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Being a single mom is the hardest, most empowering thing I’ve ever done

It isn’t easy—but it does teach you how strong you are.

By Sydney Hutt Updated April 27, 2022

When I told my own mother that my husband and I were splitting up , the first thing she asked me was, “Are you sure?” She’d raised my three siblings and I almost single-handedly and insisted that it was “the hardest thing she’s ever done.”

However, I didn’t take her worries too seriously. At the time, I was so jazzed on the idea of independence, too busy scream-singing The Pussycat Dolls’ “I Don’t Need a Man” in the shower that I regarded my mom’s advice about being a single mom as a bridge for Future Sydney to cross.

Related: To the mama just starting the co-parenting journey: The handoffs were the hardest part for me

Well, that future came soon enough. Once I was on my own, I realized that even if I’d already felt like I was doing 90 percent of the parenting and cleaning and general household running many of us moms take upon ourselves, that 10 percent made a huge difference.

1. It’s so much harder than I thought it would be

My husband and I had a routine where he would do the kids’ bath and put them to bed so I could get a break after he got home from work. After he moved out, suddenly that was completely on me, no matter how burned-out I felt .

And not only was I doing all the work during the day, but then once they were asleep there was no one there to help me clean up the hurricane-house, or fold the endless baskets of laundry or to remember to turn the dishwasher on before bed. There was no one to get up with the kids in the middle of the night either, to help soothe their tears, or put them on the toilet , or give out Tylenol for sudden fevers or scrub puke out of the carpet. No one to pick up the prescriptions or forgotten groceries, to catch the things I’d dropped or missed. I’m not going to pretend I wasn’t overwhelmed at first.

2. It’s empowering

Last week, after I killed the second spider I’d found in my house in a matter of days, I sent my mom a triumphant text bragging about my courage. After all, I’d always been able to shriek and have a man rush to crush whatever creepy-crawly had sent me fleeing onto the furniture. In response, my mom texted me back: “Living alone is empowering because it’s not easy.”

And that’s the truth: Being forced to rely entirely on myself for the first time since I was 20 has caused me take on a level of responsibility that’s ultimately made me much, much happier (though also more wrinkly).

3. It’s lonely

One thing I really didn’t expect was the intense isolation that comes with being a single mom. When you’re married, you’re often so used to your partner’s constant presence that you can crave having the house to yourself—an evening alone seems like bliss from a distance.

But quickly I discovered that aaaall that quiet was a huge adjustment. After I put the kids down each night, I was forced to face the long, empty hours before bed that seemed impossible to fill without a companion. The silence was unnerving, and I fantasized about moving into my mom’s house where I could be sure of conversation. But I resisted, and recently, amazingly, I’ve noticed that for the first time ever I’m actually learning how to be alone—and loving it too! But, the odd time I do want to go out…

Related: Motherhood can be lonely, but I want my child to understand the importance of community

4. It’s really tough to get a night away

When I was still married, after my husband got home I’d often take off to the grocery store solo. I’d take my time and stroll down the aisles, pushing my cart like I was a celebrity and they’d closed the store just for me. Sometimes I’d stop by a friends’ house for wine and child-free conversation or go for a drive just to enjoy not reaching backwards groping blindly for a toy as nursery rhymes blare through the speakers. Now that I live alone, I’ve lost that free child-minding a marriage partner offers, and I spend more evenings on the couch yelling at MasterChef Canada than I’d like to admit.

5. The time off isn’t really “off”

Most Friday nights, my ex will swing by and pick up our kids so they can spend the weekend with him. He brings them back on Sundays, meaning I have about one full day without them. Initially, I had ALL the feelings about this arrangement. (What would I do with so much free time?!)

But it turns out, that day off is usually just me catching up on the things I didn’t get a chance to do during the week−a list that is now much longer than it used to be.

Related: What do moms do on their days off? Work

6. You compromise more

There is one fewer parent to go around now and my kids definitely feel it. They act out more than they used to and it seems they’re very aware of the fact that they outnumber me. I’m also unable now to give them each as much of that all-important individual time they enjoyed before my husband and I split. The guilt about this can weigh pretty heavy at times, but I’m learning to recognize that while I’m not giving my girls everything, I really am doing the best I can—and that has to be good enough.

Related: 10 ways to get past conflict with your co-parent

7. You compromise less

Marriage is all about compromise, whether it’s agreeing on paint colors, or household chores or how to spend your money. Since I’ve moved out on my own, I’ve discovered that there is absolute liberation in not having to consider anyone else’s opinion.

My bedroom is the girliest it’s been since I was a teenager, I have books stacked in every corner of my house and if I don’t want to wash the dishes at the end of the night I really don’t have to. My home is entirely mine and it’s a freedom I plan on savoring, along with sleeping smack-dab in the center of the bed and hogging every last pillow.

8. You begin extreme vetting of potential partners

With all this independence and empowerment, I’ve become very unwilling to give up or even share my new life with anyone. I’m being cautious. I’m wary of needing someone too much, of leaning on them instead of myself—it would probably be an easy habit to slide back into. And even now that I am seeing someone, I’ve set serious limits, most of which equal moving about as fast as frozen molasses in terms of how much time and space I’ll devote to our relationship.

I’m not looking for someone to take back that 10 percent and make my life easier—after all, it’s the tough stuff that reminds me what I’m made of.

A version of this story was published July 16, 2017. It has been updated

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Open Access

Peer-reviewed

Research Article

Growing up with a single mother and life satisfaction in adulthood: A test of mediating and moderating factors

Affiliation German Institute for Economic Research, Berlin, Germany

* E-mail: [email protected]

Affiliation Department of Psychology, University of Warwick, Coventry, United Kingdom

• David Richter, 
• Sakari Lemola

• Published: June 15, 2017
• https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0179639
• Reader Comments

Single parenthood is increasingly common in Western societies but only little is known about its long-term effects. We therefore studied life satisfaction among 641 individuals (ages 18–66 years) who spent their entire childhood with a single mother, 1539 individuals who spent part of their childhood with both parents but then experienced parental separation, and 21,943 individuals who grew up with both parents. Individuals who grew up with a single mother for their entire childhood and to a lesser degree also individuals who experienced parental separation showed a small but persistent decrease in life satisfaction into old age controlling childhood socio-economic status. This decrease was partly mediated by worse adulthood living conditions related to socio-economic and educational success, physical health, social integration, and romantic relationship outcomes. No moderation by age, gender, and societal system where the childhood was spent (i.e. western oriented FRG or socialist GDR) was found.

Citation: Richter D, Lemola S (2017) Growing up with a single mother and life satisfaction in adulthood: A test of mediating and moderating factors. PLoS ONE 12(6): e0179639. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0179639

Editor: Jacobus P. van Wouwe, TNO, NETHERLANDS

Received: November 15, 2016; Accepted: June 1, 2017; Published: June 15, 2017

Copyright: © 2017 Richter, Lemola. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Data Availability: Data are available from the German Socio-economic Panel Study (SOEP) due to third party restrictions (for requests, please contact [email protected] ). The scientific use file of the SOEP with anonymous microdata is made available free of charge to universities and research institutes for research and teaching purposes. The direct use of SOEP data is subject to the strict provisions of German data protection law. Therefore, signing a data distribution contract is a precondition for working with SOEP data. The data distribution contract can be requested with a form. The form is provided here: http://www.diw.de/documents/dokumentenarchiv/17/diw_01.c.88926.de/soep_application_contract.pdf . For further information the SOEPhotline at either [email protected] or +49 30 89789- 292 can be contacted.

Funding: The authors received no specific funding for this work.

Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Introduction

Single parenthood is increasingly common in Western societies, with 27.5% of children in the US currently being raised in single-parent households—more than 80% of them in households headed by single mothers [ 1 ]. Although the importance of studying the long-term consequences of single parenthood on children is clear, there is still a dearth of knowledge on the relative strength of long-term effects of single parenthood on children’s well-being at different stages of the adult life-span as well as on the involved mechanisms. Therefore, we study differences in life-satisfaction across adulthood related to differences in childhood family structure in a large representative German panel study. We focus on life-satisfaction in adulthood as a highly desirable characteristic which is assumed to play a crucial role for the populations' health, longevity, and citizenship [ 2 , 3 ].

There are three main pathways by which being raised by a single mother may produce a long-lasting impact on well-being in adulthood. First, children in single-mother households are more likely to suffer from less effective guardianship and a higher likelihood of family distress and conflicts (e.g., [ 4 ]). It is well established that two-parent families generally provide more emotional resources to children than single-parent families (e.g., [ 5 , 6 ]). In a related vein, children, whose parents divorce, exhibit slightly lower psychological well-being and social adjustment than children from stable two-parent families (e.g., [ 5 , 7 , 8 – 10 ]). The experience of parental divorce may cause further emotional distress to the child [ 5 , 11 ] and may eventually lead to an insecure attachment representation [ 5 , 12 ]. Prolonged family distress and insecure attachment representation may in turn complicate the development of social skills and make it more difficult to engage in satisfying intimate relationships which may eventually also hamper life-satisfaction during adulthood [ 12 ].

A second pathway of impact is related to the generally lower socio-economic status and increased risk of economic deprivation among children in single-mother households (e.g., [ 4 ]). Economic deprivation affects children's adjustment and well-being in multiple ways. Children from poor households are at increased risk to live in a low quality home environment and poor neighborhood conditions. They are more often exposed to harsh parental rearing practices and poor parental mental health, and they more often receive suboptimal nutrition and suffer from poor physical health [ 13 ]. Finally, economic deprivation also increases the likelihood of these children to enter careers with poor socio-economic prospects and to show poor social integration when they reach early adulthood [ 5 ].

A third pathway can be summarized as the ‘missing-father hypothesis.’ In popular science, it has been discussed that children need both a mother and a father, presuming that fathering involves distinct and necessary qualities which are particularly important for gender identity formation in boys (e.g., [ 14 , 15 ]). There is also evidence that the absence of a father is associated with an increase in antisocial behaviors in boys, including violence, criminality, and substance abuse [ 16 ] and a decrease in social adjustment in general [ 5 ].

The present study

In the present study, we examine whether general life satisfaction is lower among adults raised by a single mother than for adults raised in two-parent families. To do so, we compare the general life satisfaction of adults reared by their single mothers with respondents who grew up with both parents. As single parenthood and parental divorce are associated with parental socio-economic background and education, we statistically control for parents’ education and occupational prestige along with the respondents’ age and sex.

We expect to find a dose-response relationship, that is, that adults who spent at least part of their childhood in a two-parent family are affected less—despite the significant stresses associated with the experience of parental separation [ 5 ]. We expect a smaller decrease in general life satisfaction in this group, as the parent who left the family may still provide resources to support children when they enter adulthood—which is less likely when the parent has never lived together with the child.

Second, we test mediation models namely whether the association between childhood family structure and general adulthood life satisfaction is mediated by life outcomes that may be summarized as adulthood life success, including educational attainment, employment status, occupational prestige, net income, physical health, integration into social networks, and success in romantic relationships as there is evidence that these life-circumstances are affected in a negative way by growing up in a single parent household and/or by having experienced parental divorce [ 5 ]. We hypothesize that differences in these life circumstances during adulthood partly explain the difference in general adulthood life satisfaction between individuals who have been raised by single mothers and their counterparts who grew up with both parents.

Third, we test moderation of the effects by three possible moderating variables, age, gender, and societal system where the children grew up. Regarding age differences one might assume that the effects of single parenthood wane across the adult life-span following the general psychological principle that the longer ago a negative experience the smaller the imposed impact (e.g., [ 17 ]). Regarding gender differences we test the idea frequently echoed in popular science, namely that men who were raised by single mothers are more disadvantaged in adulthood than their female counterparts. Finally, regarding the question if different societal systems differentially affect the role of childhood family settings for adulthood life satisfaction we compare individuals who grew up in the Federal Republic of Germany and in the German Democratic Republic. The western oriented Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) and the socialist German Democratic Republic (GDR), which existed between 1949 and 1990, differed sharply in terms of several variables that may possibly be relevant for single parent families namely divorce rate, female participation in the labor market, and child day-care infrastructure. The divorce rate in the socialist GDR was nearly twice as high as in the FRG and female participation in the labor market was at 89% compared to 55% in the FRG in 1990 [ 18 ]. Even more drastic difference existed with regard to the child day-care infrastructure; more than half of the children who grew up in the socialist GDR were in regular day-care, which was free of charge, while less than 2% were in day-care in the FRG at the end of the 1980s [ 19 ]. Due to these differences we expect that children who grew up with single mothers in the socialist GDR were less disadvantaged compared to their counterparts who grew up with both parents than children who grew up with single mothers in the FRG; we expect this, as the higher divorce-rate may have reduced the stigma associated with single parenthood in the GDR, moreover, single motherhood was possibly related with relatively less economic burden in the GDR compared to the FRG.

The data are from the SOEP (Version 30), which is an ongoing, nationally representative longitudinal study of private households in Germany running since 1984. Comprehensive information about the data collection, design, respondents, variables, and assessment procedures is reported in Wagner, Frick, and Schupp [ 20 ].

The sample comprised of 26,936 adults born after 1946, of whom 24,123 adults between the ages of 17 and 66 years ( M = 37.86 years, SD = 13.50 years; 52.1% female) were analyzed in the present paper. Given the present study’s focus on the effect of single parenthood vs. growing up with both parents, we categorized the participants into three subgroups: individuals who lived with both parents up to the age of 15 ( n = 21,943), those whose parents separated and who lived with their mothers for between one and fourteen years ( n = 1539), and those who lived with a single mother up to the age of 15 ( n = 641). Data from 2813 respondents were excluded who had spent part of their childhood in different family settings (e.g., raised by the mother and a new partner, by a single father with or without a new partner, or by other relatives; among the excluded respondents there were 207 individuals who grew up with a single father for 1–14 years and 21 individuals who grew up with a single father for 15 years, respectively).

Regarding the societal system where the children grew up, in the FRG, 18,186 respondents grew up with both parents up to the age of fifteen, 1234 lived with their mothers for between one and fourteen years, and 483 lived with a single mother up to the age of fifteen. In the former GDR, 3757 respondents grew up with both parents up to the age of fifteen, 305 lived with their mothers for between one and fourteen years, and 158 lived with a single mother up to the age of fifteen.

Although life satisfaction has been measured since the very beginning of the SOEP study in 1984, the information on where respondents had spent the first fifteen years of their lives was only available for respondents who entered the panel after the year 2000. During the fourteen years of data collection, respondents reported their general life satisfaction (‘All things considered, how satisfied are you with your life in general?’) at the end of each yearly interview using an 11-point scale ranging from 0 ( completely dissatisfied ) to 10 ( completely satisfied ), a measure with high reported reliability and validity [ 21 ]. To minimize error variance and to get a global indicator of adult well-being, general life satisfaction was estimated by aggregating all data available to build a mean-score ( M = 7.33, SD = 1.49). On average, respondents provided 4.71 ( SD = 4.29; range = 1–14) data points of general life satisfaction.

When entering the panel study, respondents reported where they had grown up in the first fifteen years of their life (“How many years of your childhood (up until age fifteen) did you live with the following persons? Please round off to the nearest year”). For our analyses, we used data from the response options “with both your father and mother (biological or adoptive)” and “with your mother without a new husband or partner”.

The participants also reported their socio-economic status (SES) in childhood (i.e., their parents’ education and occupational prestige), their own SES in adulthood (i.e., employment status, occupational prestige, education, and net income), their physical health status during adulthood (the number of visits to the doctor, reverse-coded), their social integration in adulthood (number of friends, number of visits to/from friends, and number of visits to/from family members), and success in romantic relationships (their relationship status and if they were divorced). Descriptive statistics of the study variables for the three subgroups are presented in Table 1 .

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https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0179639.t001

Occupational prestige was scored from 13 to 78 using the Standard International Occupation Prestige Score index (SIOPS; [ 22 ]). Occupational prestige was not available for 5377 (22.3%) of the respondents and for 12,331 (51.1%) mothers and 7097 (29.4%) fathers of respondents. In most cases these individuals had no occupational prestige due to being homemakers or being unemployed. In rare cases, however, participants also did not know their parents’ occupation. Missing occupational prestige was scored with the lowest value possible following the rationale that being unemployed or homemaker is regarded as lower in prestige than all other paid work. Respondents’ general occupational prestige was estimated by calculating the mean of all yearly data available.

Education of parents measured when respondents entered the panel and scored from 1 to 3 (no education [ 1 ]: no school attendance, no degree obtained, other degree obtained, or respondent did not know; low education [ 2 ]: lower-track secondary school; and high education [ 3 ]: intermediate-track or upper-track secondary school). Education of respondents was scored using the International Standard Classification of Education (ISCED-1997; [ 23 ]. Prior to the analyses respondents’ ISCED-Scores were collapsed into three categories (low education [ 1 ]: ISCED-Scores 0, 1, and 2; medium education [ 2 ]: ISCED-Scores 3 and 4; and high education [ 3 ]: ISCED-Scores 5 and 6). Missing information on education ( n = 138, 0.6%) was scored as the lowest category.

Yearly data on the employment status of respondents were coded to generate a continuous index (full-time employment was coded 1.0, regular part-time employment or vocational training were coded 0.5, marginal, irregular part-time employment was coded 0.25, and not employed was coded 0.0) and collapsed into a mean score to represent the general employments status of respondents across the years they reported their life satisfaction.

The number of doctor visits as well as their generalized monthly net income in EUR were estimated by calculating the mean of all yearly data available.

Social network status was measured in the years 2003, 2008, and 2013. Respondents reported how often they “visited or were visited by neighbors, friends, or acquaintances” and how often they “visited or were visited by family members or relatives” on a 1 ( daily ) to 5 ( never ) scale. In the analysis, the scales of these variables were reversed. In addition, respondents answered the question “how many close friends would you say that you have?”. Respondents’ general social network status was estimated by calculating the mean of all data available.

Respondents’ partnership status was coded (with partner was coded 1.0, no partner was coded 0.0) and collapsed into a mean score to represent the respondent’s general relationship status across the years they reported their life satisfaction. Similarly, we coded whether respondents’ marital status was “divorced” (divorced was coded 1.0, all other marital statuses were coded 0.0) for the years they reported their life satisfaction and collapsed the data into a mean score.

Intercorrelations of all study variables are depicted in S1 Table .

In a first step, respondents’ z-standardized general life satisfaction served as the dependent variable in hierarchical multiple regression analyses. In this analysis, dummy-coded variables were used to represent the childhood family settings of the subgroups. These analyses controlled respondents’ age, age 2 , age 3 , and sex as well as parents’ education (dummy coded) and parents’ occupational prestige (standardized). Age was centered before age 2 and age 3 were calculated.

In a second step, analyses of variance were conducted to test whether indicators of adulthood life outcomes including adulthood SES, physical health, social integration, and success in romantic relationships varied significantly in the three aforementioned subgroups. Again, respondents’ age, age 2 , age 3 , and sex as well as parents’ education (dummy coded) and occupational prestige (standardized) were entered into the equations to control for these background variables.

In a third step, mediation analyses were conducted to test whether differences in adulthood life satisfaction related to childhood family structure were mediated by indicators of adulthood life outcomes including adulthood SES, physical health, social integration, and success in romantic relationships in adulthood. These possible mediators of the effect of childhood family settings on general life satisfaction were entered in three blocks. In model 1 (baseline model), parents’ education (dummy coded) and occupational prestige (standardized) were included into the equation to control for childhood SES. In model 2, respondents’ own education (dummy coded), occupational prestige (standardized), employment status (centered), and net income (standardized) were entered as one block representing adulthood SES. In model 3, respondents’ adulthood physical health (number of doctor visits, reverse coded, and centered) was entered to the equation. Finally, in model 4 respondents’ number of friends (centered), visits to/from friends (centered), visits to/from family members (centered), partnership status (centered), and having been divorced (centered) were entered as one block representing adulthood social integration and success in romantic relationships.

First, we compared the variance explained by childhood family settings (only controlling age, age 2 , age 3 , and sex) with the variance that childhood family settings explained after the control variables of model 1 (childhood SES) had been entered to the regression model. Second, we compared the variance explained by childhood family settings in model 1 (only controlling childhood SES) with the variance that childhood family settings explained after the mediators of model 2 (adulthood SES) had been entered to the regression model. Third, we compared the variance explained by the childhood family settings in model 2 with the variance that childhood family settings explained after the mediators of model 3 (model 2 mediators plus physical health) had been entered to the regression model. Finally, we compared the variance explained by the childhood family settings in model 3 with the variance that childhood family settings explained after the mediators of model 4 (model 3 mediators plus adulthood social integration and success in romantic relationships) had been entered to the regression model.

Additionally, we also evaluated indirect paths of childhood family settings on adulthood general life satisfaction via these mediators employing the Structural Equation Modeling module of stata 13. Here, all possible indirect paths were tested in individual models controlling age, age 2 , age 3 , sex, and childhood SES.

In a fourth step, we included interaction terms into the regression analyses to analyze if the effects of the childhood family structure on adulthood life satisfaction varied depending on respondents’ sex and age when completing the questionnaire following the procedure proposed by Aiken and West [ 24 ]. In addition, we tested whether associations of the different childhood family settings with general life satisfaction in adulthood differed for individuals who grew up in the FRG or the GDR.

The analyses were conducted with SPSS 20 and stata 13.

Childhood family settings and adulthood life satisfaction

The main analyses showed a significant association of the different childhood family settings with general life satisfaction. Compared to people raised by both parents, respondents reared by a single mother for between 1 and 14 years or for the entire first 15 years of their lives reported significantly lower general life satisfaction than the group reared by both parents. The effect sizes for the difference in life satisfaction between the two groups reared by a single mother and the group reared by both parents were in the small range (1–14 years: d = 0.10 p < .001, entire first 15 years: d = 0.19, p < .001). Fig 1A depicts the association between childhood family settings and adulthood life satisfaction across the adult life-span controlling for childhood SES. The values underlying Fig 1A are reported in Table 2 , Model 1. The association between childhood family settings and adulthood life satisfaction was not moderated by respondents’ age or respondents’ sex (for further details see below).

A. Association of general life satisfaction with childhood family settings across the adult life-span controlling for respondents’ sex and childhood SES. 1B. Association of adulthood life outcomes (adulthood SES, physical health, social integration, and romantic relationship success) with childhood family settings controlling for respondents’ sex, age, and childhood SES.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0179639.g001

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0179639.t002

Childhood family settings and adulthood life circumstances

Fig 1B depicts the various domains of adult life outcomes including adulthood SES, physical health, adulthood social integration, and romantic relationship success separately for individuals who grew up with both parents, who lived with a single mother for between one and 14 years (i.e., individuals whose parents separated at some point in childhood), or who spent their first 15 years living with a single mother, controlling for childhood SES. Growing up with a single mother was associated with lower SES in childhood including lower parental education and occupational prestige (mother’s education p < .01, all other p s < .001). Growing up with a single mother was further related to the participants’ own SES in adulthood including employment status, occupational prestige, and net income. This association exhibited evidence of a dose-response relationship: individuals who spent their first 15 years living with a single mother reported lower SES in adulthood than individuals who spent between 1 and 14 years living with a single mother, who again were lower than their counterparts who lived with both parents throughout childhood, controlling for their childhood SES (all linear trends p < 0.05).

Participants who spent their first 15 years with a single mother further showed a lower degree of social integration during adulthood, including a smaller number of friends and fewer visits to/from family as well as less success in romantic relationships, including a lower probability of living with a partner and a higher probability of having been divorced, controlling for childhood SES (linear trends p < 0.05). Again the effect was somewhat stronger for participants who lived with a single mother for their first 15 years compared to their counterparts whose parents separated at some point during childhood. Generally, the effect sizes were in the modest range, and no significant association between childhood family settings and physical health (number of doctor visits, reverse-coded) and number of visits to/from friends was revealed after controlling childhood SES (see also S2 Table ).

Mediation of the effect on life satisfaction by adulthood life circumstances

Mediation analyses revealed that a large part of the variance in life satisfaction between different childhood family settings was explained by childhood SES, including differences in the education and occupational prestige of the respondents’ parents (i.e., 29% of the variance; see Table 2 , Model 1). Inclusion of respondents’ own education, occupational prestige, employment status, and net income during adulthood into the model attenuated the association of the different childhood family settings with general life satisfaction by a further 20% (Model 2). Inclusion of physical health (Model 3) attenuated the association of the different childhood family settings with life satisfaction by a further 6%. Finally, inclusion of respondents’ social integration and success in romantic relationships attenuated the association of the different childhood family settings with life satisfaction by a further 16% (Model 4). However, the differences in general life satisfaction between respondents who lived with both parents for their first 15 years of life and either group of respondents reared by a single mother remained significant in all models, even when all adulthood life circumstances were controlled for.

Evaluation of the indirect paths between ‘growing up with a single mother for 1–14 years vs. with both parents’ and general life satisfaction revealed that paths mediated by respondents’ education, employment status, physical health, and number of friends were significant (p < 0.05, see Fig 2 ). Regarding indirect paths between ‘growing up with a single mother for the entire childhood vs. with both parents’ and general life satisfaction, paths mediated by respondents’ education, employment status, occupational prestige, net income, number of friends, visits to/from family, partnership status, and experience of divorce in adulthood were significant (p < 0.05, see Fig 2 ).

Indirect paths were estimated separately in individual models but illustrated here together in one model for presentational parsimony. All models controlled age, age2, age3, sex, and childhood SES. Values are unstandardized path coefficients with 95% confidence limits. Life satisfaction, occupational prestige and net income were standardized; employment status, physical health (number of doctor visits, reverse coded), number of friends, visits to/from family, partnership status, and having been divorced were centered.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0179639.g002

Moderation of the effect of life circumstances on life satisfaction by sex

Testing sex differences regarding the role of these adulthood life circumstances for life satisfaction revealed that physical health (i.e., the reverse-coded number of doctor visits; men: β = .09, t = 2.46, p > .05, women: β = .20, t = 5.80, p < .001, sex × physical health interaction: t = 2.66, p < .01) and number of friends (men: β = .05, t = 1.17, p = .241, women: β = .16, t = 4.61, p < .001, sex × number of friends interaction: t = 2.54, p < .01) were more strongly associated with life satisfaction among women who spent between 1 and 14 years of their childhood living with a single mother when compared to their male counterparts. No respective interactions with sex were found for those who spent 15 years living with a single mother.

Moderation of the effect of childhood family settings on life satisfaction by age, sex, and societal system (FGR vs. GDR)

Moderation effects of the association between childhood family settings and adulthood life satisfaction by respondents’ age and respondents’ sex were non-significant when controlling for respondents’ childhood SES (age: F (6, 24104) = 0.807, p = .564, all age × years with single mother interactions: t < 0.45, p > .656; sex: F (2, 24108) = 2.554, p = .078, sex × 1–14 years with single mother interaction: t = 1.74, p = .081, sex × 15 years with single mother interaction: t = 1.51, p = .131), indicating that the effect does not change with age and does not differ between men and women. In addition, the association between childhood family settings and adulthood life satisfaction did not differ significantly between individuals who grew up in the FGR or the GDR ( F (2, 24107) = 0.734, p = .480, Societal System × 1–14 years with single mother interaction: t = 1.14, p = .253, Societal System × 15 years with single mother interaction: t = 0.34, p = .731). This effect remained non-significant ( F (2, 13687) = 0.834, p = .453) when the sample was restricted to individuals born between 1946 and 1974 who lived for their whole childhood until the age of fifteen in the FRG or GDR, respectively.

This is the first study to show that growing up with a single mother is related to a stable although modest reduction in general life satisfaction across the adult life-span until old age when adjusting for poor childhood SES. Individuals who spent their entire first 15 years of life living with a single mother showed on average approximately twice the reduction in life satisfaction compared to individuals who spent only part of their first 15 years with a single mother, which is consistent with a dose-response relationship. This suggests that growing up with a single mother throughout all of childhood and early adolescence and the related lack of resources from the father more than outweighs the well-described negative effects related to parental separation [ 5 , 7 – 9 ].

The reduction in adulthood life satisfaction was partially mediated by the individuals’ living conditions, including their lower socio-economic status and educational level, lower physical health status, and poor social integration and romantic success in adulthood. This finding is consistent with studies on adult well-being after parental divorce [ 5 , 25 ]. The decrease in adulthood life satisfaction was not moderated by age, thus we could not find waning of the effect of single parenthood with increasing distance to childhood. This is in contrast to evidence on negative life events during adulthood including divorce, bereavement, and unemployment for which the general principle of adaptation holds positing that the impact of an negative event decreases with increasing time since the event has happened (e.g., [ 17 , 26 ]). However, and in contrast to studies on effects of negative life events during adulthood we here studied long-term effects of enduring childhood family settings which are possibly more likely to lead to long-term changes to the set-point of general life-satisfaction during adulthood. Moreover, we could not find evidence supporting the widely held notion from popular science that boys are more affected than girls by the absence of their fathers. However, we did find that in females who experienced parental separation during childhood, the effect was more strongly mediated by poor physical health and a smaller number of friends than in their male counterparts.

Finally, we did not find evidence for differential associations between growing up with a single mother in the western oriented FRG compared to the socialist GDR––this although one might expect that the higher divorce rate in the GDR could have reduced the stigma associated with single parenthood in the GDR. Moreover, one might expect that the higher rate of female participation in the work force as well as the higher number of children in day-care in the socialist GDR might have mitigated inequalities between children raised in single parent households compared to children from two-parent households in the GDR.

However, our finding of a non-significant difference between the FRG and the GDR is consistent with comparisons between children raised by single parents in states with well-established welfare systems such as Norway as compared to children from single parents from states with less well-established welfare systems such as the US who neither found any differences [ 27 ]. One explanation for the lack of differences in such comparisons can be summarized by a relative deprivation perspective which holds that existing small economic differences may still matter a lot in societies with a more even distribution of goods and which is in contrast to an absolute economic deprivation perspective [ 26 ]. A second explanation for finding no differences between the FRG and the GDR is that our respondents who grew up in the GDR responded to the study many years after the breakdown of the socialist state of the GDR in 1990. The breakdown of the socialist system has lead to many changes and new economic hardships to a part of the population [ 28 ]. It remains possible that such economic hardships might have stroke adults who grew up with a single mother more strongly than their counterparts who grew up in two-parent families as they possibly also received less support from their father while they were already adults. A third explanation for finding no differences between the FRG and the GDR is that the socio-emotional resources provided by the father were also lacking in single-parent households in the GDR. The deprivation from the father's socio-emotional resources may have outbalanced the effects of some possibly more favorable societal circumstances for single-parents in the GDR.

As a limitation of the study, it remains impossible to derive causality as growing up in a single-mother household and adulthood life satisfaction might both be influenced by a third variable such as genetic factors. In this respect, there is evidence that the risk of divorce is up to 30–40% hereditary which is mediated by personality traits such as negative affectivity [ 29 ]. In a similar vein, it is possible that the direction of the causal influence between the factors that we tested as mediators and life satisfaction are different than we have specified them. For instance it is possible that the relationship between physical health and life satisfaction is reverse involving an impact of life satisfaction on physical health.

A further limitation lies in the measurement of the childhood family settings which were reported retrospectively during adulthood. While it may be assumed that adults are able to reliably report whether they spent the entire childhood vs. only a part of their childhood with a single mother, this variable may still be subject to memory distortions. Furthermore, regarding the possible mediating factors of the effect of childhood family settings on adulthood life satisfaction, physical health could have been measured in a more sophisticated fashion. In the present study it was assessed by the number of visits to the doctor, while more objective measures of physical health such as a doctor’s examinations or physical fitness tests might have revealed different findings.

In conclusion, the present study shows that growing up with a single mother—in particular if the father is absent for the entire childhood—predicts a small but stable decrease in life satisfaction across adulthood that is partly explained by lower socio-economic status and educational achievement, inferior physical health, poor social integration, and lower likelihood of romantic relationship success in adulthood. Contrary to expectations this effect was not moderated by sex, age, or the societal system in which the childhood was spent. Thus, the differences in life satisfaction were similar for younger and older, male and female, as well as participants who spent their childhood in the western oriented FRG or in the socialistic GDR.

Future cross-cultural research comparing effects of family settings on adulthood life-outcomes in several studies from different cultures may identify macro-level protective factors that could be targeted to improve the prospects of single parents and their children.

Supporting information

S1 table. intercorrelations of study variables..

* p < .05. ** p < .01. *** p < .001.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0179639.s001

S2 Table. Estimated marginal means of adulthood life circumstances by childhood family settings controlling participants' sex, age, and childhood SES (z-standardized on full sample; M , SE in brackets) .

Values with different superscripts vary significantly ( p < 0.05; Bonferroni-corrected).

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0179639.s002

S1 File. SPSS-Syntax of the main analyses. Stata-syntax of the mediation analyses.

Those not using SPSS or stata may check the included output-file.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0179639.s003

Author Contributions

• Conceptualization: SL DR.
• Data curation: DR.
• Formal analysis: DR.
• Methodology: SL DR.
• Validation: SL DR.
• Visualization: SL DR.
• Writing – original draft: SL DR.
• Writing – review & editing: SL DR.
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The beauty of being a single mom people don't understand

The summer I was 31, I put my belongings in storage and went to Europe. I told everyone I was planning to finally finish my novel, but in reality, I was hoping to meet my future husband. I went on Tinder dates across Europe before I settled in Dublin, Ireland, for a few months. 

By the fall, I was back in the U.S. I didn’t have a husband, or a boyfriend. But I was pregnant, and committed to raising my child as a single mom . The details matter less and less with each passing year, and I try to keep them relatively opaque to preserve my daughter’s privacy. But her dad isn’t in the picture or on her birth certificate. Since the first day I saw the double pale pink line on the pregnancy test, it’s just been the two of us. And I am so grateful for that.

In my 20s, I worked at a women’s magazine, primarily focused on sex and relationship content. My circle of friends was predominantly women. I saw relationships as a means to an end. By the time I hit 30 and more of my friends were becoming partnered, I felt unmoored and panicky. I was done with my life as a single woman, but unsure what I wanted for the future. I would approach dates like job interviews, trying to cast the person in front of me for the role of husband. Did he have a stable job? Great. A good relationship with his family? Awesome. Did he want kids in the future? Then I would do whatever I could to ensure we would have a second date. I didn’t have time to talk about favorite books or musical tastes or what inspired him. If he sounded good on paper, then he was the right fit for me. To me, having a partner was essential to “ladder up” in the game of life. While I knew this wasn’t a healthy approach to relationships, I also didn’t really see an alternative. I wanted a family. And a husband was the way to get it.

But then, my unexpected pregnancy changed everything — starting with my outlook.

The more things I did by myself — even things that people around me said couldn’t be done, like taking care of a newborn alone — the more I realized I didn’t need a partner. In fact, I realized that in many ways, I didn’t want one.

I went to the hospital in labor on the subway, by myself. I came home three days later, cesarean-section-sore, by myself. For the first seven months of being a parent, my daughter came everywhere with me, simply because there was no one else to watch her. Were there sleepless nights? Of course. Hours of endless Googling the afternoon she rolled off the bed onto the carpeted floor? Without a doubt. But there was also a sense of calm growing inside me. The more things I did by myself — even things that people around me said couldn’t be done, like taking care of a newborn alone — the more I realized I didn’t need a partner. In fact, I realized that in many ways, I didn’t want one.

This became more apparent as I saw how easily resentments could grow in relationships . I saw partnered friends struggle with compromises and have disagreements about child-rearing. Everything from which foods to introduce to their infants to where to send their child to day care was a topic for discussion, and often disagreement. Not needing to compromise made me rely on my own intuition and become incredibly comfortable with my own internal voice and compass. 

I was also falling in love, and it looked nothing like what I had imagined. Instead of falling in love with a potential partner, I was experiencing love for the first time with my child. I was entranced by her opinions and her personality, the way she loved animals and sang off-key to the “Frozen” soundtrack and the millions of other things she did that were toddler-typical but also unique to her. She had mannerisms that I recognized from my own childhood pictures — a half smile, bright blue eyes — but was so very much herself. 

She was also completely dependent on me. Everything from the jobs I took to where I lived was decided within the lens of what was best for her. But rather than feel resentful, I felt empowered. I had the ability to put someone else above myself. 

Rather than feel resentful, I felt empowered. I had the ability to put someone else above myself.

In my 20s, I dated one man for six months, which is my longest romantic relationship to date. His biography — lawyer, smart, wanted kids in the future — checked all the right boxes. One night, he called me because he had sprained his wrist during a workout. “I don’t want to be by myself tonight. I think I need someone here,” he said. I remember bristling in annoyance. I had a huge work project due the next day. My plan had been to spend the weekend holed up in my apartment, alone, completing it. In fact, I had liked being by myself, without anyone interrupting me. I didn’t want to be with him, and I didn’t want anyone depending on me. But I felt the right thing to do was to put aside my own needs and go take care of him for the evening, even though I was resentful and angry.

We broke up not long after, but that experience worried me. Maybe, I thought, it was proof I wasn’t meant for relationships. His request had been so normal. Why had it made me so angry? It wasn’t until I was parenting Lucy did I realize what love without expectations felt like. I was learning to parent while learning to love, and it was a deep, intense, healing journey that would have been impossible if I had just fallen into a relationship because someone checked the right boxes.

I don’t want to say that being a solo parent is easy. It’s not. I’ve made a ton of compromises in my career to have the flexibility needed for taking care of a young child. The parent-child relationship when there’s only one parent and one child can be incredibly intense. I never want Lucy to feel responsible for my emotions, and I want her to realize that while this is a life that makes sense for me, it’s not one that makes sense for everyone. I would love her to be able to have that deep, all-consuming love with a partner that eluded me in my twenties. But I know now that it’s also fine if she doesn’t. 

Today, Lucy is 8. And I know a child is very different from having a partner. But as so many of my friends’ and acquaintances’ marriages crumbled due to COVID and other factors, I’m so thankful for the stability that I was able to give Lucy by recognizing that my potential as a parent was independent of my potential as a partner.  

In the past two years, I’ve also started going on dates. I’ve lost the need to couple up, which has meant I’m a lot more genuine on dates. I’ve lost the “pick me, pick me” mentality of my 20s and finally have the perspective I needed to determine: Do I like this person? I also have confidence in knowing what is right for me. I know that I will never settle into something that isn’t the right fit, and that’s something I want Lucy to learn, too. I want her to learn she has inner strength and resolve inside her. But most of all, I want her to know that sometimes, living life out of order can be magical, empowering and exactly the right path.

Do you have a personal essay to share with TODAY? Please send your ideas to  [email protected] .

Anna Davies is a writer, editor and content strategist living in Jersey City, New Jersey, with her daughter. She has written for The New York Times, New York, Glamour and others. She loves traveling and sharing the adventures she has with her daughter on Instagram @babybackpacker . 

What You Don't Know Until You're a Single Mom

No one's around to pat you on the back — or tell you what to do.

But my little family with my 8-year-old and 10-year-old daughters is my greatest source of joy. Sure, there's no partner on hand to tell me after a difficult day that I'm doing a good job — but there's no one around to tell me I should be doing it any different, either. Along the way, I've learned a few things.

1. You alone are responsible.

Every time you pass that stray sock on the stairs that fell out of the laundry basket, you inexplicably hope that someone will pick it up for you. It will live there until you do it.

2. You can't threaten your kids with "wait until your father gets home!"

You're judge, jury, executioner. And then you become comforter of the very child you just scolded. It's complicated.

3. Nobody's eating the leftovers.

Those Tupperware containers in the fridge are one of many reminders that the man of the house is gone. Your notion of how much food to make is all out of whack. Soon you will stop making meals that have leftovers . Because without a husband to please, chicken nuggets for the kids and wine and a salad for you is a damn fine meal.

4. You get to use all of the closets.

Spread your clothes out . Let them breathe. The shower, too. All of those hair products you wanted to try, then couldn't throw out even though you didn't like them? There's room for all of them in the shower, because it's all yours now.

5. You can bring the catalogs inside.

When the catalogs arrive, chock full of tech gadgets or sports gear that you can't afford, you no longer have to hide them from your spouse. You can even let the kids cut them up to make a collage, then give that to daddy for Father's Day. Easy peasy.

6. Some broken stuff will stay broken.

The leaky faucet can be fixed by placing a bucket in the sink, then using the caught water for plants. The broken garage door that is holding your car hostage requires a repairman . Choose your battles.

7. There won't be any unexpected charges on the credit card statement.

You know exactly what you bought , and owe, because you're the only one shopping. Unless you aren't, and there's fraud protection for that. But mostly, your budget is yours.

8. The dog poop out back is all yours, too.

Talk about fun!

9. Sick days are brutal.

Sick kids mean not getting anything done as you comfort and care of them, trying to create remedies from the stuff on hand so that you don't have to take a sick child to the store, all while trying not to come in direct contact with them, because then you will become the sick one, and there is no backup to cover for you when you are ill . You get up with a fever and get the kids off to school. Because that's what single moms do. This will feel like hell at the time, but will in fact be all the proof you ever needed that you are an epic badass.

10. Resign yourself to smaller celebrations.

Kids can't buy extravagant birthday or mother's day gifts for you. Because you're the one who does all the shopping. And how do you take them shopping and pay for a gift without seeing what it is? So gifts aren't bought. They're made. Which means more anyway.

11. Vacations can be a challenge.

Navigating airports, lengthy flights , car rentals , and long car rides as a solo parent will seem too daunting to even consider. Do it anyway, just to prove to yourself that you can. And to show your kids how amazing you really are. Years later they won't remember that you forgot to take the liquids bag out at security and held up the whole line of cranky travelers, but they will remember swimming with you in the hotel pool and being the center of your universe for that moment.

Cassandra Dunn is the author of novel The Art of Adapting (Touchstone/Simon & Schuster).

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Essay on Being A Single Mom

Students are often asked to write an essay on Being A Single Mom in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on Being A Single Mom

Introduction.

Being a single mom means taking on the role of both parents. It involves a lot of hard work, love, and courage. Single moms face unique challenges, but they also experience special joys.

Single moms often feel a lot of pressure. They have to earn money, care for their children, and manage the home. It can be tough to find time for themselves. They may also feel lonely or stressed.

Despite the challenges, single moms show great strength. They become experts at multitasking. They also learn to solve problems on their own. Their strength inspires their children.

Being a single mom is also full of joys. They get to watch their kids grow and learn. They can feel proud of their hard work. Their bond with their children can be very strong.

Being a single mom is not easy, but it’s rewarding. Single moms are superheroes. They show us that love and strength can overcome any challenge.

250 Words Essay on Being A Single Mom

Being a single mom means taking on the role of both parents for your kids. It’s a tough job that requires strength, patience, and a lot of love.

Responsibilities

A single mom has to handle everything herself. She must work to pay bills, cook meals, help with homework, and make sure her kids are happy and healthy. She also has to find time for herself, which can be hard.

One of the main challenges single moms face is financial stress. With only one income, it can be hard to meet all the family’s needs. They also deal with social stigma, as some people might judge them for being a single parent.

Despite these challenges, being a single mom can also show the power of a woman. Single moms often become very strong, as they have to deal with tough situations every day. They are role models for their kids, showing them that it’s possible to overcome any challenge.

Single moms need support from family, friends, and society. This can come in many forms, like helping with childcare, offering emotional support, or providing financial aid.

Being a single mom is not easy, but it can also be rewarding. It’s a chance to show your kids the strength of a woman and the power of love. So, while it’s tough, many single moms wouldn’t change it for the world.

500 Words Essay on Being A Single Mom

Being a single mom is a role filled with both challenges and rewards. It involves raising a child or children without the daily support of a partner. This essay will discuss the various aspects of being a single mom, including the struggles, strengths, and the unique joys that come with it.

Challenges Faced

Single moms face many challenges. One of the main ones is financial pressure. With only one income, it can be hard to pay for everything a child needs. From food and clothes to education costs, it all adds up. Single moms also often struggle with time management. They have to juggle work, child care, house chores, and sometimes even studies. This can leave them feeling tired and stressed.

Strengths Developed

Despite the challenges, being a single mom also helps develop many strengths. They become very good at problem-solving. When something goes wrong, they can’t pass the problem to someone else. They have to fix it themselves. This helps them become strong and independent. Single moms also learn to be very organized. They have to plan their day well to fit in all their tasks. This helps them become efficient and effective in what they do.

Unique Joys

Even with all the struggles, being a single mom also brings unique joys. The bond between a single mom and her child is often very strong. They rely on each other and this creates a deep connection. Single moms also get to make all the decisions for their child. This can be empowering. They get to decide what values to teach their child, what food to cook for them, and how to spend their time together. These moments can bring a lot of happiness.

Support for Single Moms

It’s important for single moms to get support. This can come from family, friends, or community groups. Support can mean someone to talk to when things get tough. Or it can be practical help, like babysitting or sharing meals. Schools can also help by providing resources and understanding the special needs of children from single-parent families.

In conclusion, being a single mom is a journey filled with ups and downs. There are challenges, like financial pressure and time management. But there are also strengths developed, like problem-solving and organization. And there are unique joys, like the strong bond with their child and the power to make decisions. With the right support, single moms can provide a loving and nurturing environment for their children. They are a testament to the resilience and strength of the human spirit.

That’s it! I hope the essay helped you.

If you’re looking for more, here are essays on other interesting topics:

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Single Mothers’ Social Issues Essay (Article)

Introduction, poverty and the well-being of single mothers, mastery and personal control, social capital, social support, and social security, universal social policy, reference list.

The subject of single motherhood has been ignored for a long time. People often struggle to meet their daily needs without caring if everybody else is leading a comfortable life. In a real sense, single mothers struggle to make ends meet. The four central themes discussed in this paper include poverty, mastery and personal control, universal social policies, and the social capital and social support of the single mothers in poverty.

In the ancient days, it was rare to find single mothers. Women would accept to be in polygamous families or in abusive marriages to have the father figure taking care of the family. However, lately, women would rather go and suffer from poverty instead of staying in abusive marriages. Single women spend most of their time hustling and trying to make ends meet.

While employment policies would seem to help the women by offering them over-time payments, the overtime has its negative effects on the social life of the single mothers, as well as their dependants. The mothers who seek overtime payments to earn additional income have insufficient time to care for their children and perform house chores. Their children are forced to learn to do some of the difficult chores at a tender age; a case of child abuse (Albelda, 2011).

Such mothers and their children have hardened up to live in a state of absolute poverty. Such families have accepted their poverty situation, and they suffer in silence because they do not know where to seek refuge. The poverty of single mothers can be explained by such factors as low wages and lack of public support (Hill, 2011, p. 2). Single mothers in poverty treat their problems as personal responsibilities, and they have developed coping strategies. Their children may not obtain full education like children from elite families, and they are not sure of their next meal.

Some of the single mothers, especially those who lack sufficient education to secure lucrative jobs, have to do manual jobs to earn for living. Reports indicate that some single mothers are molested by their employers who know that they do not have a choice, but to submit to them. Some single mothers admitted that they had sexual insults from their employers, and they feared the consequence of reporting the matter.

The little consideration given to single women living in poverty distorts the women and their families. Some of the women struggle to the extent of being hopeless. They turn from highly esteemed individuals to lowly esteemed individuals with no self-control (Ridge & Millar, 2010). The overwork leaves single mothers with no ability to obtain better job opportunities or the freedom to make better choices in life.

Some mothers have given up in life; they have no control over their lives, and therefore, relatives or privileged individuals misuse them for their benefit. The poor women have consistent exposure to stresses, and this reduces their self-esteem and life span (Eshbaugh, 2009). The single mothers living in poverty reach a point where they cannot achieve their set goals because of the difficult economic status.

They may end up suffering from depression, ulcers, high blood pressures, and some of them may be even prone to the fatal outcome. Death marks the beginning of a very difficult lifestyle for the helpless kids, who are left in the unsafe hands of relatives and the harsh world. There is a high probability that the poverty in the family will reoccur in the future if no action is taken.

It would be worthwhile if the government reviewed its antipoverty programs and upgraded the levels of benefits of the low-income earners, and especially the single women living in poverty. Other than enhancing the employment opportunities for single mothers living in poverty, the government needs to accept the fact that the nation is in a crisis (Brandy & Burroway, 2012). Their number of marriages are dilapidated, where women prefer to live singly to have their freedom.

Regardless of the cause of single parenthood, the person suffering greatly is the innocent child whose life determines the future of the nation (Johnson, Honnold, & Threlfall, 2011). The government should work towards protecting the children of single mothers and ensuring that they do not suffer from the consequences of broken marriages. The single mothers who have a heavy burden of caring for their children need help from the government.

It is important that the Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) program has played a critical role in helping single mothers living in poverty. Moreover, there is a program named Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), which has played a critical role in strengthening the avenue between work and families of single mothers living in poverty. However, not all single mothers are aware of the above-named programs, and the government needs to invest in advertising the programs to bring general awareness to the required audience.

Single parenthood is not deliberate for all mothers. Some fateful incidences like the death of the husband, unplanned pregnancies, or rape would lead to single parenthood. However, there are those single mothers who deliberately chose to lead a single motherhood lifestyle. Modern Americans are more willing to spend a significant part of their adult life without a formal spouse. This factor contributes to rising divorce rates (Cherlin, 2009, p. 229). The mothers did it for the desire of mastering their lives.

In this case, mastering is the ability for single mothers to take full control of their lives and the lives of their children (Eshbaugh, 2009). Research indicates that most of the women who deliberately chose to live the single motherhood lifestyle had a history of abusive marriages and thus preferred living a life of poverty as long as they have sound minds.

Although teen mothers are said to demonstrate lower mastery levels as compared to matured mothers, to some extent, mastering one’s life is casual relief form stressfulness. The teen mothers can gain experience in mastering their lives as they outgrow from teenage to adulthood.

Mastering is a mechanism that enables most single mothers to cope with all life situations. The single mothers living in poverty are hardened, whereby they develop a way out every difficult situation that arises (Eshbaugh, 2009). Life is interesting, and a series of successes and failures enables people to master their lifestyles. Single women living in poverty pass the mastery ability to their children, and thus, their children can negotiate and alter difficult situations.

If subjected under similar life problems, children living in poverty with their single mother are likely to cope effectively as compared to children from rich families. Such individuals are more likely to accept different forms of family because they are not strongly affected by conventional stereotypes about family (Cherlin, 2009, p. 229). Research indicates that some of the successful individuals in the world came from very humble backgrounds that opened their minds, and this molded them from being great innovators and inventors.

Mastery has played a critical role in single mothers living in poverty. Even though the government gives financial and material assistance to poor mothers, they have also invented new ways of generating income. Single mothers living in poverty are slowly becoming less dependent on government support, and they may soon be self-reliant (Albelda, 2011). They have invented ways of generating income from underexploited self-sufficient projects.

The term poverty will soon snuff out because many single women are participating in self-employment projects. The government should take responsibility and give financial support to the projects of the mothers. Adult education and training programs would play a critical role in encouraging single women living in poverty to take part in the self-sufficiency programs instead of waiting for aid from the government.

Mastery and personal control have enabled single mothers to treat their problems as personal responsibilities. They acknowledge their problems and work tirelessly towards finding tentative or permanent solutions to the problems. Mastery has enabled single mothers living in poverty to accept their position and keep away from criticism of those trying to underestimate them.

Despite the life stresses that poor mothers go through, they have the energy to walk majestically and proclaim their positions in society (Iwata, 2007). It is upon the government to work tirelessly to enhance the sense of belonging to the single women living in poverty.

The society is the greatest determinant of the well-being of single mothers living in poverty. Social support to the single mothers living in poverty offers the mothers with the necessary network to develop social contacts outside their sphere, and meet with potential employees and acquaintances. The information obtained from social networks helps single women considerably.

They obtain new investment ideas, share their life experiences, access useful information, and obtain comfort from their peers. Social support enables poor mothers to feel a sense of belonging, and thus, social trust is strengthened (Johnson, Honnold, & Threlfall, 2011). Strengthened social trust helps in building strong community relationships and deepened mutual obligations. Gender inequalities have not been eliminated, and at present women tend to have lower incomes than men do.

In many cases, women are financially dependent on their spouses (Hill, 2011, p. 5). Social support builds unity, such that all people, regardless of their social class, can access the diversified community resources. Social capital has played a critical role in offering both social support and social power to single mothers living in poverty.

The poor mothers can access soft loans to meet their daily needs. The mothers can even use the loans to invest in small projects that would enhance their financial well-being, and thus be able to manage their needs. The single mothers living in poverty are among the minorities in the society, but the social capital projects recognize them, and the projects help in creating strong bonds between the single mothers and women of their caliber.

As stated before, the society takes the role of offer social security to single mothers living in poverty. It is upon the society to ensure the poor mothers live a comfortable life free from distresses. It is noteworthy that single mothers living in poverty are not vocal because of their tightened schedules in their daily hustles to make ends meet. They may not have access to the necessary information on the current issues. It is upon the society to find ways to get them informed of the happenings.

The information of the procedures to follow in case of a problem should be made available in the places that the poor mothers are likely to visit (Iwata, 2007). Politicians are likely to take advantage of poor mothers. They make heavenly promises to the poor mothers to win their votes, and it is upon the society to protect the single mothers living in poverty from false information.

One should remember about the stereotypes about single mothers; for instance, according to a popular misconception, these women do not seek employment and only expect support from the government (Hill, 2011, p. 4). Due to these stereotypes, they do not receive the assistance that they need.

The society and the local governments should act on behalf of the larger government to embed and protect single mothers living in poverty. The single mothers ought to have a voice to speak, and an ear to listen to them. Most importantly, the government should take an initiative to punish the reckless individuals who father children and leave the burden of caring for the children to the mothers.

It takes a couple to have a child, but the single mothers have often taken the full responsibility of caring for the child. Overall, the main objective of social policies is to improve the welfare of citizens (Petersen, Sznycer, Cosmides, & Tooby, 2012). Universal social policies would work towards protecting the rights of the child. Single mothers living in poverty strain heavily in trying to meet the needs of the children that keep on growing as the children grow older (Brandy & Burroway, 2012).

The biological fathers of the children could be somewhere “enjoying” life, whereas the mother and the child suffer in difficult life situations. While some single mothers could have chosen to be single, there must be an underlying reason, probably abusive marriages. Some Americans have often mistaken single mothers, when, they say that they deserve to live in poverty.

However, some single mothers’ husbands neglect them, some conceived at a tender age, while some single mothers’ husbands died before they could gather enough wealth to cater for the children. It is encouraging to note that single mothers have benefit entitlements from government policies.

The government also has policies to offer total assistance to single mothers living in poverty. The government has taken a great role in ensuring the existence of policies that care for the children. Children living in poverty have statutory entitlements, social insurance, and child maintenance allowances.

The universal social policies have played a critical role in ensuring that single mothers living in poverty have access to their basic needs (Ridge & Millar, 2010). However, some of those mothers have remained to live a life of poverty because of the overdependence of the government.

They never take quality time to think of a worthwhile project that can earn them some extra income to upgrade their lifestyle. It is noteworthy that the “lazy” single mothers living in poverty ought to rise and find a way to generate extra cash other than their entitlements by the government. Also, the scholars state that the development and realization of the social policy largely depend on the norms and values, which are encouraged in the society (Petersen et al., 2012).

From the discussions, it is evident that single mothers are a minority group in society, and they need recognition and protection. The society and the government should invent and invest in long-lasting solutions to alleviate poverty. The solutions would relieve the government from the burden of overdependence on financial support, and this will consequently relieve the taxpayer.

Albelda, R. (2011). Time binds: US antipoverty policies, poverty, and the well-being of single mothers. Feminist Economics, 17 (4), 189-214.

Brandy, D., & Burroway, R. (2012). Targeting, universalism, and single-mother poverty: A multilevel analysis across 18 affluent democracies. Demography, 49 (1), 719-746.

Cherlin, A. (2009). The Origins of the Ambivalent Acceptance of Divorce. Journal Of Marriage & Family , 71 (2), 226-229.

Eshbaugh, E. (2009). Socioeconomic predictors of mastery among mothers in poverty. Journal of Poverty , 13 (1), 426-440.

Hill, K. (2011). Single Mothers – How are They Doing?. Journal Of Organizational Culture, Communications & Conflict , 15 (1), 1-10.

Iwata, M. (2007). Identifying the poor: Analysis of impoverished single-mother households. Journal of Poverty , 11 (3), 29-45.

Johnson, J.A., Honnold, J.A., Threlfall, P. (2011). Impact of social capital on employment and marriage among low-income single mothers. Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare , 38 (4), 9-31.

Petersen, M., Sznycer, D., Cosmides, L., & Tooby, J. (2012). Who Deserves Help? Evolutionary Psychology, Social Emotions, and Public Opinion about Welfare. Political Psychology , 33 (3), 395-418.

Ridge, T., & Millar, J. (2010). Following families: Working lone-mother families and their children. Social Policy & Administration, 45 (1), 85-97.

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Navigating College as a Single Mother

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5 Ways To Write Scholarship Essay As A Single Mother

Last Updated on January 22, 2024 by Lori Pace

Table of Contents

When it comes to crafting a compelling scholarship essay, every word and idea matters. Single mothers, in particular, face unique challenges that can make this task even more daunting. However, with determination and the right guidance, you can overcome these obstacles and shine through your essay. One crucial aspect of a winning scholarship essay is a clear and persuasive thesis statement that encapsulates your goals and aspirations. This is where thesis writing help can play a pivotal role. Seeking assistance from experienced professionals or mentors can assist you in articulating your thoughts and objectives effectively, increasing your chances of securing the financial support you need for a brighter future. So, don’t hesitate to reach out for thesis writing help as you embark on this journey toward educational success.

If you’re a single parent with dependent children, going to college doesn’t have to be just a pipe dream. But before that, you have to pass the “test” to achieve a scholarship if you want to reduce the financial pressure. So, in this article, we’ll talk about the top 5 ways to write a scholarship essay for single moms and other things to keep in mind.

Single Mothers’ Facts

There is around 43 percent of college students in the United States are single mothers, according to the Institute for Women’s Policy Research. Almost 88% of single mothers have incomes that fall below the poverty line.

Single mothers who go to college and acquire a degree are often saddled with more debt than their peers who do not. Single parents, on the other hand, had an average of $3,800 more debt than students without children. This is nearly $5,000 more debt than students without children of the same gender.

It’s an undeniable fact that acquiring a college degree increases your salary significantly. Those with a bachelor’s degree earn 66% more than those with a high school diploma throughout the course of their career. Below are the top 5 ways to write scholarship essay for single moms.

5 ways to write scholarship essay for single moms

Follow directions.

Reading scholarship application essays, according to Shore, is the most frustrating part of the process. What this implies is paying attention to any formatting or length limits, as well as responding to the question.

A good rule of thumb to follow when writing an essay is to focus on responding directly to the question that was posed. “Longer doesn’t always equate to higher quality. The essay will be boring to both the writer and the reader if the former is the case.”

Get Personal and Be Specific

Experts suggest that the most important part of a successful scholarship essay is to make it personal and include powerful details. In a sea of academic essays that may be tedious to readers who are sifting through hundreds or even thousands of submissions, an essay that seems authentic and offers insights into the applicant’s deeper character will stand out. To be considered for a scholarship from any reputable organization, the scholarship essay writer recommends students submit a scholarship application. This includes multiple essays outlining their academic goals, aspirations for future employment, and other relevant information. The social justice-focused nonprofit foundation provides more than 60 scholarships to deserving post-secondary students in the Northwest.

Tell a Story in Your Scholarship Essay

Monica Matthews, author of the scholarship guide, “ How to Win College Scholarships ,” believes that an outstanding essay catches the reader’s attention from the first sentence.

In order to get their audience interested, students should use a hook that is both personal and concrete “Mathews sent that.”. Judges can’t assess a person’s true character just by hearing them mention how they’ve benefited others. Essays with lasting impact are those that use interesting details to describe personal experiences that are based on real-life events. Experts advise students to consider the essay’s structure and how it might entice a reader. The story should reflect the student’s life.

Customize Your Scholarship Essay

The use of a previously written essay for a different application may be permissible and even smart in some situations. Students, on the other hand, should exercise caution, according to experts. Colleen Paparella Ganjian, an independent educational consultant and founder of DC College Counseling in Virginia, noted in an email that “many students try to re-purpose writings from the admissions process for scholarship essays, and the result ends up being so-so.” When writing an essay, students should focus on answering the exact question they are being asked and the organization they are applying to.

Don’t Make Yourself Customized to the Reader

Many students feel the need to exhibit a certain version of themselves in scholarship applications and essays. Not always necessary. Shore says scholarship applicants must be themselves. Mandee Heller Adler, founder, and CEO of Florida-based Overseas College Counselors says personalizing oneself may appeal to nontraditional or international students .

“Share your traditions, culture, and experiences. If you’re a foreign candidate, minority, or non-traditional student, don’t “Americanize” your application “Heller Adler emailed it. “The goal is to stand out among scholarship hopefuls. Don’t be afraid to delve into your heritage to better understand your identity.”

It’s not easy for anyone to pay for their child’s college education, but it’s especially challenging for single moms. Whether you’re returning to school or starting your academic career from scratch, there are numerous resources to help you succeed. Even though scholarships for single moms are available, we at College Rank can help you streamline your college search. There are a number of factors to consider while choosing a college to attend. These can include the type and cost of education you desire.

Lori Pace is a single mother of three daughters ages 7 and under. As a working mom from home, she balances kids, work and two crazy dogs with humor and love. Follow Lori as she honestly gives tips and advice based on her own experiences as a single mom!

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Single Mom Personal Essay Series: Christin Thorpe

Single mom personal essay – christin thorpe.

During my senior year of college at Hampton University, I became a twenty-one-year-old pregnant preacher’s daughter. At the time, there was so much anticipation from family and friends regarding my upcoming graduation. But, there wasn’t much excitement about my becoming a mom. My loved ones made plans to attend my graduation ceremony, a ceremony I wasn’t even sure that I would attend. My due date and graduation date both fell on May 10th.

I discovered that I was pregnant the day before my classes started my senior year. Even though I was considered grown, being twenty-one years old and two semesters away from receiving a degree, I was mortified. When I informed my family I was pregnant, they treated me like a teenage mom dropping out of high school.

Even though the pregnancy was unplanned, I looked forward to becoming a mom, but unfortunately, my family and friends did not share my enthusiasm. As I prepared for the greatest gift in my life–the birth of my child, suppressed my joy and bore shame for getting pregnant. No one rubbed my belly, accompanied me to doctor’s appointments or just celebrated the little things along the way. Then, one day, I went to one of my favorite restaurants to pick up food, and a young cashier inquired about my pregnancy. I shared the shame I felt due to my family and friends’ reactions to my pregnancy. She proceeded to tell me about her multiple miscarriages and the recent loss of yet another baby. She told me that I should not be ashamed because I am blessed to bring a life into this world. That was the day my perception of my pregnancy changed forever.

Even though the negative comments from my family and friends still hurt, I no longer let them affect how I felt about my pregnancy. God chose me to give birth to my son. The need for validation shifted from my family and friends to God. It was time to heal from heartache and drop the guilt of being a young, unwed mother. I chose God and accepted the path He chose for me.

Giving Birth & Moving Forward

My son finally arrived–and not on my graduation day. I gave birth ten days after walking across the stage to receive my degree. Three months later, I started graduate school and became an advocate for young mothers.

Ozzie and Me Scholarship Foundation

Sharing my experience of being a young, Black mom helped me heal and control the narrative. I am resilient. I am educated. I am unashamed. My story inspired others to overcome the stigmas and obstacles of young motherhood and reach their academic goals. And that inspired me to start the Ozzie and Me Scholarship Foundation. The foundation awards an annual $1000 scholarship to a young mother enrolled full-time in a graduate or undergraduate degree program. Through the Ozzie & Me Scholarship Foundation, I hope that young moms are inspired and supported in accomplishing their goals and combating stereotypes of being a young mother.

Being a single young mother is hard, and it’s undoubtedly not something that I would encourage anyone to do. Still, our experiences are just as beautiful, authentic and deserving as anyone else.

Disclaimer: The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed in this single mom personal essay series belong solely to the author, and not necessarily that of Single Mom Defined or persons referenced. The information is provided on an “as is” basis with no guarantees of completeness, accuracy, usefulness, or timeliness.

Christin Thorpe

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Home — Essay Samples — Life — Single Parenting — Single Mothers: Navigating a Complex Journey

Single Mothers: Navigating a Complex Journey

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• The Case for Marrying an Older Man

A woman’s life is all work and little rest. An age gap relationship can help.

In the summer, in the south of France, my husband and I like to play, rather badly, the lottery. We take long, scorching walks to the village — gratuitous beauty, gratuitous heat — kicking up dust and languid debates over how we’d spend such an influx. I purchase scratch-offs, jackpot tickets, scraping the former with euro coins in restaurants too fine for that. I never cash them in, nor do I check the winning numbers. For I already won something like the lotto, with its gifts and its curses, when he married me.

He is ten years older than I am. I chose him on purpose, not by chance. As far as life decisions go, on balance, I recommend it.

When I was 20 and a junior at Harvard College, a series of great ironies began to mock me. I could study all I wanted, prove myself as exceptional as I liked, and still my fiercest advantage remained so universal it deflated my other plans. My youth. The newness of my face and body. Compellingly effortless; cruelly fleeting. I shared it with the average, idle young woman shrugging down the street. The thought, when it descended on me, jolted my perspective, the way a falling leaf can make you look up: I could diligently craft an ideal existence, over years and years of sleepless nights and industry. Or I could just marry it early.

So naturally I began to lug a heavy suitcase of books each Saturday to the Harvard Business School to work on my Nabokov paper. In one cavernous, well-appointed room sat approximately 50 of the planet’s most suitable bachelors. I had high breasts, most of my eggs, plausible deniability when it came to purity, a flush ponytail, a pep in my step that had yet to run out. Apologies to Progress, but older men still desired those things.

I could not understand why my female classmates did not join me, given their intelligence. Each time I reconsidered the project, it struck me as more reasonable. Why ignore our youth when it amounted to a superpower? Why assume the burdens of womanhood, its too-quick-to-vanish upper hand, but not its brief benefits at least? Perhaps it came easier to avoid the topic wholesale than to accept that women really do have a tragically short window of power, and reason enough to take advantage of that fact while they can. As for me, I liked history, Victorian novels, knew of imminent female pitfalls from all the books I’d read: vampiric boyfriends; labor, at the office and in the hospital, expected simultaneously; a decline in status as we aged, like a looming eclipse. I’d have disliked being called calculating, but I had, like all women, a calculator in my head. I thought it silly to ignore its answers when they pointed to an unfairness for which we really ought to have been preparing.

I was competitive by nature, an English-literature student with all the corresponding major ambitions and minor prospects (Great American novel; email job). A little Bovarist , frantic for new places and ideas; to travel here, to travel there, to be in the room where things happened. I resented the callow boys in my class, who lusted after a particular, socially sanctioned type on campus: thin and sexless, emotionally detached and socially connected, the opposite of me. Restless one Saturday night, I slipped on a red dress and snuck into a graduate-school event, coiling an HDMI cord around my wrist as proof of some technical duty. I danced. I drank for free, until one of the organizers asked me to leave. I called and climbed into an Uber. Then I promptly climbed out of it. For there he was, emerging from the revolving doors. Brown eyes, curved lips, immaculate jacket. I went to him, asked him for a cigarette. A date, days later. A second one, where I discovered he was a person, potentially my favorite kind: funny, clear-eyed, brilliant, on intimate terms with the universe.

I used to love men like men love women — that is, not very well, and with a hunger driven only by my own inadequacies. Not him. In those early days, I spoke fondly of my family, stocked the fridge with his favorite pasta, folded his clothes more neatly than I ever have since. I wrote his mother a thank-you note for hosting me in his native France, something befitting a daughter-in-law. It worked; I meant it. After graduation and my fellowship at Oxford, I stayed in Europe for his career and married him at 23.

Of course I just fell in love. Romances have a setting; I had only intervened to place myself well. Mainly, I spotted the precise trouble of being a woman ahead of time, tried to surf it instead of letting it drown me on principle. I had grown bored of discussions of fair and unfair, equal or unequal , and preferred instead to consider a thing called ease.

The reception of a particular age-gap relationship depends on its obviousness. The greater and more visible the difference in years and status between a man and a woman, the more it strikes others as transactional. Transactional thinking in relationships is both as American as it gets and the least kosher subject in the American romantic lexicon. When a 50-year-old man and a 25-year-old woman walk down the street, the questions form themselves inside of you; they make you feel cynical and obscene: How good of a deal is that? Which party is getting the better one? Would I take it? He is older. Income rises with age, so we assume he has money, at least relative to her; at minimum, more connections and experience. She has supple skin. Energy. Sex. Maybe she gets a Birkin. Maybe he gets a baby long after his prime. The sight of their entwined hands throws a lucid light on the calculations each of us makes, in love, to varying degrees of denial. You could get married in the most romantic place in the world, like I did, and you would still have to sign a contract.

Twenty and 30 is not like 30 and 40; some freshness to my features back then, some clumsiness in my bearing, warped our decade, in the eyes of others, to an uncrossable gulf. Perhaps this explains the anger we felt directed at us at the start of our relationship. People seemed to take us very, very personally. I recall a hellish car ride with a friend of his who began to castigate me in the backseat, in tones so low that only I could hear him. He told me, You wanted a rich boyfriend. You chased and snuck into parties . He spared me the insult of gold digger, but he drew, with other words, the outline for it. Most offended were the single older women, my husband’s classmates. They discussed me in the bathroom at parties when I was in the stall. What does he see in her? What do they talk about? They were concerned about me. They wielded their concern like a bludgeon. They paraphrased without meaning to my favorite line from Nabokov’s Lolita : “You took advantage of my disadvantage,” suspecting me of some weakness he in turn mined. It did not disturb them, so much, to consider that all relationships were trades. The trouble was the trade I’d made struck them as a bad one.

The truth is you can fall in love with someone for all sorts of reasons, tiny transactions, pluses and minuses, whose sum is your affection for each other, your loyalty, your commitment. The way someone picks up your favorite croissant. Their habit of listening hard. What they do for you on your anniversary and your reciprocal gesture, wrapped thoughtfully. The serenity they inspire; your happiness, enlivening it. When someone says they feel unappreciated, what they really mean is you’re in debt to them.

When I think of same-age, same-stage relationships, what I tend to picture is a woman who is doing too much for too little.

I’m 27 now, and most women my age have “partners.” These days, girls become partners quite young. A partner is supposed to be a modern answer to the oppression of marriage, the terrible feeling of someone looming over you, head of a household to which you can only ever be the neck. Necks are vulnerable. The problem with a partner, however, is if you’re equal in all things, you compromise in all things. And men are too skilled at taking .

There is a boy out there who knows how to floss because my friend taught him. Now he kisses college girls with fresh breath. A boy married to my friend who doesn’t know how to pack his own suitcase. She “likes to do it for him.” A million boys who know how to touch a woman, who go to therapy because they were pushed, who learned fidelity, boundaries, decency, manners, to use a top sheet and act humanely beneath it, to call their mothers, match colors, bring flowers to a funeral and inhale, exhale in the face of rage, because some girl, some girl we know, some girl they probably don’t speak to and will never, ever credit, took the time to teach him. All while she was working, raising herself, clawing up the cliff-face of adulthood. Hauling him at her own expense.

I find a post on Reddit where five thousand men try to define “ a woman’s touch .” They describe raised flower beds, blankets, photographs of their loved ones, not hers, sprouting on the mantel overnight. Candles, coasters, side tables. Someone remembering to take lint out of the dryer. To give compliments. I wonder what these women are getting back. I imagine them like Cinderella’s mice, scurrying around, their sole proof of life their contributions to a more central character. On occasion I meet a nice couple, who grew up together. They know each other with a fraternalism tender and alien to me.  But I think of all my friends who failed at this, were failed at this, and I think, No, absolutely not, too risky . Riskier, sometimes, than an age gap.

My younger brother is in his early 20s, handsome, successful, but in many ways: an endearing disaster. By his age, I had long since wisened up. He leaves his clothes in the dryer, takes out a single shirt, steams it for three minutes. His towel on the floor, for someone else to retrieve. His lovely, same-age girlfriend is aching to fix these tendencies, among others. She is capable beyond words. Statistically, they will not end up together. He moved into his first place recently, and she, the girlfriend, supplied him with a long, detailed list of things he needed for his apartment: sheets, towels, hangers, a colander, which made me laugh. She picked out his couch. I will bet you anything she will fix his laundry habits, and if so, they will impress the next girl. If they break up, she will never see that couch again, and he will forget its story. I tell her when I visit because I like her, though I get in trouble for it: You shouldn’t do so much for him, not for someone who is not stuck with you, not for any boy, not even for my wonderful brother.

Too much work had left my husband, by 30, jaded and uninspired. He’d burned out — but I could reenchant things. I danced at restaurants when they played a song I liked. I turned grocery shopping into an adventure, pleased by what I provided. Ambitious, hungry, he needed someone smart enough to sustain his interest, but flexible enough in her habits to build them around his hours. I could. I do: read myself occupied, make myself free, materialize beside him when he calls for me. In exchange, I left a lucrative but deadening spreadsheet job to write full-time, without having to live like a writer. I learned to cook, a little, and decorate, somewhat poorly. Mostly I get to read, to walk central London and Miami and think in delicious circles, to work hard, when necessary, for free, and write stories for far less than minimum wage when I tally all the hours I take to write them.

At 20, I had felt daunted by the project of becoming my ideal self, couldn’t imagine doing it in tandem with someone, two raw lumps of clay trying to mold one another and only sullying things worse. I’d go on dates with boys my age and leave with the impression they were telling me not about themselves but some person who didn’t exist yet and on whom I was meant to bet regardless. My husband struck me instead as so finished, formed. Analyzable for compatibility. He bore the traces of other women who’d improved him, small but crucial basics like use a coaster ; listen, don’t give advice. Young egos mellow into patience and generosity.

My husband isn’t my partner. He’s my mentor, my lover, and, only in certain contexts, my friend. I’ll never forget it, how he showed me around our first place like he was introducing me to myself: This is the wine you’ll drink, where you’ll keep your clothes, we vacation here, this is the other language we’ll speak, you’ll learn it, and I did. Adulthood seemed a series of exhausting obligations. But his logistics ran so smoothly that he simply tacked mine on. I moved into his flat, onto his level, drag and drop, cleaner thrice a week, bills automatic. By opting out of partnership in my 20s, I granted myself a kind of compartmentalized, liberating selfishness none of my friends have managed. I am the work in progress, the party we worry about, a surprising dominance. When I searched for my first job, at 21, we combined our efforts, for my sake. He had wisdom to impart, contacts with whom he arranged coffees; we spent an afternoon, laughing, drawing up earnest lists of my pros and cons (highly sociable; sloppy math). Meanwhile, I took calls from a dear friend who had a boyfriend her age. Both savagely ambitious, hyperclose and entwined in each other’s projects. If each was a start-up , the other was the first hire, an intense dedication I found riveting. Yet every time she called me, I hung up with the distinct feeling that too much was happening at the same time: both learning to please a boss; to forge more adult relationships with their families; to pay bills and taxes and hang prints on the wall. Neither had any advice to give and certainly no stability. I pictured a three-legged race, two people tied together and hobbling toward every milestone.

I don’t fool myself. My marriage has its cons. There are only so many times one can say “thank you” — for splendid scenes, fine dinners — before the phrase starts to grate. I live in an apartment whose rent he pays and that shapes the freedom with which I can ever be angry with him. He doesn’t have to hold it over my head. It just floats there, complicating usual shorthands to explain dissatisfaction like, You aren’t being supportive lately . It’s a Frenchism to say, “Take a decision,” and from time to time I joke: from whom? Occasionally I find myself in some fabulous country at some fabulous party and I think what a long way I have traveled, like a lucky cloud, and it is frightening to think of oneself as vapor.

Mostly I worry that if he ever betrayed me and I had to move on, I would survive, but would find in my humor, preferences, the way I make coffee or the bed nothing that he did not teach, change, mold, recompose, stamp with his initials, the way Renaissance painters hid in their paintings their faces among a crowd. I wonder if when they looked at their paintings, they saw their own faces first. But this is the wrong question, if our aim is happiness. Like the other question on which I’m expected to dwell: Who is in charge, the man who drives or the woman who put him there so she could enjoy herself? I sit in the car, in the painting it would have taken me a corporate job and 20 years to paint alone, and my concern over who has the upper hand becomes as distant as the horizon, the one he and I made so wide for me.

To be a woman is to race against the clock, in several ways, until there is nothing left to be but run ragged.

We try to put it off, but it will hit us at some point: that we live in a world in which our power has a different shape from that of men, a different distribution of advantage, ours a funnel and theirs an expanding cone. A woman at 20 rarely has to earn her welcome; a boy at 20 will be turned away at the door. A woman at 30 may find a younger woman has taken her seat; a man at 30 will have invited her. I think back to the women in the bathroom, my husband’s classmates. What was my relationship if not an inconvertible sign of this unfairness? What was I doing, in marrying older, if not endorsing it? I had taken advantage of their disadvantage. I had preempted my own. After all, principled women are meant to defy unfairness, to show some integrity or denial, not plan around it, like I had. These were driven women, successful, beautiful, capable. I merely possessed the one thing they had already lost. In getting ahead of the problem, had I pushed them down? If I hadn’t, would it really have made any difference?

When we decided we wanted to be equal to men, we got on men’s time. We worked when they worked, retired when they retired, had to squeeze pregnancy, children, menopause somewhere impossibly in the margins. I have a friend, in her late 20s, who wears a mood ring; these days it is often red, flickering in the air like a siren when she explains her predicament to me. She has raised her fair share of same-age boyfriends. She has put her head down, worked laboriously alongside them, too. At last she is beginning to reap the dividends, earning the income to finally enjoy herself. But it is now, exactly at this precipice of freedom and pleasure, that a time problem comes closing in. If she would like to have children before 35, she must begin her next profession, motherhood, rather soon, compromising inevitably her original one. The same-age partner, equally unsettled in his career, will take only the minimum time off, she guesses, or else pay some cost which will come back to bite her. Everything unfailingly does. If she freezes her eggs to buy time, the decision and its logistics will burden her singly — and perhaps it will not work. Overlay the years a woman is supposed to establish herself in her career and her fertility window and it’s a perfect, miserable circle. By midlife women report feeling invisible, undervalued; it is a telling cliché, that after all this, some husbands leave for a younger girl. So when is her time, exactly? For leisure, ease, liberty? There is no brand of feminism which achieved female rest. If women’s problem in the ’50s was a paralyzing malaise, now it is that they are too active, too capable, never permitted a vacation they didn’t plan. It’s not that our efforts to have it all were fated for failure. They simply weren’t imaginative enough.

For me, my relationship, with its age gap, has alleviated this rush , permitted me to massage the clock, shift its hands to my benefit. Very soon, we will decide to have children, and I don’t panic over last gasps of fun, because I took so many big breaths of it early: on the holidays of someone who had worked a decade longer than I had, in beautiful places when I was young and beautiful, a symmetry I recommend. If such a thing as maternal energy exists, mine was never depleted. I spent the last nearly seven years supported more than I support and I am still not as old as my husband was when he met me. When I have a child, I will expect more help from him than I would if he were younger, for what does professional tenure earn you if not the right to set more limits on work demands — or, if not, to secure some child care, at the very least? When I return to work after maternal upheaval, he will aid me, as he’s always had, with his ability to put himself aside, as younger men are rarely able.

Above all, the great gift of my marriage is flexibility. A chance to live my life before I become responsible for someone else’s — a lover’s, or a child’s. A chance to write. A chance at a destiny that doesn’t adhere rigidly to the routines and timelines of men, but lends itself instead to roomy accommodation, to the very fluidity Betty Friedan dreamed of in 1963 in The Feminine Mystique , but we’ve largely forgotten: some career or style of life that “permits year-to-year variation — a full-time paid job in one community, part-time in another, exercise of the professional skill in serious volunteer work or a period of study during pregnancy or early motherhood when a full-time job is not feasible.” Some things are just not feasible in our current structures. Somewhere along the way we stopped admitting that, and all we did was make women feel like personal failures. I dream of new structures, a world in which women have entry-level jobs in their 30s; alternate avenues for promotion; corporate ladders with balconies on which they can stand still, have a smoke, take a break, make a baby, enjoy themselves, before they keep climbing. Perhaps men long for this in their own way. Actually I am sure of that.

Once, when we first fell in love, I put my head in his lap on a long car ride; I remember his hands on my face, the sun, the twisting turns of a mountain road, surprising and not surprising us like our romance, and his voice, telling me that it was his biggest regret that I was so young, he feared he would lose me. Last week, we looked back at old photos and agreed we’d given each other our respective best years. Sometimes real equality is not so obvious, sometimes it takes turns, sometimes it takes almost a decade to reveal itself.

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