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Spain is witnessing a unique event: in a rather sudden fashion a generation of working mothers are living at the same time as their mothers who all their lives were housewives. This article looks at the mutual help that exists between these two generations faced with the arrival of the third, specifically in the case of lone mothers. It shows the strength but also the ambivalence of kinship solidarity. It also shows how, helped by neither their male companions nor by the state, by their reluctance to adopt the compassionate behaviour of their mothers while refusing to abandon waged work young Spanish women are transforming the foundations of an implicit social contract.