Do kids need a dad? Ask single moms.
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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I think increasingly the picture of families in America is completely shifting and it really is time to hit reset on the narrative of single motherhood because it is shifting in a way that is pretty dramatic. It's not the old narrative anymore.
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.
Hester Prynne, so that all men may know you are guilty of the sin of adultery.
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.
the welfare queen. She has used 127 names so far, posed as a mother of 14 children at one time, seven at another.
This was a stereotype of black single mothers who were said to be scamming the government by abusing the welfare system.
No one doubts that welfare programs were designed with the best of intentions, but neither can anyone doubt that they failed.
And then there was MTV's contribution to the single mom discourse.
What is changing in the narrative of single motherhood in America?
Their hit reality TV shows, 16 and Pregnant and Teen Mom.
I'm Macy. I'm Sarah. I'm Amber. I'm Caitlin. And our stories continue now on 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.
My baby's daddy isn't in the picture, so I've been doing it alone. I've been driving myself crazy trying to do it all.
In some ways, the teen mom and the single mom became culturally conflated, and their stigmas became shared, with the assumption being that single mothers are incapable, immoral, and immature. But that image doesn't line up at all with the numbers. The largest share of single moms today are actually women over 30.
Women over 30 are better educated. I know that they have more full-time jobs.
That's Pallavi Gagoi, NPR's chief business editor. She's been reporting on single mothers in the United States.
They have more agency. And that basically puts them in a completely different starting point compared to single mothers of the past.
And not only are single moms getting older, there are also many more of them than you might think.
How do societal stereotypes affect single mothers today?
When I made the decision to pursue being a mom on my own, I thought I was doing something kind of unique.
That's Danielle Elliott, freelance science writer and single mother to a three-month-old.
As soon as I started saying it out loud, all of a sudden I was realizing it was women all over the country making this choice.
40% of babies that are born in America is to unmarried women. What it says is that 4 in 10 women around you might be single mothers. Some of the unmarried women might not be single mothers, but a lot of them are.
So today, we're giving the single mom stereotype a long overdue makeover and getting into some of the challenges and the unique joys of single motherhood. Hello, hello. I'm Brittany Luce, and you're listening to It's Been a Minute from NPR, a show about what's going on in culture and why it doesn't happen by accident.
All right, y'all, we are going to get into the single mom makeover. But first, public media is made for you. This show, like all of public media shows, helps you feel smarter in a world that makes things feel confusing. From its founding, public media was designed to shed light on stories from underrepresented communities and provide cultural insight that expands your perspective. Over 50 years later, these remain mine and NPR's core commitments to you. But right now, NPR and public media are navigating a new chapter without federal funding.
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–1:44
2
What is changing in the narrative of single motherhood in America?
1:44–3:04
3
How do societal stereotypes affect single mothers today?
3:04–16:04
4
What statistics reveal about single mothers and their children?
16:04–16:43
5
What are the joys and challenges faced by single mothers?
16:43–22:12