This is the text of Sue Cohen’s speech on the ‘question time’ panel on “Poverty and motherhood: how society undervalues women’s work” at Feminism in London 2009.
Single Parent Motherhood: Survival, Resistance and Emancipation
Those of us who become mothers, whatever our background do so in many different ways – by choice, accident or design – sometimes a combination of these. However achieved, motherhood is the most creative and life changing event, both for ourselves and for the world. Children of course are our future.
Single parent mothers are not a homogeneous group – they are divorced, separated, never married, widowed, heterosexual, lesbian and from different ethnic backgrounds, classes and cultures, young and older. Single parent mothers too became mothers by choice accident or design. Why then is single parent motherhood as opposed to motherhood in general, considered so problematic in this country? What is problematic about a woman on her own looking after children?
The critical factor I think is patriarchy, – which – when combined with the oppressions of social class and poverty and then with ethnicity takes a particular virulent form. Patricia Collins notes how “race, class and gender as interlocking systems of oppression produce an increase in female headed households in national and international contexts.”
Patriarchy, where men or masculinity has the overarching control in private and public arenas takes many different forms. It is active or nuanced in many different sites, spaces and settings – all women experience this although we may not always recognise what is happening.
We experience patriarchy
in relationships
how we feel about our bodies
in the home
the family
the work place
in the wage packet
in political decision making
on the streets
in the bars and clubs
We live and breathe it. That doesn’t mean we as women lie down and role over though some are destroyed by it. To varying degrees and depending on who we are and the situations we are in,
we as women
interrelate with it,
ignore it
collude with it,
make compromises,
protect ourselves from it,
contend with it,
subvert it – we‘ve become very skilled at leading subversive lives –
we laugh at it,
resist it,
challenge it,
unite against it and in some arenas have liberated ourselves from it.
In liberationist mode, we have exercised our power against the structural power possessed.
However, as stated previously when patriarchy interrelates with poverty and single parent motherhood, it can take a particularly aggressive form. Mothers who have choices in life, with regard to where they can live, who they live with, where they educate their children etc. are not questioned in the same way. But the single parent mother who lives in poverty and has few choices, comes under the closest scrutiny.
To the extent that it begs the question: “Do single parent mothers in poverty have the right to have children?”
Living in a society with such an underlying discourse, single parent motherhood can be an ever changing state of Survival, Resistance and Emancipation – certainly this is my experience working alongside single parent mothers for the last twenty odd years.
Survival
Survival can take many forms.
Many single parent mothers struggle to survive on low income having left or been left by men, or simply decided to have children on their own.
At least a third of single parents have survived abusive, violent relationships.
Many have to leave family and friends behind them and end up in unstable housing conditions far away from extended family with an impact on their health and happiness and the health and happiness of their children. But they survived.
Some barely survive – in poor housing, in dangerous environments, suffering depression and poor health – feeling scared and isolated.
There can be a high level of guilt.
Some feel the pressure to have a man in the family not by choice but rather by panic and can repeat abusive relationship patterns.
A high percentage of single parents however, develop social networks to support each other and their children, breaking the isolation. As such they may have more in common with the extended family/friend networks of poorer families in the developing world rather than the nuclear family of the West.
Resistance
In developing these social networks of support single parents could be said to be resisting the overarching oppressions of patriarchy, poverty and racism. They can help each other to avoid abusive relationships, they look after each others children enabling each other to work and study. They share food, give each other time off. They talk a lot about life, overcome the guilt and isolation that society forces on them. Many single parents choose to have children on their own because they do not want enforced dependency on men.
In doing this, single parent mothers are taking control over their lives – often preferring to live on lower incomes because they feel more in control of their financial situation.
Feminism has had some influence on these supportive social networks but even more important has been what Patricia Collins describes as the influence of black and working class women’s consciousness in creating a movement developed out of “women’s innovative and practical approaches to motherhood under oppressive conditions. “
These friendship networks mirror extended family networks in developing countries, but the difference is that that are networks of close friends who the children come to regard as extended family.
At the same time, actual extended families are also significant – for example grandparents. The most important childcare arrangements for those single parent mothers working over 16 hours a week are grandparents.
In black families, extended family and friends can play an additional significant role in helping the family resist racism. Patricia Collins states that “Whereas the family has traditionally been seen by white feminists as the site of oppression, for black feminists it can also be a site of resistance.”
Other relationships are also significant. Many single parents go on to develop relationships with loving and positive live-in partners or to have a range of more short-term non live-in relationships having fun or testing the ground etc.- Most single parents still want to have sex.
Single parent motherhood is not a separatist concept. Single parent mothers can have constructive, platonic relationships with the ex-partner, where the father is loving and considerate of the children’s and family needs. Fathers can also play a significant role in childcare support.
Dependency is not in itself negative – but an intrinsic part of personal and social relationships. Part of liberation is to move away from enforced dependency, although this can be a grey area.
Where relationships with ex partners need to be especially resisted is when the relationship is abusive, where single parents have left abusive, violent relationships, taking control over their own situation. In surviving and resisting such relationships, we are lucky in this country that a hard fought feminist resistance movement developed against violence against women, creating Women’s Aid and the refuge movement in the process.
Emancipation
How can single parent mothers go on to emancipate themselves? SPAN undertook participatory research with over 60 women in five different cities in Britain and top of the agenda was not childcare and financial security, though these were significant, but training and education. The woman who empowers herself, who is given opportunity to raise her confidence, self-esteem, education – is less likely to go back to a destructive relationship. There is a chilling statistic that 70% of women will leave a refuge and go back to an abusive partner when they have nothing else to go onto. But the statistic is reversed for those who access fulfilling training and education courses, with 70% not going back to the partner but moving forward in their lives.
Life is still not easy – patriarchy reigns in political and economic arenas as well as in the private. For generations our society in this country has been underpinned by the male adult worker model. Women have always been present in the workplace, and more so recently than any other time in our history. But in doing so and to different degrees they’ve had to become as men with a choice between long hours or low pay – or both.
For mothers, this is eased somewhat if there is a male earner in the family. Generally however, the infrastructure of the work place has historically not integrated the needs of parents or indeed motherhood into the equation.
There has been progress – tax credits, maternity leave, childcare provision. Some of these changes in legal and economic protection have come through the women’s and the unions’ equal opportunity movements at both a national and EU level. But in the overall scheme of things in the UK the adult worker model prevails.
Luckier societies have more of a parent/worker infrastructure. In those societies – the Scandinavian countries, mothers do much better, and they include single parent mothers. The more unequal the society, the greater the difference between men and women and the greater the difference between rich and poor, the worse single parents do: Hence the virulent combination of patriarchy and poverty.
To conclude
In the economic downturn of the 90’s, political and media discourse suggested single parent mothers to be victims, scroungers, teenagers, producers of delinquent children and criminals, undeserving, a drain on society and the state. In the process single parent mothers fell off all equal opportunity agendas and became further impoverished.
In the midst of a recession, and with a General Election looming, we as feminists must fight against a return to an era when all the ills of society were laid at their door. In doing so I believe we must work together to better understand and articulate single parent mothers as survivors, resistors, and liberationists.
Sue Cohen, October 2009