Helping single moms

I was a single mom for several years before I met my husband. I was one of the very, very lucky ones. I had a family that let me live rent free, cooking every now and then. My mom took care of my daughter while I went on to finish my university degree. After graduation, she was nearby for those times that my girl was too sick to go to daycare and such – which is great, because I was in a toxic workplace that had zero understanding for a single mother with a sick child.

Abortion was never a consideration for me. Even before I knew I’d have my parents’ backing, I refused to consider it. I’m very definitely prolife, and always have been. It seems incomprehensible to me how someone could have an abortion.

That is, until I think about what my life really would have been like without the support of my parents, and if I didn’t already have an anti-abortion personal outlook.

What would my life have been like? Would I still be working some minimum wage job, moving to a more urban city to find late evening daycare? Would I have even been involved in raising my daughter at all when it came down to it, other than tucking her in after carrying her home while she was half-asleep? Would she be as successful in school as she is now, or would my lack of time and energy affected her ability to learn, since I’d be less inclined to read and play and write with her?

And mommy skills. Oh man. I so didn’t have them. I like to pretend that I’m a natural-born mother, but I’m not. And even though my own mother and I disagree on some basic things with childrearing, it would have been a huge struggle to develop routines to maximize my time, energy, money, and make sure my daughter grows up happy and healthy.

I have the deepest respect for single moms, especially the ones that really make it on their own. But they’re in the minority, aren’t they? A huge number of single moms are out there barely surviving, without the education or skills to better their own and their children’s lives. They live paycheck to paycheck, and not even really that, getting deeper and deeper in debt with every passing emergency.

It makes me sad, and I want to do something about it. I have some ideas bouncing around in my head – things that I probably won’t be able to follow through with for quite some time, but they are in there. In the meantime, my thoughts and prayers are with those women who defied the statistics, chose life, and struggle every day to make their children’s lives, and their own, a little better and a little stronger every day.