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Single parents face countless hardships, but they can be boiled down to a triple bind: inadequate resources, insufficient employment, and limited support policies. This book brings together research from a range of disciplines from more than forty countries--with particularly detailed case studies from the United Kingdom, Iceland, Sweden, and Scotland. It addresses numerous issues related to the struggles of single parents, including poverty, employment, health, children's development and education, and more.
Shirl is a single mother who urges her son's baby-sitter to swat him when he misbehaves. Helena went back to work to get off welfare, then quit to be with her small daughter. Kathy was making good money but got into cocaine and had to give up her two-year-old son during her rehabilitation. Pundits, politicians, and social critics have plenty to say about such women and their behavior. But in this book, for the first time, we hear what these women have to say for themselves. An eye-opening--and heart-rending--account from the front lines of poverty, Through My Own Eyes offers a firsthand look at how single mothers with the slimmest of resources manage from day to day. We witness their struggles to balance work and motherhood and watch as they negotiate a bewildering maze of child-care and social agencies. For three years the authors followed the lives of fourteen women from poor Boston neighborhoods, all of whom had young children and had been receiving welfare intermittently. We learn how these women keep their families on firm footing and try--frequently in vain--to gain ground. We hear how they find child-care and what they expect from it, as well as what the childcare providers have to say about serving low-income families. Holloway and Fuller view these lives in the context of family policy issues touching on the disintegration of inner cities, welfare reform, early childhood and pro-choice poverty programs.
Single moms, you are not alone. You may feel lonely, abandoned, overwhelmed, and ill-equipped in your life as a single mother, but you are not alone on this journey. God is WITH you, and if you are willing, He will help you build a strong home and legacy for your family. As a former single mother, Michelle Lynn Senters understands you could use a little soul nourishment. In the Unseen Companion, she explores the ten needs every single mother has and asks, “God, where are you in this?” Avoiding clichés and hurtful platitudes, Michelle offers true hope from God’s Word. Her reflections, seasoned with personal experience, will help you: Trust that God sees your needs and can satisfy them Develop a vibrant relationship with God’s Word Avoid temptation and counterfeit solutions Strengthen your resolve and confidence to raise children of faith Read The Unseen Companion and receive the encouragement your heart longs to hear: “You can do this, God is with you, and He will lead your family in strength and love.” Includes questions at the end of each chapter for reflection, journaling, or group discussion.
Nonwhite and white, rich and poor, born to an unwed mother or weathering divorce, over half of all children in the current generation will live in a single-parent family--and these children simply will not fare as well as their peers who live with both parents. This is the clear and urgent message of this powerful book. Based on four national surveys and drawing on more than a decade of research, Growing Up with a Single Parent sharply demonstrates the connection between family structure and a child's prospects for success. What are the chances that the child of a single parent will graduate from high school, go on to college, find and keep a job? Will she become a teenage mother? Will he be out of school and out of work? These are the questions the authors pursue across the spectrum of race, gender, and class. Children whose parents live apart, the authors find, are twice as likely to drop out of high school as those in two-parent families, one and a half times as likely to be idle in young adulthood, twice as likely to become single parents themselves. This study shows how divorce--particularly an attendant drop in income, parental involvement, and access to community resources--diminishes children's chances for well-being. The authors provide answers to other practical questions that many single parents may ask: Does the gender of the child or the custodial parent affect these outcomes? Does having a stepparent, a grandmother, or a nonmarital partner in the household help or hurt? Do children who stay in the same community after divorce fare better? Their data reveal that some of the advantages often associated with being white are really a function of family structure, and that some of the advantages associated with having educated parents evaporate when those parents separate. In a concluding chapter, McLanahan and Sandefur offer clear recommendations for rethinking our current policies. Single parents are here to stay, and their worsening situation is tearing at the fabric of our society. It is imperative, the authors show, that we shift more of the costs of raising children from mothers to fathers and from parents to society at large. Likewise, we must develop universal assistance programs that benefit low-income two-parent families as well as single mothers. Startling in its findings and trenchant in its analysis, Growing Up with a Single Parent will serve to inform both the personal decisions and governmental policies that affect our children's--and our nation's--future.
Because of the decline in government assistance that accompanied economic reform in Russia, single mothers there, facing a greater risk of poverty, are increasingly choosing to live with other adults or relatives.
Single parent families in the United States have almost tripled in the past few decades. A huge majority of these families are female headed. In American culture it is not so important that we all be equal so much as it is that we all have equal opportunities. Yet sometimes we turn a blind eye to those who need us most. In fact, when it comes to single parent families, it is as if the barriers are too great, the issues too complex. We wind up reducing the debate to its lowest common denominator. Ironically, it is the families who are most affected that get tangled in the political barbed wire and hidden behind numbing statistics. Moreover, community responses, those small grassroots organizations who care deeply and give whole-heartedly are seldom celebrated, seldom recognized for their empowering efforts. Moving Up and Out focuses on just such a program, the Arkansas Single Parent Scholarship Fund, which has since 1984 provided scholarships for single parents interested in obtaining their post-secondary education. In this story of a highly successful nonprofit, Lori Holyfield (herself a recipient of a scholarship) draws upon the voices of single parents to consider the barriers and struggles faced as they attempt to obtain secondary education and change the lives of both themselves and their children. The help this program has brought to Arkansas residents is needed throughout the country.
The strengths and abilities children develop from infancy through adolescence are crucial for their physical, emotional, and cognitive growth, which in turn help them to achieve success in school and to become responsible, economically self-sufficient, and healthy adults. Capable, responsible, and healthy adults are clearly the foundation of a well-functioning and prosperous society, yet America's future is not as secure as it could be because millions of American children live in families with incomes below the poverty line. A wealth of evidence suggests that a lack of adequate economic resources for families with children compromises these children's ability to grow and achieve adult success, hurting them and the broader society. A Roadmap to Reducing Child Poverty reviews the research on linkages between child poverty and child well-being, and analyzes the poverty-reducing effects of major assistance programs directed at children and families. This report also provides policy and program recommendations for reducing the number of children living in poverty in the United States by half within 10 years.
Single-parent families succeed. Within these families children thrive, develop, and grow, just as they do in a variety of family structures. Tragically, they must do so in the face of powerful legal and social stigma that works to undermine them. As Nancy E. Dowd argues in this bold and original book, the justifications for stigmatizing single-parent families are founded largely on myths, myths used to rationalize harshly punitive social policies. Children, in increasing numbers, bear the brunt of those policies. In this generation, more than two-thirds of all children will spend some time in a single-parent family before reaching age 18. The damage done in the name of justified stigma, therefore, harms a great many children. Dowd details the primary justifications for stigmatizing single-parent families, marshalling an impressive array of resources about single parents that portray a very different picture of these families. She describes them in all their forms, with particular attention to the differential treatment given never-married and divorced single parents, and to the impact of gender, race, and class. Emphasizing that all families face significant conflicts between work and family responsibilities, Dowd argues many two-parent families, in fact, function as single-parent caregiving households. The success or failure of families, she contends, has little to do with form. Many of the problems faced by single-parent families mirror problems faced by all families. Illustrating the harmful impact of current laws concerning divorce, welfare, and employment, Dowd makes a powerful case for centering policy around the welfare and equality of all children. A thought-provoking examination of the stereotypes, realities and possibilities of single-parent families, In Defense of Single-Parent Families asks us to consider the true purpose or goal of a family.
Explores the effects of divorce on children and their parents.
How low-income people cope with the emotional dimensions of poverty Could a lack of close, meaningful social ties be a public—rather than just a private—problem? In Social Poverty, Sarah Halpern-Meekin provides a much-needed window into the nature of social ties among low-income, unmarried parents, highlighting their often-ignored forms of hardship. Drawing on in-depth interviews with thirty-one couples, collected during their participation in a government-sponsored relationship education program called Family Expectations, she brings unprecedented attention to the relational and emotional dimensions of socioeconomic disadvantage. Poverty scholars typically focus on the economic use value of social ties—for example, how relationships enable access to job leads, informal loans, or a spare bedroom.However, Halpern-Meekin introduces the important new concept of “social poverty,” identifying it not just as a derivative of economic poverty, but as its own condition, which also perpetuates poverty. Through a careful and nuanced analysis of the strengths and limitations of relationship classes, she shines a light on the fundamental place of core socioemotional needs in our lives. Engaging and compassionate, Social Poverty highlights a new direction for policy and poverty research that can enrich our understanding of disadvantaged families around the country.