DadTalk

Credit crunch commune

One single parent found an answer to her financial worries by forming a single-parent commune with others in a similar situation

Last summer, Maria Roberts was living a pretty dreary existence. There she was, single mother to a nine-year-old son, living in a small, two-bedroom house on a Manchester estate, getting by on the money she earned as a writer.

Fast forward to 2009 and life is very different. Home is a spacious four-bedroom house in a leafy South London suburb, with two reception rooms, a state-of-the-art kitchen and an airy dining room with French doors that lead to a 60ft lawned garden. This is where son Patrick can be found playing football with the other males of the household.

For Maria and her son now share a home - and much of their lives - with two other single-parent families: Andrew Fleetwood, 36, and his son Bradley, four, and Laverne Hunt, 43, and her two daughters Isabella, ten, and Libby, eight.

The arrangement was Maria's idea and she believes she's found the perfect way to transform the lot of fractured families the length and breadth of Britain. By teaming up in what amounts to a single-parent commune, not only have there been material benefits for all three adults involved, they have also been able to provide the missing role models which were lacking in their children's lives.

'We were all so lonely, struggling on our own, but by joining forces we have gained so much,' says Maria. 'Patrick doesn't see his father and he doesn't have siblings, but now he has a man to look up to and there are always children to play with.

Read on in the Daily Mail