Single-Mother Households

To achieve your goal, you must learn to schedule work, classes, study time, and sleep time or risk burning out. Some single moms work fulltime and attend college part time, or go to school fulltime and work part time.

Did you know that more than one fourth of all children in the United States live with only one parent? Single parenting has become more common today than in the 1800s, when it was sometimes frowned upon. As the years have gone by, it has become easier and easier for women to become single parents. In the 1800’s if husbands died or abandoned their families, women had no choice but to work for extremely low and unfair wages. Today, most men and women are treated equal and receive equal wages making it easier for women to be single parents. This concept is shown in Twain’s The Adventures of Tom Sawyer through Aunt Polly in the 19th century, single parenting is also common today.

However, by rising to these challenges, custodial single parents develop significant strengths. The positive benefits of being a single parent are that the child receives a lesson in independence. The child sees how strong the one parent is at providing them with everything they need without having to depend on someone else. The parents are showing their children that it is possible to live on their own, have an enjoyable life and take care of others while doing so. The children will know that they are a priority to the parent. When there is a second parent around the house, it can be easy to put responsibility off on them, but when the children see how hard the parent is working for them, they will understand how important they are to their parent. (Dowd, 1997)

In 2002, number of children living with their single parent was 16.5 million (Davidson). The most important thing is that each single-parent family is different from the other. Children who live with a widowed mother will definitely be living a different home life from children with divorced parents or the one whose parents were never married. Children of the parents who were divorced will always have some kind of relationship with parents and parents’ partners. But it is obvious that children from single-parent families face tougher times economically as well as

In today’s society it is not unusual to have a one-parent family with a young mother in charge. Teen mothers having children has increased so much over the years that it’s now a common occurance. Being a young single mother in today’s society is challenging but with the help of government assistance single mothers are finding their way.

The essay “In Defense of Single Motherhood” by journalist Katie Roiphe is best summed up by the title. The writer is a single mother of two children and is fighting back against the stereotype that say children from a single parent household will not have as fulfilling a life as they would with two parents. She goes on to explain how she believes the studies on single mother-led households are flawed.

33). The largest segment of poverty is unemployed single-parent (mother-only) families, which account for 70.8 percent (Census Bureau, 2003). Interestingly, that figure decreases to 21.1% if someone is working in that family type (Census Bureau, 2003). The latent effects of such high poverty rates are the children, with an estimated 16 million American children living in poverty (Frontline, Poor Kids). The single-parent (mother-only) dynamic can be broken-down further… the underlying causes. Divorce has always been seen as the number one cause for formation of mother-only family households. Although divorce rates remain relatively high (40%), another dynamic, out-of-wedlock-births, have supplanted divorce as the number one living arrangement (mother-only) for poor children (51.1 %), compared to 24.2% for divorce (Census Bureau, 2004b). Digging deeper into these numbers uncovers something more troubling. The numbers increase dramatically for out-of-wedlock-births for Black women (71.4% compared to the 51.1% average for all mother-only families). No other race surpasses the 51.1% average, and the next closet is Hispanic mother-only households at 48%. Overall, 33% of black children live in poor families (NAACP,

Today, many households are headed by single women raising children, some with the presence or involvement of the father and others without. According to Vargas et al. (2016), parenting by a single mother is defined as a home sustained by a maternal caregiver for many reasons to include absence, neglect, divorce, or death of the other parent. According to Anderson (2002), half of American children at some point in their childhood will live in a household that’s being reared by a single parent, who is primarily the mother. Lowry (2005) uses the term “social disaster” when describing the epidemic of absenteeism of father from the household.

In the United States around 82.2% of custodial parents are mothers; 30.4% of them and their children lived in poverty in the year 2009 (Wolf, 2017). The gender gap in the workplace can keep a single mother from being able to fully get out of poverty. A single mother earns less than a single father does. In the year 2015 it was noted that single mothers earned 70.7% of the income single fathers had earned (Industry Week Staff, 2017). It is harder for a single mother, who may have never been married to begin with, to invest in schooling when she is trying to cover the costs of her children and

“Single-parent families now constitute 30 percent of all families with minor children and are the most rapidly growing families in America” (as cited in Dowd, 1997). When people hear the term ‘single-parent’ they automatically think it means a person who is the legal guardian of a child or children. It is typical for a single-parent to be a woman, because the statistics on the proportion of the children who live with their mother is at 87 percent, while a small 13 percent live with their father (as cited in Dowd, 1997). Because of the diversity in household types, a common question has been asked several times. Which type is better? Raising a child in a single-parent household or a two-parent household?

Money is one of the most obvious issues that single mothers may deal with. As mentioned earlier, the average difference in salary between single mothers and single fathers exceeds almost $60,000 which makes it so that single mothers are more likely to struggle with money problems. This is because they earn less than a male typical because of their gender. The most

Every mom needs support in their lives, and that include single moms. Some single moms are either in high school or in college. I know from experience that being in school, and trying to raise a child is not easy. Especially if the mother has no partner to help her; for example, a single mother raised me. My mother went through college, and raised me at the same time. Even though my mom had a little support, it was not easy to do two things at once.

The purpose of this article is to argue the fact that American society has for years looked down upon single mothers as irresponsible and dangerous and that no family structure of any kind can guarantee that children will grow up to be productive citizens. The article brings to light that raising children as a single mom really all depends who you are and instead of criticizing these mothers we should be helping them by providing more resources. 2. Who is the audience for this argument? This article was written for several different audiences.

Single- parent families are characterized in several different ways. These include single- parenthood due to the following: divorce, as a result of death, individual choice (unwed pregnancy, adoption), or types of temporary work-related situations, such as military deployment (Gladding, 2015). Regardless of what leads to the family being restructured, the hardships and stressors that the family faces during this time are quite similar. Every aspect of the family system tends to change, which includes but is not limited to income, housing, parenting styles and relationships with family

Women have for many years struggled with balancing the demands of home, children and work. This is especially true for young single mothers who do not have the support of family.