blairmacg | (no subject)

I'm looking forward to reading A Women's Nation Pushes Back From the Brink.

40% of American households are now headed by a single, female parent, while less than 20% are headed by a male breadwinner supported by a stay-at-home mother. However, the majority of society is still structured for the 20%, as if by maintaining the structure will retroactively enforce certain demographics. An attempt at cultural engineering using the Field of Dreams playbook.

I didn't set out to be a single parent. Living as one opened my eyes to the misconceptions, attitudes, and assumptions many make about single parents. They are told to work hard to avoid any societal assistance, and to invest huge amounts of time personally raising their children, and are snubbed and demeaned when they can't do all that while also attending school fulltime in order to improve their lot in life (and taking on more debt, btw).

And I have heard, more times than I can count, people discuss the struggles of single parents as if their hardship is deserved penance, thus determining there is no need to examine what could be changed for the better.

There are times when standing on the "moral high ground" is merely an excuse to feel special while watching others drown. It's no better than making one's self feel good by bullying someone else.

I'll never forget the time a married person--the family breadwinner who had a spouse at home to take care of house and children--told me that if karate really mattered to me, I'd find a way to train three or four times a week. I informed the person that raising my child was higher priority. The person simply couldn't understand that maybe, just maybe, there were not enough hours in my day to do it all.

Anyway. I'll hush now before I soapbox more.