Single Parents

There is no question about it - there are more single parents these days than ever before. Having been a single parent myself, I can also tell you from first hand experience that there ARE still prejudices existing. What used to be totally unacceptable - as in an unwed mother - is marginally accepted now, but not as accepted it should be. The fact of the matter is that single parents are often not in these situations by choice, and should be heralded for their commitment to their children’s lives rather than shunned for their lack of a “partner”.

It might be perfectly acceptable to be a widowed single parent, and somewhat less acceptable to be a divorced single parents (although you have the added stigma of divorce there!), but what about the single mother who is seventeen and still in high school? I do not advocate becoming a mother at such a young age, but for those who find themselves in that situation and have the courage to do what they need to do for the sake of their children, I salute you.

Unfortunately - younger single parents especially come under a lot of criticism when what they should be getting is support from those around them. Yes, a mistake was made, but everyone makes mistakes, and I am willing to bet that they have already paid a very high price for that mistake. Who among us has never made a mistake? What gives anyone the right to stigmatize these people and their children and make an admittedly hard life even worse?

Single parents can also come be couples who are unmarried. This is just as bad or sinful to some as being a teenage single parent. Some people can’t understand why you would become pregnant if you’re not married, and feel that outside of marriage, a union isn’t lasting or binding. Then, if the couples split up and go their own ways as sometimes happens, these nay-sayers feel even more vindicated in pointing out that they really shouldn’t have had children in the first place, without a proper wedding. What seems to be conveniently forgotten in so many of these ill-placed accusations is that the divorce rate in America is a staggering forty-three percent. Meaning - forty three out of 100 couples who marry will divorce.

Living in a very rural area myself, I can say from experience that the stigma held against single parents - for whatever reason, is alive and well in our so-called “enlightened” society today. I will share a brief story with you from my own personal archives. My parents divorced when I was only 17 years old. I had my daughter out of wedlock when I was 22 years old. I married her father later, and we divorced as well. I was trying to find housing for myself and my daughter, and the house that I had grown up in that my parents had to sell because of their own nasty divorce became available for rent. The “good Christian man” that bought it (Alan Zink, now owner of Zink’s Inn in Berlin Ohio if you ever get the chance to visit!) denied me the opportunity to live in my childhood home because he did not want my kind of “element” in the house he bought. My “element” being a single mother, working 2 jobs to support her daughter and going to college.

What people never think about, though, is the fact that although they stigmatize the single parent as some kind of evil-doer or sinner, the people that get hurt are the children. Fortunately, not all single parents are subjected to this, there is a goodly portion of single parents in this world who have managed to carve out a niche for themselves and who live good lives. The only thing one could wish for then, would be that more single parents, whether they are single dads, single moms, divorcees or widows could live this way too.