Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling has said her self-esteem was eroded by the stigma of being a single mother and she has hit out at the dim view society takes of single parents.

The writer, who has become one of the wealthiest women in the UK on the back of her books, said she is prouder of the way she coped as a single parent than of any other part of her life.

Rowling, president of single-parent charity Gingerbread, called on the Government to do more to help people who find themselves in that situation to be able to get into employment.

She famously began working on her Potter books after splitting from the father of her daughter Jessica, writing with the youngster at her side.

As she could not afford childcare, she took a low-paid filing job at a local church in Edinburgh, where she had settled, which allowed her to take her daughter along.

Writing for the charity, Rowling said: “My overriding memory of that time is the slowly evaporating sense of self-esteem, not because I was filing or typing – there was dignity in earning money, however I was doing it – but because it was slowly dawning on me that I was now defined, in the eyes of many, by something I had never chosen. I was a single parent, and a single parent on benefits to boot. Patronage was almost as hard to bear as stigmatisation.

Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling.