Children of Single Mothers

What do people mean by this weird expression “children of single mothers”? That their fathers are all married? Or that they were conceived by the Holy Spirit?

See this article, for example. It talks about “the percentage of children born to unmarried women.” OK, the article in itself is beyond silly but forget about that for the moment. How come these children are born just to women? Aren’t they supposed to be born to women and men, married or unmarried? Or does a father only count if he is officially married to the child’s mother? That can’t make sense.

The only child that we know of who was born to a woman with no male participation was Jesus. And even he had two fathers.

And then we start asking ourselves why men are less involved in parenting than women. Might that be because they are constantly and stubbornly erased from their children’s existence?

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35 responses to “Children of Single Mothers”

Keith

January 23, 2012

Actually fathers don’t count at all married or not. I don’t even understand why we continue to use the term.

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bloggerclarissa

January 23, 2012

I wonder why we continue to use fathers, let alone the term. 🙂

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1. Keith
  
  January 23, 2012
  
  There you go now your getting it. This too is a good question. Fatherhood in this culture is broken and this is not a culture with the capacity for repair we only have a capacity to replace.
  
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P. rhoeas

January 23, 2012

Hey my dad is awesome.

“Aren’t they supposed to be born to women and men, married or unmarried?”

Well you see, women and men have crossed the ocean. They now begin to pour out from the boat and up the shore. Two by two they enter the jungle and soon they number more: three by three as well as four by four. Soon the stream of people gets wider, then it becomes a river; river becomes an ocean carrying ships that bear women and meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeen.

Anyway, this goes back to like the seventies and eighties and nineties and if this article is any evidence even up through the present day, when “single mom” was/is code for “unmarried slut ruining America”. And yes, it does a disservice to both sexes that while opprobium is heaped upon the mother, the father is completely effaced from the equation. Although I think depending on your point of view, the implication is either the father isn’t taking responsibility to marry the woman he knocked up all willy-nilly, or the mother stole the hapless father’s seed to raise her baby in a godless way. Yeah, like I said: this rhetoric sucks all the way around.

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David Bellamy

January 23, 2012

But there are also single fathers raising children, whether because they are widowers or they are divorced. I have known several. And single fathers don’t often get child support payments from the mothers. Frankly, I have always thought of the term “single parent” of whatever sex as conveying an element of heroism, not irresponsibility.

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bloggerclarissa

January 23, 2012

I agree. This dumping on single parents is beyond my understanding. Just like the desire to pretend that there aren’t tons of unmarried couples who live happily together and have fantastic families. According to the article I quoted, children of such families would also be classified as children of unmarried women.

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nominatissima

January 23, 2012

“Frankly, I have always thought of the term “single parent” of whatever sex as conveying an element of heroism, not irresponsibility.”
Same here, probably because my mother is a widow, and several other women I look up to in my life raised their children without the support of a father.
Also, isn’t that article written by the same yo-yo who wrote The Bell Curve? I need to reanimate Stephen Jay Gould to give him a verbal takedown for that garbage.

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Hattie

January 23, 2012

My granddaughters refer to the male half of their parenthood as “the donor,” or “Pavel.” That’s because he was a sperm donor. If this has damaged them psychologically in any way, I have yet to see signs of it.

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Jodie

January 23, 2012

I think this dates back to the days of illegitimate and legitimate children. When I was a kid (back in the 60s), there was still a wide social gulf between children born of marriage and children who weren’t. People talked about that crap enough that I remember those conversations as a small child.

I think that “single moms” is a way for some people of trying to call back that shame that was heaped upon women for a very long time. The men who fathered those children, even if they didn’t support them (and often were not expected to do so), were not only not shamed, but sometimes were envied by other men.

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AYY

January 24, 2012

“The only child that we know of who was born to a woman with no male participation was Jesus. And even he had two fathers.” Huh?
BTW, virgin births were very common in the ancient world. Just about everyone who started a religion back then was born of a virgin. There was nothing special about the Christian version. They had to make it that way just to get on the playing field..

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Tim

January 24, 2012

Well, first of all: An unmarried woman is not necessarily a single woman!

And secondly: I believe that stories about virgin births are why some christian douchemorons want to be so controlling about women’s sexuality. I mean they might think that they believe this rumour about jesus being born to a virgin woman, but unconsciously they know that this is impossible. They probably have this nagging little thing pounding away at their sanity in the back of their heads. And when the mother of their fancy religion is not above being a cheating and lying arsehole, other (and thus lesser) women are probably also not! 😀

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charlesrowley

January 24, 2012

The reason that Charles Murray refers to children born and raised by unmarried mothers is statistical. Empirical evidence across many countries indicates that such children, on average, do far less well in terms of many economic and social metrics than do children born to and raised by married couples. This is a statistical fact, even when income and education level of the parents is controlled for in the analysis.

Charles Muray is a positive scientist. His work focuses on interpreting the facts rather than advocating social policies. For the most part he has shown that social policies simply worsen the statistical divergences.

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bloggerclarissa

January 24, 2012

“The reason that Charles Murray refers to children born and raised by unmarried mothers is statistical.”

– Is there anything preventing him from referring to such children as “children of unmarried parents“?

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twicerandomly

January 24, 2012

Here is an article by David Frum on Charles Murray. David Frum is one of the very few conservatives I respect. He is a Canadian-American who was a member of the Bush administration who admits quite frankly that they screwed up big time. He says of Charles Murray’s work, “You can call this analysis many things, but social science sure isn’t one of them.”
I really don’t see how you can say, “His work focuses on interpreting the facts rather than advocating social policies,” with a straight face.

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twicerandomly

January 24, 2012

Here’s the link to Frum’s comment: http://www.frumforum.com/murrays-bogus-elite

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Adi

January 24, 2012

Why does it always have to be a virgin? I mean, if people want to believe that she was inseminated by a deity, that’s one thing but she doesn’t have to be a virgin for that. One can understand that mortal men preferred virgins so they could be sure the child was theirs but surely, a god doesn’t need such assurance.

The more one looks at the descriptions of the Judeo-Christian god, the more human he appears.

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P. rhoeas

January 24, 2012

Well if you were a peasant woman in a time when they stoned you for infidelity and you were given to your husband as a virgin and you popped up pregnant what would you say?

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1. bloggerclarissa
  
  January 24, 2012
  
  “Well if you were a peasant woman in a time when they stoned you for infidelity and you were given to your husband as a virgin and you popped up pregnant what would you say?”
  
  – I’d convince him he did something wrong and then guilt-trip him for this his entire life.
  
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bloggerclarissa

January 24, 2012

“Why does it always have to be a virgin?”

– because sex is dirty and a deity could not be a result of such a nasty, disgusting act. 🙂

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1. P. rhoeas
  
  January 24, 2012
  
  Just ask Zeus.
  
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Titfortat

January 24, 2012

Technically Mary wasnt a virgin. The term they thought meant virgin(alma) was improperly translated. It actual means young woman.

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P. rhoeas

January 24, 2012

Whoops there goes 2000 years of Christian tradition! [not really, they’re great at ignoring that kind of shit]

Another cool Bible mistake: according to my undergrad ancient Greek prof, the famous phrase from Matthew that “it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God” makes a lot more goddamn sense when you realize that there is a Koine word for “rope” that is spelled almost exactly like a word for “camel”. Anglicized, both words are “kamelos”, except the stress falls on a different syllable for each. I believe it was KA-melos for camel and ka-ME-los for rope. So: ROPE, not camel, through the eye of a needle. Lots more goddamn sense.

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1. twicerandomly
  
  January 24, 2012
  
  That’s fascinating. It reminds me of the translation mistake that caused Michaelangelo to sculpt Moses with horns. A mistranslation of something like “rays of light coming from his head” to “horns coming from his head.”
  
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Titfortat

January 24, 2012

@P.rhoeas

The bible gets it right in this instance and it is totally relevant in this day and age.

Proverbs 22:7

The rich rule over the poor, and the borrower is servant to the lender.

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P. rhoeas

January 25, 2012

Cosleeping is so yesterday. Here’s some copeeing!

http://jezebel.com/5878913/who-needs-the-family-bed-when-you-have-the-family-toilet?utm_source=Jezebel+Newsletter&utm_campaign=32a031fb23-UA-142218-20&utm_medium=email

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bloggerclarissa

January 25, 2012

When my sister and I were little, we sometimes peed together on the same toilet. Now our asses have become way too big for that. Mine more so than hers, of course. That’s kind of sad.

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1. nominatissima
  
  January 25, 2012
  
  This just inspired a blog entry out of me. When I hang out with friends of mine who are mothers, they always tell stories about how they don’t bother keeping the bathroom door closed anymore when they bathe or use the toilet, because if they do, the kids will bang on the door, yelling “Mommy, mommy, mommy!” and so the kids just sit in the bathroom with them and bombard them with questions.
  They laugh, and my ovaries shrivel involuntarily.
  
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  1. bloggerclarissa
    
    January 25, 2012
    
    “They always tell stories about how they don’t bother keeping the bathroom door closed anymore when they bathe or use the toilet, because if they do, the kids will bang on the door, yelling “Mommy, mommy, mommy!” and so the kids just sit in the bathroom with them and bombard them with questions.”
    
    – I hope nobody notices this comment that I’m about to write because it will provoke the ire of many people. I’ll still make it, though. When a child can’t be left alone for two minutes while one goes to the bathroom, it’s neither funny nor healthy. It’s a sign that the kid is not going through the stages of separation from the mother at a healthy pace. This is not a reason to panic, of course. It’s reason to figure out why the child feels so anxious outside of Mommy’s presence.
    
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2. P. rhoeas
  
  January 25, 2012
  
  I noticed this comment. I am outraged. If I want a toddler to watch me piss, or shit or masturbate or shoot up a moonrock, then by god that is my right as an American.
  
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  1. bloggerclarissa
    
    January 25, 2012
    
    Easy for you to laugh. I’m so terrified of the unhinged parents that I’m afraid to write the word “children.” Maybe I should adopt a code word for them. Say, “hedgehogs.”
    
    “Sleeping with a hedgehog might traumatize the poor animal for life. And if your hedgehog insist on seeing you pee, it has already been traumatized.”
    
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3. P. rhoeas
  
  January 25, 2012
  
  “Easy for you to laugh.”
  
  It’s a coping mechanism.
  
  I dig kids = hedgehogs. Hedgehogs make me think of something adorable. Children make me think of snot.
  
  [Actually I’ve been told I’m very good with kids. This is another offshot of my paranoia, I’m sure. I just don’t want to like awake late at night wondering if I’ve fucked up a human being for life. I don’t spend much time around kids so when I do I try to be on my best behavior and not scar them psychologically.]
  
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  1. bloggerclarissa
    
    January 25, 2012
    
    “Children make me think of snot.”
    
    – Did you know that when they are little they don’t understand the concept of blowing their noses, so when they get sick, you have to suck the snot out of their noses to help them breathe? So yes, snot will definitely make an appearance.
    
    “I just don’t want to lie awake late at night wondering if I’ve fucked up a human being for life.”
    
    – What, you’ve never dated? 🙂 🙂
    
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4. P. rhoeas
  
  January 25, 2012
  
  bloggerclarissa :
  – What, you’ve never dated?
  
  Alright alright. I meant “another human being”.
  
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nominatissima

January 25, 2012

You didn’t provoke my ire. You just reassured me that I am not going to have to face this nightmare and pretend to laugh about it with other moms when I have kids. I’m big on my privacy and “me” time, and the idea of losing it and taking it with a smile is too much for me.

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bloggerclarissa

January 25, 2012

No, I didn’t mean that you would get angry over this. I was talking about other, scary people.

If you really don’t want your kid to follow you to the bathroom, s/he will not want that, either. Small children dedicate everything they do to the goal of being accepted and protected by adults. There is always a reason for any clinginess, neediness, tantrums. And once you find that reason, it can be addressed.

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