United States Single Mothers
Harold Gilman’s Mother and Child, painted in 1918, depicts the traditional bond between a mother and child from early on in life.
In the United States, 83% of single parents are mothers. Among this percentage of single mothers: 45% of single mothers are currently divorced or separated, 1.7% are widowed, 34% of single mothers never have been married. Although decades ago, having a child outside of marriage and/or being a single mother was not prominent. Census information from 1960 tells us that in that year, only nine percent of children lived in single parent families. Today four out of every ten children are born to an unwed mother.
The prevalence of single mothers as primary caregiver is a part of traditional parenting trends between mothers and fathers. Data supports these claims, showing that in comparison to men, women are doing more than two-thirds of all child caring and in some cases one hundred percent. Of approximately 12 million single-parent homes in 2015, more than 80 percent were headed by single mothers. This disproportionate statistic has been well- documented in multiple country contexts all around the world. The United States Census Bureau found that today, one in four children under the age of 18, a total of 17.4 million are being raised without a father at all. Women all around the world have been perpetually socialized to adhere to traditional gender roles that place the majority of responsibility for childcare upon them.
Cultural definition of a mother’s role contributes to the preference of mother as primary caregiver. The “motherhood mandate” describes the societal expectations that good mothers should be available to their children as much as possible. In addition to their traditional protective and nurturing role, single mothers may have to play the role of family provider as well; since men are the breadwinners of the traditional family, in the absence of the child support or social benefits the mother must fulfill this role whilst also providing adequate parentage. Because of this dual role, in the United States, 80% of single mothers are employed, of which 50% are full-time workers and 30% are part-time. Many employed single mothers rely on childcare facilities to care for their children while they are away at work. Linked to the rising prevalence of single parenting is the increasing quality of health care, and there have been findings of positive developmental effects with modern childcare. It is not uncommon that the mother will become actively involved with the childcare program as to compensate for leaving her children under the care of others. Working single mothers may also rely on the help from fictive kin, who provide for the children while the mother is at her job. All of these factors contribute to a well-documented heightened likelihood for single-parent, female-headed households to experience poverty.
Single mothers are one of the poorest populations, many of them vulnerable to homelessness. In the United States, nearly half (45%) of single mothers and their children live below the poverty line, also referred to as the poverty threshold. They lack the financial resources to support their children when the birth father is unresponsive. Many seek assistance through living with another adult, perhaps a relative, fictive kin, or significant other, and divorced mothers who remarry have fewer financial struggles than unmarried single mothers, who cannot work for longer periods of time without shirking their child-caring responsibilities. Unmarried mothers are thus more likely to cohabit with another adult.Many of the jobs available to women are not sufficient and do not bring in enough income for the mother and her children; this is common in the United States and other countries all over the world.