Chapter 1: 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.
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Chapter 2: 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.
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Chapter 3: 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.
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Thank you so much. I love doing this with you. Now, let's get into some culture. What are some of the reasons that you've seen that solo moms like yourself are citing as to why they wanted to do this on their own?
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Chapter 4: What statistics reveal about single mothers and their children?
Something could happen to them.
Oh, yeah. That didn't even cross my mind.
I think a lot of them do a lot of planning on that front. I mean, almost every mom that I talk to, they're the most amazing planners that I have ever encountered in my life.
You know, the first person I talked to When I decided to do this was my therapist. And the first thing she said was, OK, but what's your plan if something happens to you? And I got so mad at her because I was in a moment of feeling so excited. And that was her first question. But she was right that I'm one of four kids. I have a big family.
I know that my daughter would be OK if, you know, if something happened to me. Obviously, that's worst case scenario.
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Chapter 5: What are the joys and challenges faced by single mothers?
And I'm brushing over it because it's tough to even think about, you know, something like that.
Danielle, yeah, I'm wondering, like, what have you found yourself to be some of the cons of single parenthood or like, you know, from your community of other like solo moms? What are some of the things that you've heard or experienced?
I think the challenges are the challenges that you would expect to hear, right? The biggest one really is finances. And I think, unfortunately, I can say the same thing about all of my married friends right now, all of my coupled friends. I don't know anyone who's not worried about the cost of living right now. So I don't know that that's unique to single parents.
It's interesting. A lot of the cons that you all have brought up are either things, to your point that you just made now, Danielle, are things that parents in general are thinking about, such as cost of living, and also too, where can I raise my family where my child will feel like they have community? I wonder, what are some of the tactics that
single moms are employing to work around the challenges presented by not having that parenting partner, whether they be logistical, whether they be, you know, emotional, because sometimes the things that your children are dealing with are so big that you maybe, I imagine it can feel very isolating to sometimes be trying to process them on your own.
Or even time management wise, some of the mothers, I'd love to hear about some of the mothers that you talk to, Pallavi.
I think the one thing that I hear from every single mother is that you have to be part of a community. And the community is not just going to come by itself. You have to invest in creating that community around you. So, you know, I'll go back to the two women that we spend a lot of time with. You know, Adrienne Rumley, she picked up running.
She runs with her kid in her stroller because she wants to save on child care. And she's like, while I'm running, you know, from 5Ks, 10Ks.
Pushing a stroller? Pushing a stroller. Oh, my gosh.
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