The demonisation of single mothers.

Don't know why relationship has separated into two words there...!

What an interesting question.

I'm a single mother and very content to be so (five plus years now). I feel infinitely happier now than when I was in a supposedly stable, happy long term relation ship - which was in fact anything but (cf HB's comment that people do not just leave happy relationships. There is always a reason why).

I very much enjoy male company but am certainly in no hurry to be in a relationship again.

Certain sections of society do seem feel threatened by women managing quite happily on their own, and not needing a man.

One thing I have observed is that it's ok to be a single mum if you are unhappy about it and find it terribly difficult..perhaps because it affirms their view?

Agree herbeatitude.

Oh and another thing - the debate is nearly always framed in terms of - women choosing not to have happy marriages and stable relationships, as if thousands of women are walking en masse away from happy, fulfilling marriages. People hardly ever point out that no-one walks away from a happy marriage; they walk away from an unhappy one. But nevertheless, if the argument is between happy marriage versus dangerous single motherhood, of course it looks as though single mothers are bieng unreasonable - why on earth are they all out there choosing this, instead of fulfilling relationships with the fathers of their children? As if that was the choice for most single mothers.

Booboo sorry about the despised club term. But we are despised by a certain section of society and it is a club most women don't actively aspire to belong to, I think Harpo Marx was probably in my head when I wrote it.

To return to one of the OP's questions:

"Is women being able to have children alone a part of the feminist outcome - if women have more control over their bodies and reproduction surely it was an inevitable outcome?"

It is only inevitable if men make themselves intolerable to live with and don't step up to the parenting role, or if men give themselves permission to leave the family home. If men are nice, and function reasonably well as fathers, women will want to live with them, however much control they have over their own bodies and if men have a sense of responsibity towards their families, they won't just up and leave them without proper financial support.

The debate is nearly always framed in terms of women's choices and what women do - but women are only half the story here. People hardly ever ask what choices men are making. There's a thread on here atm (to which I have been a vociferous contributor ) where a woman is plannign to go back to work FT, talking about needing "help" in the house as opposed to domestic work being a joint venture, and the guy wants to spend every saturday on his hobby leaving her alone with the baby, so no fmaily time except on sunday and where does she get the whole day off a week to spend on her hobby? That's a choice he is making and it's not an unusual choice - why do the media continually ignore the way men behave in the debate over the "breakdown of the family"?

Something that might also be worth considering is that The Meeja may demonise single mums but it's not necessarily representative of the way that everyone perceives them (or how they perceive themselves!) There's definitely a link between fear / despising single mums and class.

For example my neighbour is a working class single mum - amongst her friendship group this is fairly common. Her family, friends etc have all been very supportive. Single parenthood is perceived as fairly normal (in fact probably the norm) and although she is sad that her relationship with the dad didn't work out long term that doesn't seem to impact on her perception of herself as a mum - if anything she is more determined to do a good job on her own (which she is, puts me to shame on a regular basis) Nobody in her circle of family / friends has "told her off" for being a single mum or implied that she won't do a good job raising her kids.

My best friend is also a single mum (had her baby as a teenager) and she got a lot more disapproval / "disappointed" crap from her middle class educated extended family (her parents were great though) than my neighbour did from hers. Some of her friends' parents banned them from seeing her after she got pregnant (in case it rubbed off?!?) and she regularly got told off by teachers, vague acquaintances etc. Even by the time she was at uni lecturers etc used to literally recoil in horror if she told them she had a baby in the uni creche.

Is it more acceptable for working class women to be single mothers because they shouldn't aspire to do anything else? Or is it less acceptable (they might out-breed the ruling classes!)? I don't know. I suspect it's similar to the difference between my neighbour not working so she can raise her kids (LAZY! BENEFITS SCROUNGER!) and Yummies doing the same (CARING VISION OF BODEN-WEARING LOVELINESS!)

Sorry if this post is a bit incoherent, I've only had four hours sleep.

I dislike the term 'despised club' there, HerBeautitude.
I am a single parent of 2 children by 2 different men. The first I had when at university, very much unexpectedly and I chose to go it alone when the father told me he wanted to get rid. We had been childhood sweethearts, together forever and tbh it hurt. We are now both good, though seperate, parents.
My second dc was a planned child in what I thought was a happy relationship. He couldn't 'handle responsibility', came to this conclusion when it was already too late, and buggered off without a backwards glance.
If anyone deserved to be stigmatised and punished by society, it is the people like my second dc's father. Feckless, leaving other people to pick up the responsibility. Am I pleased he's gone? You bet. But does society come down on him at all? Hell no. He is running from the CSA, and his own family are makign excuses for him.
In comparison, I'm a bloody saint. I'm bringing up my children well, I am on benefits, but that's only since I was made redundant from my full time job after maternity leave with dc2. It's a short term safety neyt and I'm bloody glad it's there. Maybe I'm lucky, but I don't really feel stigmatised. Maybe I should?
The problem here isn't single motherws as I see it. It's that we as a society have made it more than OK for men to just bugger off, very often leaving children in poverty behind them.

Why MistressMaker? FGS in loads of cases it's within the man's power to become a sperm donor or a dad.

Is this for an article?

I think, first and foremost, some men feel threatened by single mothers because (in their opinion) it reduces men to nothing more than sperm donors and makes them feel redundant.

I think there are loads of reasons why single mothers are so demonised and off the top of my head the ones I can think of first are:

1. Every mother knows deep down that at any time, she could become a member of this despised club. If for any reason her relationship goes west, she'd be in the club whether she likes it or not. So the hostility to the club from some women, is partly born of fear. If they can distance themselves from it, they can hold it at bay.

1. Someone else said this on another thread - if a woman won't even knuckle under when she's got children and put up with her man, then when will she? Man, she's out of control. That's upsetting what is considered to be "the natural order".

1. They're threatening the family, the relationship, the whole premise of how our society is built, so the meejah tells us. They are choosing to do it differently (though of course in many cases, it isn't a choice - death or desertion has been the thing that has decided their single mother status, not choice. They're showing that it is possible to have another model of child-rearing and the nuclear family is such a fragile instituttion, that it can't take too much challenge.

1. The figures for the outcomes of single parents are BAD. They are more likely to be in ill health (one of the reasons the marriage split in the first place in many cases) more likely to truant, get worse school results, be involved in criminality, drugs, early sex etc. This is because of poverty - if you take out the income variable in the data, the figures level out and it becomes very obvious that the reason the results are bad, is because of poverty. Lots of people do not know this, because the media don't tell them. So a lot of the hostility, is an honestly held perception that single parenthood in itself is bad for children, as opposed to the poverty being bad. And of course, no-one wants to address the reasons for that poverty - workplace structures and non-pyament of maintenance or maintenance set at poverty levels.

That's my lot for now, must go and do some work...

You are totally right about the difference in the way single fathers are seen as opposed to single mothers. The single fathers I know (two) are practically deified because they are heroes - one stepped in when he son was six weeks and about to be take into care. He has cared for his son alone ever since - he does a fantastic job of it too.

I am also a single parent - a single Mum since my husband left three years ago. My main experience has been that people locally expect me to be a single parent as I live on the local sink estate. They also expect that I will not be working (I am) and that I will need the mythical "loads of benefits" (I don't).

Intersting topic - should be a good discussion.