There is a silent disease in this country that is literally destroying our children- single motherhood. Last week, two single mothers were arrested locally, one for leaving her baby in the car to nap while at work because the sitter was unavailable and the other for accepting food stamps while working. According to the Bureau of Statistics, there are 12,220,000 million single mothering homes in the United States. The stigma placed on single mothers is devastating and subliminal yet few mothers had a choice in their lot. Fathers who abandon children both physically and financially, are more common than not. Demands for this irresponsibility are placed heavily on the overburdened , understaffed Division of Support Enforcement who attempt to collect support and locate fathers. Yet it is the mothers who carry the burden of raising the child alone.
Mothers with a sense of dignity and integrity do not want to live free off of government assistance spending time in “free health clinics or welfare agencies”. In these places, the view of the caregivers is something less than human. Women and their children become human guinea pigs for resident physicians and dentists and are treated as such. Waiting in lines for multiple hours at a time at clinics is a common place occurrence. Attitudes of medical personnel are often demeaning and humiliating. Most single mothers must live this substandard existence, in poverty.
Trying to find rental situations is nearly impossible as the market is designed for two adult incomes. Renting facilities turn away single mothers in fear of non-payments. Mothers, very often, cannot afford to meet rent or utilities payments. Single mothers often must cohabitate with other single mothers to survive or live in housing that is deplorable. Trying to get mortgages is next to impossible.
Single mothers know that they must put up with working conditions that others would not tolerate. Sexual harassment and low paying positions are common. In fear of losing their jobs, these women must be satisfied to work at positions that have little responsibility and low pay as single parenting is a heavy burden itself. One cannot serve two masters. Either you are a career mom with heavy responsibilities at work and a higher pay whose children, who see little of mom, are raised by day cares or you are a mom who works an eight hour day for minimum wage to go home to cooking, cleaning, laundry, homework, illness, household repairs and similar crisis which drain the already exhausted body of energy. And when children are ill, hourly waged mothers lose their paychecks to caretaking their young.
Emotions of single parenting run high with guilt and worry. These moms, especially those of young children, must face the daily need for keeping their children in the most subsistence level of existence, food, clothing and shelter. The guilt factor comes in times when fatigue is so heavy that one cannot function or becomes ill temper, when daily needs are unmet, when tots develop into children who are aware of their economic status.
In single parent homes, having a child wait out an illness of long term, is impossible. Most children return to school and day care not fully recovered from sickness. This means that their immune system often has not been given the time to replenish and they end up with recurring illness, meaning that mom must continually take time off. Mothers tending to sick children often become ill themselves, having to return to work in that condition.
Yet out of necessity, single mothers and their children become very, very resourceful. They learn to live with less and live very simply. Self-reliance is paramount. Their children learn to value intangible and “free” commodities. Mothers learn to sew or buy clothes from second hand stores and often pass down items to other single mothers. Children read books or do art work or learn life-significant survival skills. When children learn to live simply there is a sense of dignity and pride in the most mundane of achievements. For others, however, the stigma of poverty has long-life implications.
Statistically, single parent youths have more difficulty in school, lower intelligence and less social skills. When a child has school related problems, mom must spend precious time in meeting after meeting with school personnel to eliminate the problem. In these situations, single mothers are more often than not treated with little respect. They are seen as the cause and root of the child’s psychological problem. Somehow, they are the enemy. Children go to school psychologically damaged by their circumstances in single parent households. Someone has to be the scapegoat- so it becomes mother.
Children of single parent homes have few advantages, save for the continuity of rules and discipline. Mothers, stressed with the burden, often have little patience for the least of conflicting situations. They find themselves exhausted and unwilling to tolerate the slightest disturbance. With no one to share the responsibilities or discipline, choices are made that are often not in anyone’s best interest. There is little support from the community and few resources for a single mother to turn, even if she did have the time. Single mothering support groups and counseling sessions take time and money, two commodities single mothers lack most.
For single mothers, their energy is spent giving with little receiving. Most women would admit that the need to be loved and cared for is a fantasy high on the list of “wants”. Some mothers, in desperation, turn to remarriage or live-in boy friends, only to find that this solution was only temporary or even worse than the previous. If these mothers find themselves in a desperation modality starving for affection, they often find abuse and mistreatment around the corner. Others choose lonely lives of silence unwilling to repeat past mistakes.
Few institutions have favorable support for single mothers. Courts have “formulas” for support. Fathers and mothers salary are weighed against each other while the parent who receives custody often gets the short end of the deal. Fathers often find very legal ways to hide money so as not to pay support. Mothers are forced to go to work by well intentioned judges- we’ll assume. The courts play Solomon in matters directly relating to the welfare of children who will, statistics show, trying to make the best of unhealthy circumstances.
There is little time to play, to laugh, to enjoy life. There are no vacations. Fathers, seeing the child for brief periods on weekends, become “Disneyland Daddies” doing all of the playing and enjoyment as the day to day difficulties that arise in life are mothers responsibility. There is much seriousness about life in the struggle for survival. There is no time for self indulgence. If a single mother goes out one night a week, dates or finds a moment of pleasure, she is ridiculed and chastised by the community and neighbors. A single mother can only do this if she finds another single mother who will share the sitting as paying for a night out would be prohibitive.
Today a model for supporting single motherhood thrives in Italy. In 1945, pregnant girls and women returning from concentration camps and raped by occupying and liberating troops were cast out by condemning families. Villaggio della Madre e dell Fanciullo began for unwed mothers during the end of the last war who were trapped in an intolerant political and religious culture. Elda Mazzocchi Scarzella’s vision was to serve adolescent girl-mothers by respecting, preserving and supporting the integrity of the mother-child relationship through pregnancy, delivery and early childhood. By women caring for other women, Elda created a safe supporting-residential environment where young women could discover and develop within themselves the capacity to respond appropriately for their own and their child’s well being. Children from these circumstances have a more positive view of life and themselves.
Our society must change its views on the significance of “mothering” and having the caretaker in the home as the anchor, the “Hub of the Wheel” where all family activity revolves. The level of violence in this country has escalated among youths and children because there is no one at home to guide them. Television has become the sitter. Children need freedom with a fence. They need a solid figure at all times in the home in order for them to develop a sense of security and order. Instead they are being cared for by children in day cares with little education receiving minimum wage.
It is the community that must raise the child. If we are to grow children in this mobile society who feel safe and secure, then something has to change. The negative stigma of single motherhood must be viewed as a community problem. Society treats individuals with cancer and AIDS better than it does single parent families. This is because single parenting is a psychological issue not an obvious physical one. The long range effects of single parenting is devastating to society. When a child is raised by the community which becomes the extended nuclear family, he/she gains a sense of self and the feeling of security is greatly enhanced. These two commodities- enhanced self-esteem and security- are that which promotes a healthy attitude about self in ad