Brittany Luce

This episode was edited by Nina Potok.

Engineering support came from Robert Rodriguez.

Our supervising producer is Barton Girdwood.

Our executive producer is Veralyn Williams.

Our VP of programming is Yolanda Sanguini.

All right.

That's all for this episode of It's Been a Minute from NPR.

I'm Brittany Luce.

Talk soon.

Growing up, I knew a lot of single moms.

Play aunties, church family, my friends' moms, you get it.

They were great parents, responsible and engaged and honestly, a lot of fun.

But even then, I knew that in our society, single moms had a bad rap.

From reading The Scarlet Letter in high school.

Where the protagonist, Hester Prynne, who has a child out of wedlock, has to wear a mark of shame.

The Scarlet Letter A. To learning about a twisted form of 80s royalty.

This was a stereotype of black single mothers who were said to be scamming the government by abusing the welfare system.

And then there was MTV's contribution to the single mom discourse.

Their hit reality TV shows, 16 and Pregnant and Teen Mom.

We watch these girls struggle with the realities of being a young parent, usually without adequate help from their partners, if they have one at all.