7 risks for single mothers; & the art of managing them—introduction

8/3/2019 7 Risks For Single Mothers; & The Art of Managing ThemIntroduction

1/8

Welcome!

When I finished writing 7 Risks for Single Mothers; & the Art of Managing Them , I gave copies orextracts to the single mothers who helped me. And then abandoned it. Id learned what Ineeded to know for myself, and felt uncomfortable exposing my weaknesses as a mother anda human being any further. Who was I to give advice? Even th ough the you in the text isoften me-the-writer, talking to me-who-wants-to-learn.

But I built on one 7 Risks theme for my Master of Laws thesis, and am proud that my LLM was awarded with Distinction. Other themes made their way into my Creative Writing PhD,into my screenplays, and of course stayed with me in my daily life. An extract from

Chapter 4 is about to appear in Exercise Book, from Victoria University Press. Then one of my single mother mates had a clean up, came across her copy and sat down and(re)read it. Its good, she said. Useful. Why didnt you do something more with it? Iexplained.

And then, Blogger came up with the Dynamic template. I decided to experiment with using it to publish a book , to learn if other single mothers think 7 Risks make sense and is useful,
http://www.victoria.ac.nz/vup/2011titleinformation/exercise.aspxhttp://www.victoria.ac.nz/vup/2011titleinformation/exercise.aspxhttp://www.victoria.ac.nz/vup/2011titleinformation/exercise.aspxhttp://7riskssinglemothers.blogspot.com/http://7riskssinglemothers.blogspot.com/http://7riskssinglemothers.blogspot.com/http://7riskssinglemothers.blogspot.com/http://7riskssinglemothers.blogspot.com/http://7riskssinglemothers.blogspot.com/http://www.victoria.ac.nz/vup/2011titleinformation/exercise.aspx


2/8

and have ideas about how it can be better. My warm thanks to all the single mothers whoshared their lives and their stories with me, over years and years, and to all the other people

who helped along the way. I hope 7 Risks shows how much I appreciate you. When I wrote7 Risks , I was on the Domestic Purposes Benefit, so it is also my warm thank you totaxpayers, a wee gift in appreciation of your support.

I've left the original references, and plan to add more recent material soon.

Please comment anywhere you want! I'd love to hear what you think! And I love to meet youon Twitter, too: @7RFSM

1. INTRODUCTION

How I came to write this book

Single mothers in Sweden and England die earlier than those who have partners. Anddivorced mothers are more at risk, according to one part of the research. Thats what I read.

As a divorced single mother I was shocked. I dont live in Sweden or England but perhapsbeing a single mother had been more dangerous than I realised. Scary stuff. Id been ill. WasI also going to die early? Just as my youngest child was about to leave home?

It had never occurred to me that being a single mother might affect how long I could expectto live. The reasons for reduced life expectancy for single mothers are have not beenestablished: in general their lifestyles in Sweden are different than they are in England.

Id heard for years that children of single mothers are at risk. But Id never considered thatsingle mothers might also be at risk. I began to consider what risks may have been present inmy own life and to talk with other single mothers about common risks to our health andhow we might manage and reduce them.

This book is the result. Its put on your own oxygen mask before you help your childinformation, like the instructions that flight attendants offer on the plane. Because I believethat if were not healthy, our children are less likely to be healthy. And every single mother Iknow cares deeply about her children.

Why is our health at risk?

Ive found many reasons why we might get sick and why we might die early to add to thosenamed in the articles. They all seem to arise from two basic conditions for single mothers:

Mothering is a highly demanding and grossly undervalued occupation

Single mothers are less valued than mothers in general and tend to attract criticismand hostility rather than support and affirmation : the word single attached to
http://twitter.com/#%21/7R4SMhttp://twitter.com/#%21/7R4SMhttp://twitter.com/#%21/7R4SMhttp://twitter.com/#%21/7R4SM


3/8

mothering seems to further devalue the mother and the kind of mothering job shedoes.

Isolation, loneliness, poverty, exhaustion, are words that I heard most often when I askedsingle mother friends and acquaintances what single motherhood meant to them. To manage

the risks to our health we have to acknowledge these hard truths. Its necessary to find waysto value ourselves and our work (since others dont). We have to generate support andaffirmation for ourselves. Because, as I learned when I read further, chronic stress very common among single mothers compromises the immune system. The emotionaldistress generated by stress has physical effects.

Its not just having primary responsibility for a child or children that makes it hard. Singlemother seems to be the worst of both words. If being a mother is hard work, being single as

well can and usually does make it harder. Being single is usually seen as an undesirable statefor someone who is a mother, the opposite of being respectably married or partnered.Furthermore it has none of the fun associated with being single for those who arent alsomothers.

If youre just single you get to play a lot. But to associate single mothers with this kind of singleness tends also to associate us with promiscuity and inevitable sexual availability. Weare seen as predatory too, although many of us are not interested in finding sexual partnersor new fathers for our children. A woman can be a mother or be sexually available but isdangerous if she is both.

Mothering is hard work for anyone. Its been described as having a close and attentivephysical and emotional involvement with children and offering them education in itsbroadest sense while preparing them for independence.

It is a huge commitment. There are few immediate rewards, little societal status, and anuncertain future benefit. As Madonna whose mothering must be cushioned by aneconomic freedom that very few single mothers enjoy - has put it, mothering is like being pulled from every cell and nerve fibre and every hair, invigorating and exhausting. Singlemother hood is even more demanding. Forget the invigorating. Often its just exhausting.

Even for Madonna being a single mother was just OK. She really wanted her child. Shecharacterises herself both as someone with perseverance, resilience and a sense of humourand as a tireless workhorse. But single motherhood was not what she wanted.

Madonna was OK, but it was hard work. When she broke up with the father of her first

child, she said, she wanted another child but needed to think that she would be with the nextfather for a very long time. She recognised that she needed support of a particular kind tobring up another child, as well as all the support that presumably she could afford to buy:nannies, housekeepers, cooks and so on.

Ive come to believe that if single mother families are acknowledged as viable and goodplaces for children to grow up in, that poses a risk to the survival of what is understood asthe family, something often seen as sacred and to be protected. Negativity towards us comesfrom this desire to protect the family. So what exactly isthe family?


4/8

The family

The family is defined in article 16 of the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights asthe natural and fundamental group of society. This group consists of men and

women[who]have the right to marry and found a family. This is the family referred toin discussion about family values or family breakdown leading to broken homes.

This idea of the family, firmly embedded in our consciousness may be based on what my mother called good Christian values. These values exist also in other religions and cultures.

The Industrial Revolution of the nineteenth century and colonisation of the Americas, Asiaand the Pacific may also have something to do with the familys evolution into a very small,rigidly defined unit. Immigrants often lost their extended family and their family histories.During an era when transport and communications were slow it was difficult to keep up

with family members gone or left behind. Many people wanted to break away from theirfamilies, or their families wanted nothing more to do with them. Migrants had to find(found) new families. Founding a family implies that each party comes to the activity

without family ties, genetic or social, and there were and are many people in this situation.

Ive also wondered if ideas about the family in the United States, in relation to the needs anddesires of its immigrant and migrant populations, unduly influenced the family conceptexpressed in the Declaration of Human Rights. After all, the United Nations is based in New

York and was substantially underwritten by the United States at the time the Declaration wasdeveloped. And lawmakers in the United States continue to use the language of theDeclaration in legislation, such as the punitive 1996 welfare reform law that limited the timethat single mothers can receive welfare support and which states that marriage is thefoundation of a successful society.

This law created Temporary Aid to Needy Families with the goal of ending dependency of needy parents on government benefits by promoting job preparation, work and m arriageand encouraging the formation and maintenance of two - parent families. BarbaraEhrenreich points out that many welfare recipients are likely to marry men from a group

whose wages have been declining since the 1980s. A woman would have to marry, shecalculates, 2.3 of these men to lift herself out of poverty!

Other countries have better systems for supporting single mothers with their responsibilities.But in general, the Declaration of Human Rights definition of the family is the one many people want to put themselves inside and single mothers outside. A family is the family, the

only legitimate family unit.The family does not exist unless a marriage a marriage is a part of the equation. More recently the definition is sometimes extended, grudgingly, to include defacto marriages. But single mothers do not have a status that entitles them to call theirimmediate family the natural and fundamental group unit of society. Their households areunnatural.

To keep the idea of the family going other families (however well they work for those whoare part of them) are described in a negative way. A family that once included a marriedcouple and their child or children (or maybe the unmarried couple and their child or


5/8

children) and which now consists of one parent, usually the mother and the child orchildren, is called a broken home.

Ive always experienced this phrase as an especially violent one. The home I provide for my children is whole, a family system that works.Its taken me a while to understand fully how

deeply my life and choices have been affected other peoples attitudes towards motherhoodin general (often hugely undervalued whether or not mothers are part of the family), andsingle mothers in particular.

Risks

Some women become single mothers as the result of divorce or separation from a partner.Some become single mothers by accident or by choice without ever having a parenting partner. And however we become single mothers we are also as diverse in every way as themembers of any other group that exists by chance rather than by choice. But we do havesome things in common. Becoming single mothers changes our lives and exposes us to somerisks that we didnt face before we were single mothers and are less likely to face if we ceaseto be single mothers.

When I asked around, I learned from other single mothers that my single motherexperiences and the risks I faced were familiar to them. We often come to singlemotherhood in states of shock, grief, pain. We are vulnerable, become quickly exhausted andunable to function effectively. Some cope better than others; and we all have differentcoping mechanisms. But the problems we face seem to be universal.

My dear friend Maria who appears here and there throughout this book says that happinessis a matter of character, not external circumstances. And I agree with her. But for those of us

who are less resilient than others, who find it hard, say, to move on from the effects of

violent experiences, or a lifetimes poverty, the risks from single motherhood are harder tomanage. Women who have been committed to the ideals of the family, and who benefitedeconomically and socially as a result of being part of the family often find the transition tosingle motherhood especially difficult.

Risk is present in everyones life, all the time. If ever I doubted this, New Zealands and Japans recent devastating earthquakes removed all doubt. But the conditions of singlemotherhood create everyday specific, ongoing and generic risks for those who are singlemothers. If these risks are not managed effectively we both compromise our health and findit more difficult to care for our children, that all important next generation. This book presents the risks, and offers one way they can be managed.

It is also meant to be optimistic. Once we come to terms with the often shocking reality of asingle mother life, many women come to value our independence as single mothers, thegreat job we do in bringing up our children, our capacity to create satisfying and happy livesfor our families. You may be a single mother who is already in this situation, who can meet

with any challenge or risk and resolve it, and who doesnt need this book. On the other handyou might be a bit more like me and have temporarily lost the capacity to be happy or havenever really had it. If thats your experience, some of the information that follows may help.I certainly hope so.


6/8

I have much in common with other single mothers. But my ideas about the risks we facealso come from my own background and experiences. So before I go into detail about therisks we share, heres my own story. Skip it if you want to get straight into the risksthemselves.

My story

Is my experience of single motherhood an unusual one? Am I overreacting in seeing my experiences as being dangerous to my health?

Yes and no. I started with more resources than some single mothers and met with somegood fortune along the way. But I still became debilitated and ill.

Even now in a relatively peaceful middle age, its sometimes a challenge for me to manageday-to-day life as a single mother, as youll read later. Developing and sustaining a characterthat generates happiness has been hard for me. Not least because of the conditions I share

with most single mothers.

I didnt expect to become a single mother. I had a family: a partner I loved, two smallchildren and two older children whose father shared responsibility for them. A littleunconventional perhaps, but it worked (for me). Then it was gone. I had a new family of onefifteen month old child, two teenagers and me. It was a shock. I had no paid employmentthough there were projects I was committed to: I was working hard. And suddenly I wasresponsible for all the caring and the shopping and the cooking and the bedtimes. Family and friends did not offer help. I did not think to ask them for help: they had their own busy lives. I did not cope well. I became ill. I became isolated. I learned the hard way. And little by little things improved.

I arrived at single motherhood fairly shattered emotionally and short on the skills to moveme forward. I just wanted to escape the pain. I had few options for doing this. Booze anddrugs make me physically ill. Im hopeless at casual sex. I m ost wanted to be left alone, tosleep, to read trash, just to be. This was impossible with three children, each with differentneeds many of which I could not help them fulfil. When I reached the end of each day andsometimes during the day I fell into bed exhausted. I was so engaged with feeling and withcoping minute by minute that I didnt think much.

So there I was, struggling. My life until then gave me some advantages. I was fairly welleducated, with a degree and a professional qualification. I had a part share in a house close to

town: no car but no transport problems. I was European in a place where pale people froman English background are well treated. I was in a country where at the time welfare benefits were adequate. As a child of migrants I was used to being marginal, on the edge of things,good practice for what was to come.

And the unpaid work I was doing held many satisfactions. It continued to do so. With onegroup of friends I had published a novel. It became a best-seller and won a major prizeduring this time. With another group I wrote an art book that did well. Thanks to theseprojects I travelled internationally.


7/8

Then a friend asked me what I would wish I had done when I was seventy and it was toolate. Id wish Id finished my law degree I answered. I went back to law school to finish it.I was admitted to the bar and practised for a couple of years. I wrote articles with anotherfriend that were later used in judges training and in law schoo l teaching in several countries.

But I did not get a proper job. Perhaps because I didnt really want one. Eventually Iborrowed money on my shared house and went with my youngest child to live overseas.

Through all this I was intermittently unwell with immune system difficulties: cervicaldysplasia that eventually led to my having a hysterectomy; toxoplasmosis; chronic fatigue;fungal infections. The illness continued overseas. It became too hard to live there as Ibecame more ill. I came home.

Then, suddenly, I was offered a university-based office to work from while I made some video archives and developed some documentaries. Then a job teaching in an art school at asmall tertiary institution. I loved this, learned more about teaching and about moving imagesand digital media. I lasted two and a bit years before I got ill again. On the side I had beenresearching a thesis about the law relating to unreliable fathers. And that is when I found thearticles about single mothers dying sooner than those who have partners.

The organisation of this book

Ive started with some frequently asked questions about single mothers. Then I introduce theart of managing the risks to our well being. Start here if youre a single mother who has animmediate problem or two to deal with. Then I move on to the risks themselves. They allarise from the demands of mothering within a society where mothers are not highly valuedand mothers outside the family are actively criticised.

Hostility and criticism that comes from beliefs about single mothers is the first risk. Whetheror not it is conscious and overt it can undermine us and make us less effective. If we take onsingle mother as defined by others as our only identity and lose other aspects of ouridentity, thats risky too. So thats the second risk.

Then theres the risk that arises from expectations -whether our own or those of others -that our children cannot thrive without a father or male role model. Our experiences may suck us into a vortex of violence created by the beliefs and behaviour of others. These arethe four primary risks that, I believe, place single mothers without partners at risk from anearly death. If these risks can be successfully managed, the other risks become lessdangerous: the risks of poverty; isolation and loneliness; and ill health. Each of these seven

risks has its own chapter in this book.Research material

Ive used my own life as a rich resource of research material. There may be aspects of someof my stories that are new or unrecognisable to people who were there at the time. So Iemphasise that this is my version and that I have avoided using material that directly involves or might hurt others in my family. I am very grateful to the single mothers who


8/8

shared their stories with me. It helped me a lot to learn that I wasnt the only single motherin the world who had some kinds of experiences.

Ive emphasised information and ideas that I havent seen detailed anywhere else and that Ihave myself found helpful. References are listed at the end of each chapter, sometimes at the

end of two chapters if theyre useful for each. The articles and books themselves usually include further references.

I have ignored information that said or implied that single parent families cannot work. This kind of information gets plenty of airtime. It is easy to find and it is not helpful in thiscontext. Every researcher, like every writer has a story they want to tell. This is mine.

References

Weitoft G, Haglund B, and Rosen M (2000) Mo rtality among lone mothers in Sweden: apopulation study The Lancet 355 (9211) 8 April 1215-1219

White, Mark (2000) American BeautyHQ Summer 2000-2001 24-31

Whitehead M, Burstrom B and Diderichsen F (2000) Social policies and the pathways toinequalities in health: a comparative analysis of lone mothers in Britain and Sweden January 15 Science and Medicine 50(2) 255-270

7 risks for single mothers; & the art of managing them—introduction

Documents