The dangers of celebrating single motherhood

“Single Mom by Choice: A Great Option for ‘Strong-A–– B––––––.’ ” That was the headline of a post on Jezebel last year exploring the question of the ups and downs of single motherhood. Citing a recent piece by Kate Bolick in Cosmopolitan, the author notes that the moms who were interviewed all said having a child as a single woman was “the best decision she’d ever made.”

Whether it’s good for the kids, though, is another story entirely. According toresearch done by Pew’s Economic Mobility Project, 54 percent of young adults today who grew up in an intact, two-parent home in the top third of household income have remained in that bracket, compared with just 37 percent of today’s young adults who grew up in a top-third divorced family.

So while our culture often celebrates the single life as empowering, this empowerment rarely trickles down to children. We can cheer the mother who dragged her son away from the rioting in Baltimore after Freddie Gray was killed, and we can find it sweet that the former star of “16 & Pregnant” istaking her young son on “dinner dates” to teach him how to treat women, but there is something sad about the fact that these boys do not have a father to offer these lessons in a more effective way. Children of single-parent familiesare less likely to finish school; more likely to abuse drugs and alcohol; and more likely to be incarcerated. Disadvantages for boys in particular are especially pronounced.

So how did we go from thinking of single motherhood as the fate of widows to seeing it as a “great option”? In part, it stems from the feminist notion of women needing men like fish need bicycles. But it’s not only sisters these days who are doing it for themselves. It’s everyone. In 1950, 22 percent of American adults were single. Now we are at almost 50 percent. One in seven adults lives alone.

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