How about a bailout for single moms?

We're aren't hearing much about the needs of women, let alone single moms, for economic stimulus these days, so word out to Kelly White, writing at WeNews. Her article is jam-packed with data, including this addendum to my post about the high cost of childcare: single mothers spends 45 percent of their income on childcare. And you wonder why so many single moms and their children are in poverty.

Everybody's favorite villain (again): the single mom

Events have shifted that octuplets story. I figured it would play out the way the story of the McCaughey septuplets in Iowa did—with oohs and ahs and a donated 16-room house, 15-passenger van, baby food from Gerber, and a lifetime supply of Pampers from Procter & Gamble —and I was all set to rain on that parade.

Never underestimate the power of race or sexism to flip a story. Now that it has emerged that the mother of the octuplets is unwed (and has six other kids), there isn’t much gushing. The headline in my local paper reads, “Winning Sympathy the Hardest Task.” In the article, a call-out headed “Cost of 14 Kids” reads “for a single mother, the cost of raising 14 children through age 17 ranges from $1.3 million to $2.7.”

Excuse me?

Last I checked, children cost the same to raise whether by a single mom, a single dad, two moms, two dads, or a mother and a father. Suggesting children cost more if raised by single mothers vilifies single mothers, implying they’re parasites on society. The birth of the octuplets already burdens society, in the form of the millions of dollars their birth cost our medical system, but that would be true even if Ozzie and Harriet were their parents.

This woman is surely crazy, but then so are the McCaugheys and the Gosselins (of the TLC reality show). It’s just that certain forms of insanity—such as having sextuplets in God’s name or putting your children on a reality show—are socially acceptable and others aren’t.

Lynn Paltrow of National Advocates for Pregnant Women (so glad to learn about them!), put it best (courtesy Salon’s Broadsheet):

"When the pregnant woman is not brown or black and the drugs/technologies are provided by big pharma, the discussion focuses on questions of ethics. But if the issue is childbearing by low-income women of color, and the drug is homegrown/ illegal then the debate is a question of punishment through the criminal justice or civil child welfare system." Paltrow also cited a study showing that, while we often talk about the effects illegal drugs can have on pregnancy, "women who take fertility drugs and choose to carry three or more embryos to term often experience pregnancy loss and risk severe, lifelong harm to the children who survive."

A break for single parents

Since having kids, I now divide the world into two kinds of people: the ones who give me the evil eye when my children are howling and the ones who offer to help. Nowhere does this Manichean division seem more true than when I’m traveling. My heart bleeds when I see a mother struggling to keep a couple of children calm while herding them and all their belongings onto an airplane and I’m always shocked that everyone isn’t leaping forward to help. On Guatemalan buses, friends have told me, a crying baby is handed from arm to arm among the passengers. America a child-friendly culture, my tuckus.

My mother tells epic tales of traveling alone with me, so I’m delighted to learn (via Mothertalkers and Newsweek) of organizations that cater to single parents. About time. These organizations offer not only assistance, but company, something single parents could use just as much.

Children of single mothers in China don't exist

If you think it’s hard being a single mother in this country, check out the recent NY Times article on single mothers in China, where it’s very nearly illegal to be a single mother. Or rather it’s illegal to be the child of a single mother. These children don’t even have the right to go to school or get any kind of social services, because that requires a man signing off on documents as his father. Talk about existential patriarchy—a child doesn’t exist in China unless a man says so.

This kind of reminds me of those anti-homelessness ordinances in this country that allow people to be arrested for sleeping in the street, etc. Those laws make it illegal to exist if you’re homeless. I guess you’re supposed to just dematerialize if you’re homeless in this country or the child of a single mother in China.