personal, family and work life in the field of single-parent families. It is based on an approximation to the concept of single parenthood and it is predetermined that this can be original and voluntary or supervening. The existence of an individual desire to establish a parent-child relationship from the beginning determines precisely that inequalities in the enjoyment of these rights do not imply discrimination but rather reasonable differential treatment. Thus, it will be determined that the articulation of co-responsibility in conciliation rights and in contributory social protection cannot be guaranteed as impossible in single-parent families and, when it has been done, this has meant a substitution of the role of the legislator by the of the courts that puts in check the contributory Social Security system.