Once
upon a time,
we too were legitimate
By
Tere McDowell & Insanity House, Inc.
We
are thirteen million women raising approximately twenty million
children as single parents. We are the failed representations
of womanhood and motherhood, of American families and American
society. We are the women and mothers to be scrutinized and scorned.
Questioned and pitied for our failed lives. How did this happen?
Once Upon a Time, we
too were legitimate. The majority of us were married or in what
we thought sacred, secure relationships. A more independent group
(35% of single parent women) simply gave up on that notion and
chose to go it alone right from the beginning. I think they are
having the easier time of it, void of all notions of support and
responsibility from long forgotten donors. Not so with the rest
of us.
“Single moms” evoke
an image of low class, low income, poorly educated women who simply
made bad choices. We know these women. They work at the local diner
serving up burgers and fries. They have three children from some
drunken bum, and have the appearance of being heavily burdened
by their lives. When we encounter these women, the first thought
that pops into our heads is: “I’ll never be like her.”
We also hold other images
of single moms. We have an image of poor young teenagers who went
out and did the wild thing and got caught because they got pregnant
(although less than 5% of single moms are teenagers and only 11%
are young ladies under the age of 25). We have an image of welfare
queens sitting at home eating ice cream while watching Jerry Springer
all afternoon on their cable television set. We know these images
well. They were provided to us wrapped in ribbons of pink and purple
as an example of what we never want to become.
The reality is very different.
70% of all divorces filed in this country are filed by women. This
should be of grave concern, as we imagine hundreds of thousands
of women running into the fields behind their homes with desires
of partaking in a Dionysian festival. Not! What is it that the
majority of divorces filed are filed by women? According to research,
the number one reason for divorce in this country is financial
strain. However, 70% of the women who initiate divorce cite domestic
abuse as the reason. This is something that we, as women, should
truly be concerned about.
Most single parent women
looked like all women in married relationships. As married mothers,
we reflected what our society likes to see in a woman. As no-longer-married
or never-married mothers, we are illegitimate. We violate the comfort
zone. We are hoydens. We fill the ranks of America’s working
class poor, regardless of our levels of education. For you see,
we have failed at the most basic patriarchal relationship, and
as a result we are automatically questioned as to our ability to
work within a corporate structure of a larger one. Added to this
is the insult of a potential employer asking: “and who will
take care of your children when they are sick?” Don’t
all mothers--regardless of their marital status--give the same
answer?
The majority of single
parent women work full time. 45.5% have multiple jobs. A large
percentage of single parent women continue on with higher levels
of education: 59% over their married women counter parts at 46%.
The national average household income for a single parent woman
is $24,000 – which offers just a 13% margin above the federal
poverty level for a family of four. 41% of single parent households
headed by women live at or below the poverty line -- the national
average is 13%. Children from single parent women head of households
have replaced the elderly for poverty, food hunger and food insecurity
in America. Single parent women and their children are the least
likely of all Americans to have health care coverage.
When marriages come undone,
it doesn’t take long for the reality of single parenting
to hit. When a woman divorces her income drops to approximately
one-quarter of what it was while she was married. She now is paying
one-third of her weekly income to child care, and if she has two
children this amount nearly doubles. Child support stops coming,
or it only comes sporadically. “Sure, we can take him to
court”, says the wonderful attorney at the other end of the
line. “Pay me $2400 as a retainer and we can get this process
going”. What a single parent woman learns quickly is that
the courts are not collection agencies, and the only person who
gets any money out of the arrangement is the attorney who is collecting
his fee.
There are literally millions
of women who have foolishly walked down this road. After all, the
law is the law. What women learn through their legal adventures
is that the law of child support is not a law that was ever intended
to be taken literally. According to a year 2000 report on child
support, $39 billion was owed to 29 million children in back support
payments. And fewer than one out of every four children who are
owed child support receive it. No one is collecting child support.
The majority of women who receive state assistance would not require
financial aid if they received child support.
There are many other
factors tied into child support. Domestic abuse is one. Since a
large portion of women leave a relationship due to domestic abuse,
attempting to get child support keeps them locked into a relationship
with their abuser. They must continually fear for their own safety,
and for that of their children. Many women, who rely upon the court
system to get child support, also find themselves facing a custody
battle for their children. Attorney fees for child support could
easily move from $2400 to $10,000 or even $20,000 when custody
is challenged. Most men know that the easiest way to control the
woman is to go after custody of the children and bankrupt her at
the same time. The courts appreciate this. They are dependent on
it. Custody and child support battles are a revenue generator for
the legal profession.
In addition, federally
funded research states that single parent women are raising the
next generation of emotionally damaged children, criminals and
drug addicts. These studies recapitulate America’s deepest
fears about the dangerous power of “unfit” mothers – meaning
single parent women – to wreak havoc in our society. What
these reports fail to mention is that the number one determining
factor affecting our children’s emotional and psychological
well being is not how well or poorly they are mothered, but the
level of poverty they experience. The major causes of poverty in
single parent women households are 1) the inability to collect
child support and 2) lower wage rates for jobs and careers that
are traditionally women centric professions, such as the helping
and teaching professions. Children’s involvement in the Juvenile
Judicial system is directly related to those who have experienced
or witnessed domestic abuse. Of the 70% of women who stated the
reason for filing for divorce was domestic abuse, 50% of those
children had already experienced abuse or were witness to it.
Several years ago at a
woman’s conference I heard an older woman say, “Oh
my gosh! I forgot that women come with children.” I smiled
when she said this, for I felt for that brief second that I had
found a golden nugget to the problem that separates women from
women. Women do come with children, but only if there is a husband
attached to the structure are they legitimized as mothers. When
the “husband” is removed, we fall silent. We become
an invisible part of the world of the working poor, or we are denigrated
as the cause of every imaginable social ill. We have now entered
into the category of the sacred hoydens of American society.
mmo : march
2003 |
