If you click on a story about a single mother claiming benefits, you’re likely to see the face of Marie Buchan.



Since 2013, she’s been written about in at least 84 online news stories across 20 national publications, with 45 of those stories coming out this year alone. The 33-year-old has starred in numerous exclusive interviews, videos, and photo shoots with papers such as The Sun, the Daily Express, and the Daily Mail. She’s been interviewed on ITV’s This Morning and the BBC’s Victoria Derbyshire show, and has appeared in documentaries on ITV and Channel 5 reaching millions of people across the UK.

The attention she’s garnered over the last three years is at a level many celebrities would enjoy at the high point in their career. But Buchan’s fame didn’t stem from talent or connections. Instead, it's because she's the lone mother of eight children, living in a council house, and claiming benefits to support herself and her family.

Buchan says she receives £20,000 a year in benefits. She lives in Birmingham and looks after her kids, who range in age from 2 to 13, and has a part-time job as a care-worker.

Some of the headlines about her read: “Mum of eight says she will have MORE children to claim more benefits”; “Shameless 'Octomum' who gets £26,000 benefits a year enjoys first family Christmas in her new four-bedroom home (and she hasn't ruled out baby number 9!)”; “Fury at dole mum's Xmas spend frenzy! Marie treats eight kids to pile of presents… Viewers demanded on the internet she be sterilised.”



She has grown used to seeing negative comments under articles written about her, and receiving abusive messages in her Facebook inbox. Strangers have called her a scrounger, a slapper, and a thief, and told her to stop having children.

Buchan told BuzzFeed News she initially accepted media offers because she wanted to break the stereotype of a single mother, but that reporters often “twist” what she says.

She has been condemned in opinion pieces across national newspapers, including by Daily Mail writer Richard Littlejohn who reflected that single-parent families are “one of the biggest drains on the Exchequer” and Leo McKinstry of the Daily Express who mused that “the concept of contraception seems as alien to her as the world of proper work”. In another story, a reporter for the Birmingham Mail asked readers if Buchan is the “mental equal” of other 31-year-old mothers, calling her “a pathetic throw-back to harem concubines or slave plantation workers bought to breed.”

