We should view lower-income single
moms as heroes. Most of them make enormous sacrifices to raise their
kids -- trying to balance work and parenthood in a society that offers
them very little support. Many are forced to forego opportunity to
advance, working multiple jobs just to scrape by. But too often, they're
villified – blamed not only for failing to “keep their man,” but also
for America's persistently high poverty rate and dramatic inequality.
The
idea that the decline of “traditional marriage” is the root cause of
all manner of social problems is especially prominent on the political
Right. Serious research into the causes of wealth and income inequality
has not been kind to the cultural narratives conservatives tend to
favor, but they nonetheless persist because such explanations have
immense value for the Right. They offer an opportunity to shift focus
from the damage corporate America's preferred economic policies have
wrought on working people – union-busting, defunding social programs in
order to slash taxes for those at the top and trade deals that make it
easy for multinationals to move production to low-wage countries and
still sell their goods at home – and onto their traditional bogeymen:
feminism, secularism and whatever else those dirty hippies are up to.
The
single mother, especially the black or brown single mother, plays an
outsized-role in this discourse. A compelling body of research suggests
that economic insecurity leads to more single-parent “broken homes,” yet
the Right clings tirelessly to the myth that the causal relationship is
the other way around. READ MORE
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