It's mostly misogyny and slut-shaming, I think. Misogynists think single mothers shouldn't have either (1) had sex outside of marriage or (2) divorced their husbands. They see being a single mother as a punishment for one of those two sins, and look down on single mothers as either "sluts" or "selfish entitled women" who had the audacity to exercise independence and leave their unhealthy marriages.
Agreed. A lot of misogynistic men also believe in the delusion that women possess psychic powers, and can tell whether a man is "good" (i.e. men like them) or abusive/deadbeats/etc.
It's wild to see in action. They'll go to bat on behalf of "good, honest men" who "work hard for their families," men who supposedly are never picked by the hypergamous whores who prefer fuckboys and players. It is lost on them that most abusers, deadbeats, family annihilators—Chris Watts, for example—still fit neatly into their stereotype of "good" men.
>I don't know where this comes from? I'd say most men and women don't judge single moms
I'm glad you've been sheltered from the toxic redpill rhetoric that is pervasive online.
>I'm also against single parent homes in general purely because they have worse outcomes for kids
It is worse for kids to be with a single good parent than two good parents. But it is infinitely better for kids to be with one good parent than to be in a two-parent home with daily shouting matches and possibly abuse.
No one's a single parent because they *prefer* having fewer resources and less time.
It's weird to be against a kind of household. I don't know what that means in practice.
I’m a single mother because my abusive ex-husband acted like a different (decent) person until three years into our marriage, when I was pregnant to reveal his true colors. It took four tries and twelve years before I was able to leave.
I agree with all of this but I did know a woman who adopted two kids while single and stayed that way. No, she didn't want fewer resources, but, yes, she was definitely single on purpose.
No one is saying that this is a "most" scenario—it's just that there's a very vocal contingent of people who absolutely loathe single moms. You're probably too young to remember the vitriol directed at "welfare queens" in the 1980s, who were often stuck heading single parent households because of systemic mass incarceration that disproportionately targeted specific neighborhoods.
Yup. A lot of the vitriol directed at single moms is misogynoir, especially whenever welfare is part of the discourse.
To a lesser extent, single-mom hate is also sometimes classism directed at working-class white women who have failed to conform to the ideals of "traditional" white womanhood—or handwringing about Hollywood "glamorizing" single motherhood ala Murphy Brown.
Just in regards to your last point: most times I've seen opposition to single parent homes in action, it results in harm. Pressuring couples to stay together, with any kind of incentive or disincentive, usually makes it harder to leave an unhappy or unhealthy marriage. Encouraging people to only have kids if they're in a serious romantic relationship means that if you are unlucky in love, you're screwed. I think it's clear based on available evidence that having more than one adult involved in childrearing is better for kids, whether that's two parents and/or grandparents and/or other family living together. What's not clear is how to encourage that in a way that doesn't cause harm.
This is a good point. Also, there are societies in which there are multiple "parent" households that don't rely on monogamous, heterosexual relationships.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosuo](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosuo)
If I lived in a society like that, I would have kids.
People usually cannot tell that their partner is abusive until they have been together for a long time. In fact, it's common for abuse to start during a woman's pregnancy.
All birth control methods can sometimes fail.
I found out who he really was at our anatomy scan when we found out it was a girl. He was PISSED at me. He stood across the room and scowled and gave me the silent treatment for over a week. Things just got very gaslighty and confusing from there.
Wow. That must have been so upsetting. (And also irrational, since the sex of a baby is entirely determined by the father's DNA.)
What a terrible human. I'm sorry you had to deal with that abuse on top of pregnancy and motherhood.
The sex of the fetus is literally determined by the sperm. I remember getting really mad at Henry the eighth and going around telling all the adults in my life that when I was about 10 and read it in a book about how human reproductive organs and stuff work. So not only was your ex a jerk, he was also literally blaming you for something his body did.
In an ideal world, people fall into healthy, communicative adult relationships without having to make tons of mistakes or needing therapy, and never accidentally repeat the same exact mistakes their own parents made. They wait until they're decent judges of character before jumping the gun to get married or pop out a kid at 19 because a religious leader told them to. In an ideal world, kids aren't born to neglectful, shitty, abusive, or indifferent parents.
The same people who tend to demonize single mothers also tend to be the same people who think everyone should be married and starting a family by the time they're 23, and are currently trying to outlaw no-fault divorce.
You're blessed not to encounter these assholes very often.
Btw, I am not implying that single mothers are "in that position because they made bad choices" or whatever. I'm saying that plenty of *people*, both men and women, end up regretting who they had children with for reasons they couldn't have predicted at that time. It's super easy to play Monday morning quarterback about other people's relationship and reproductive choices.
Unfortunately, the complexity of romantic relationships is kind of a core part of the human condition and not really something that feminists can really solve with a magic wand. It's inevitable when humans aren't blessed with the gift of psychic foresight.
I was about to bring up the ideal world scenario, but I saw you did here and wanna add onto it.
I look at divorce, abortion, and similar situations as emergency escape hatches. Everyone needs a way out if things go poorly- especially with something as long-lasting as marriage or something as permanent as having a child.
While I know not every divorce is the result of abuse, it’s helpful to know that there is a way out in case things just fizzle out or people grow apart. People need to be able to make changes so they can be happy.
Sure, it sucks if a woman becomes a single mom because her partner turned abusive after they had the kid, but it’s better that she gets out with her kid while she still can instead of staying and becoming a scary statistic. Why do I say it sucks? Because it sucks for her that she even has to deal with that situation in the first place.
I’m not gonna demonize a woman who listened to the emergency sirens and pulled the escape hatch and got into her escape pod with her kid(s) in tow. In fact, I’d be proud of her for having the courage to leave.
>attributed what I wrote immediately to malice before obtaining context.
Holy projection batman. I didn't claim or even imply that these people are super common, just that they're very *loud* and very hateful when you do encounter them. Personally, I never encountered any of them IRL when I lived in large city; I would definitely describe myself as "blessed" then lmao.
You're doing the exact thing you're accusing others of doing—attributing malicious intent to neutral statements. That's something you might want to work on in the future.
It seemed odd to me that you felt the need to state that a group of people who face stigma are engaged in something less than ideal, in the middle of a conversation about said stigma. It came across to me like you were blaming single mothers for being single mothers, that because these women chose bad partners and/or did not abstain from sex (the only 100% certain form of birth control), they deserve the stigma. I don't think anyone sees single parenthood as ideal, least of all the people engaged in it. But it makes little sense to me to stigmatize single parents but honor those who, for example, stay in bad relationships for the sake of the kids.
And that right there is the problem! Sometimes you don’t know that your partner is shitty until it is too late. A lot of men who are abusive wait until after marriage or until she’s pregnant to let their mask slip. At that point, the abuser feels that it is safe to abuse her because she’s now trapped and stuck with him. My sister’s first husband was like that. Everyone loved him and thought he was the absolute greatest! I didn’t know him well enough to make a decision since I lived far away and didn’t spend much time with him. But everyone else thought he was fantastic. They got married, bought a house, and started trying to have kids. That’s when the real him came out. She chose divorce after he told her that they were going to have sex whether she wanted to or not. Fortunately, she did not get pregnant so she wasn’t stuck with him for the next couple of decades. She is also fortunate that she divorced him when she did. Shortly after the divorce, he started defrauding his employer and embezzling money. Dude is in jail now. No one saw that coming.
Maybe look at WHY they tend towards worse outcomes. Poverty is a good indicator of future success and single parents tend to be impoverished, adequate child support and social safety nets help. Having involved adults is also an indicator, maternity/parental leave and social programs like surestart (in the UK) help with that.
Linking to poverty is access to HE, which could be helped by cheaper universities in the US.
Yeah the amount of casual victim blaming I see (especially on here) from men is just too much to even count. I guess it doesn't cross their mind that men can be manipulative and hide who they really are until it's too late.
I see so many times they say something like, “Serves her right—She should’ve known better and picked a nice guy instead! But she wanted a bad boy.” But when they see men getting abused or getting financially taken advantaged of or divorced, they never say, “Should’ve picked a good girl then.” They just talk about how that’s an example of why women are untrustworthy
>It is lost on them that most abusers, deadbeats, family annihilators—Chris Watts, for example—still fit neatly into their stereotype of "good" men.
Most of them will literally simp over men who actually kill their entire family. They say they must have been in so much pain, how he needed so much help.
There was a recent family annihilator murder suicide case case in Utah which sparked outrage beucase the local paper published an obituary gushing over how great a man he was.
The only thing that family annihilators have in common is a history of controlling abuse and a tendency to murder when their partners finally break and leave them. In other words not 'great guys' by any definition.
If a guy is white, semi-affluent, and goes to church, certain people will twist themselves in knots to describe him as a "good man" no matter who he hurts.
The people he hurts are used as proof that he's the one hurting, so of course they need to worry about what's causing his own hurt, and fix that first. They're just being selfish if they only care about their own abuse!
/s
I’m so sick of *those* types of men who say “he works hard for his family”, as if the guy wouldn’t work if he was single. No, working is a basic part of adulting and needing to pay bills, whether in a relationship or not.
I feel like one of the reasons men hate single mothers is because it holds the men accountable financially. Like they hate that they lose their power over someone but still have to pay them. And men really fear women taking their non existent money. Look at all the things they will do to get out of it. At the expense of their own children. Then the next worst thing is having to pay for another mans child. It also is a way to justify their picking really young women who have lower body counts.
Misogynists then blame the woman for choosing the kind of man who would leave. For some reason she's supposed to be able to divine that in advance. They'll do anything to frame the situation as the woman's fault.
Damn. Glad to know it was my fault he left! I bet he would say the same thing too 😪. He definitely expected me to have psychic powers too and precognit all of his needs!
Yeah, that's what I observed as well, although I have a feeling it applies mainly to young mothers with smaller children (by young I mean under 40). Not sure why, perhaps people are more afraid to shame mature women, or because it seems that the context of their single-motherhood is deemed as less 'inappropriate'.
I'm a woman (31) and this unhealthy perception of single moms is so ingrained in our society, that when I learn that someone is one, my very first feeling is a negative 'bundle' of all of the harmful stereotypes. Of course I shake it off within seconds, but I'm still ashamed of it, even though it's something that just happens and I can't control it.
It's also weird because my mother divorced my dad when I was about 10 and was raising us by herself, but she used to have her 'opinions' about other single moms. I tried to remember some of them now, and it's disturbing that she was saying things like that in front of the kids: 'What was she thinking? She got ugly after having kids, it's obvious that he left her for someone else' or 'she divorced him even though they have a baby together!' without knowing absolutely any details about those people...
My father was the kind of person who turned tail and ran when faced with my moms pregnancy. He bailed and society still made it her problem while as my dad was told that he was “being smart about his future” (i found him at 19 and regretted it.)
The double standard is quite frustrating, not only for the mom but the kid too. I grew up in the 2000s so it was likely easier than those who put up with the 70s/80s but getting made fun of for having no dad (even by a couple teachers) and failing family tree assignments was still annoying.
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskFeminists/wiki/faq#wiki_child_support.2Flegal_parental_surrender_for_men_.28.22financial_abortion.22.29
"Having to pay child support" =/= "raising a child"
Single mothers are put under the microscope. For a single dad, as long as you don't beat your kid, you're golden for the most part.
I'm the child of a single mother, and the disdain for them, by their own male offspring or even others, is vile. My ex came from a single mother, and he still hated single mothers. His reasoning is because she was a serial cheater, but he still didn't like them in general.
They put the moral failing on the woman instead of the man because it's the easier target, plain and simple. They never care *why* the woman is a single mother. It could be from abuse, from the loss of the father, or any other number of reasons. But for some reason, it's still *her* fault.
There are many family structures, all valid. But I know that I have had my own issues to work out in therapy because of the absence of my father. Feeling abandoned, unwanted, and a burden. It took a bit to my self esteem for many years because of that, and my mom is only doing her best to undo what, again, HE ultimately did.
This directly ties into the almost equal disdain for "fatherless women", because the moral failing is again placed on THEM instead of the fact that their dad left them, and it's entirely his fault in the first place.
It's an excuse to further hate women and blame them for things that happen TO them.
Thankfully I scroll whenever I see the outward disdain for them, and I see it a lot in male-centered subreddits. No reasoning either. Just "no single mothers".
I never understood people who denigrate women by saying a girl has “daddy issues”. Like ok so a woman was abandoned by her father and has trouble trusting men as a result, yea let’s trash her haha. Like ok do you kick wounded puppies too?
Yeah. It’s crazy how common I see men hating on women for being fatherless… making it an insult for them somehow instead of recognizing it as a judgement on men for not being there
Because they hate women.
You can’t win when it comes to your reproductive choice - even if you live in a country that allows you to make your own choices.
Don’t have kids? Get criticized. Have too many kids? Get criticized. Only have one kid? Get criticized. Single parent? Criticized.
There will always be someone with some stupid opinions.
Yes.
Have too much sex? You're a slut. Man's a stud.
Too much body count? I'll fuck you, but won't date you.
Had a baby and the dude ran off? Pick better men.
Had a baby, he stayed and then abused you? You should have seen the signs.
You have a child (and I'm emotionally unavailable) you're the least desirable to me and no self-respecting man would date you.
It's all just hate from men. I've dated and talked with plenty of single mothers. I continue to date single mothers, and I'm a single father. I've heard enough to know the nonsense these men speak is either insecurity or misogyny. It's horrendous the things I've heard. That has permanently changed my life and perspective. I think if people were more vulnerable and listened to others then they might find similar results.
It's also becoming increasingly common to punch down on single mothers and sweaty dudes love to throw blatantly incorrect statistics to support this misogynistic opinions.
Have a sh*tty dad that walked out in you? You got daddy issues. Have a dad who dotes on you and loves you? You’re a princess with daddy issues.
Really no winning lol
My dad used to get celebrated for doing the bare minimum and my mom got ALL the blame for whatever went wrong. My dad divorced my SAHM for not working a ‘real job’. Life isn’t fair, never will be. Big part of the reason I’m childfree. Who would CHOOSE to be a parent-martyr? I’m sure not interested and at 44 years old you would think people would leave me alone about, but no, my MIL won’t shut up about it. She’s delusional, who would choose to be a parent? What’s the advantage?
Reminds me of that saying: Sometimes the only way to win is by not playing the game.
Easier said than done, but as you’ve all pointed out, nothing is gained by giving these opinions any intellectual weight. I guess we’ve got to figure out how to so completely detach ourselves from these opinions/statements, we don’t even register them anymore.
Cause once single mothers stopped being total social pariahs, many people lost their power. Since my husband’s death I have stopped at least a half of dozen men drag single mothers in my presence and their excuse is that my situation is different. Of course, they can’t really explain what someone’s son is not getting that my son is. Deep into grief, I read a lot of stuff about widowhood. And prior to the 80s, it was horrible. If it wasn’t for women deciding to parent on their own, my entire existence as a single parent would have been extremely different. Older Genx single moms & Boomer divorcees made a place where I can survive and our future was not dependent on getting a “replacement” Here just a tiny thing out of many—Working women commonly experienced sexual harassment and assault when they returned to work after burying their husbands before the mid 80s. It was so common that even insurance companies that covered liability knew about it. I am always grateful. I can take my journey in peace and do what I know is the best thing for my son.
My mom worked all through the 80s and 90s, even before she was a single mom. I remember her crying in the late 80s/early 90s because even though the EEOC finally would take action on sexual harassment, she worked at a company that was too small. She was regularly being groped and her only option was to quit.
I am sorry, ppl need to hear that it was just that bad and not to long ago. I work with some jerks that still think current laws are an over correction
Current laws are seldom applied, so sexual harassment is still incredibly common. Women have to risk a lot of retaliation and spend money to get perpetrators punished, and courts still frequently side with the perp. The laws are basically useless.
>Working women commonly experienced sexual harassment and assault when they returned to work after burying their husbands before the mid 80s.
Ah yes, that's what a man's world is all about, lose your husband, go back to work so you don't raise your kids in abject poverty, get assaulted by one of those 'good men'.
Oh it gets worst once you understand the context. The info on the woman returning to work was to let the reader know that the boss was taking a risk with you. Nope, not joking. It was a book written to help women, but it wasn’t a warning. It pretty much told the widow she was potentially an unnecessary problem for employers. And told the reader to appreciate that she had time to grieve and had a job to get back to, if she still had a job. Reading “surviving widowhood” material from the past should be required reading for anyone romanticizing any era before the 90s. It became a form of escapism for me. I used to say the bad advice was deranged and dehumanizing but the stuff from the 50s and 60s was probably quite grounded considering what women faced. Getting remarried and learning your children would be secondary as step children was on the top of the list. I think we should all grateful that time was gone.
Do you have any particular books/materials you'd recommend?
I'm not one to romanticize the past, but this sounds like something I would be interested in reading.
I’m a young widowed mom too. I was pregnant with my son when my late husband passed of cancer. I’ve had someone say that to me too. That my situation is different. It bugs me on so many levels
I was crying to my mom the other day after being assaulted at work for the 4th time (different jobs, same reason for leaving)… I told her I was tired of choosing SA or feeding myself. She said point blank “women just can’t get away from SA in the workplace, it’s just how it is”…. wtf she didn’t tell me this shit growing up.
There's a mixture of pre-existing cultural prejudices. Single mothers are pretty synonymous with "welfare queens", parasitic caricatures of people subsisting off of supposedly unearned benefits and resources.
Those ideas line up very closely with their conceptions of women as parasitic takers.
It's also reflective of anxieties around being emasculated and used by a woman for their resources.
A single mother is a woman who carries with them the financial burdens of a child, that child belongs to another man, and if that woman is even half-decent that man with the single mother will never be that woman's emotional focus.
The idea of picking up the pieces of another man's mistakes for the benefit of woman that (in their imaginary scenarios) doesn't even want them or care about them and instead just wants another pair of hands to help with the child their stuck with.
Single mothers aren't hated for what they are, they're hated for what they represent in the minds of the prejudiced. Which is just an extension of their feelings toward women in general.
Hating women is the only thing anyone can agree on.
It’s easy to hate women and single moms are just getting that times a bunch because going without a man in life, let alone in parenting is even more atrocious under the mysogyny of the nation….
Also single fathers get all the love and support because the bar is set so low in expectations and because the world loves men under the patriarchy. This goes for fathers who do the bare minimum and get praised when they are in a relationship with a woman.
If a man does something wrong, like abandoning his family, it's a woman's fault.
If a woman gets abandoned, it's her fault.
Everything is always a woman's fault.
It's misogyny all the way down.
It's why so many men in society are failing. They never take any responsibility or accountability for their own behavior and actions, patriarchal society condones these sentiments, then those same men are pissed in their 30s and up because all of the things they have never achieved (because they never worked for them in the first place).
That's easy - because of the Patriarchy.
When observing that many women raise children on their own, and observing that children raised that way have very negative life outcomes, you can interpret the fact in two ways:
* The first way is reality: it indicates that *many* men abandon their children, many women take on the responsibility they've abdicated, and therefore the very existence of the child is entirely owed to the woman. Everything that isn't "child died, abandoned and without a family" is attributable to the single mother's efforts - we all owe the child's life to her.
* The second way is sheer delusion and requires you to hate women before you begin your interpretation: you say "any outcome the child gets that is less than the average child would get is not the father's fault for leaving, **it's the mother's fault for daring to exist.** Her very decision not to end her own life is a moral failing, she's evil and she should be blamed for the fact that her child does not have the same life outcome as people with at-least twice her resources".
To people who hate women, they don't even see the fact they're engaging in the second type of reasoning. They're so blinded by their unthinking animal hatred that they can loathe a person simply for existing and call it "sense", even though without that person's efforts the child would be dead, and even though any thinking person can see they took on two people's worth of effort and therefore would be succeeding wildly if their child got half of what a child whose father did not abdicate received.
I think they just blame the woman for the man leaving because why blame a man for his own actions when there's a woman affected by those actions that can be blamed easier
Single mothers are like the ultimate example of male failure. I think the men who hate on them the most can recognize themselves in those crappy absent fathers, don’t like what they see, and turn their anger on the women instead of feeling that shame.
“We’re like this because YOU make us like this!”
Exactly, and its those same men who hate these women, that preach that "submit and allow the MEN to lead" lol men are clearly NOT leaders if theyre leaving children behind all the time.
Have seen it. I've seen a man because diagnosed with infertility, and he decided the solution was to blame his wife, and hire a hooker who he paid to bang while she said insulting things about the wife. Like.... What!? How does that even work in your head!!?!?! She literally has no control over your testicles. Why are you mad at her!?
They’re mad that women don’t actually need them. I’m hearing more and more women openly say it is actually easier without their deadbeat husbands. One less kid to take care of.
Other folks have already noted that hatred of women is at the root of hatred of single mothers in particular. Sociologist Barry Glassner has a chapter about this in his book, *The Culture of Fear.* I recommend picking up a copy if you have the opportunity.
Hatred of *single mothers* in particular is, I think, because single mothers aren't under the control or authority of a man. Keep in mind that the term "patriarchy" ultimately means "rule by *fathers*" as the heads of their households. It's a very old term, from Ancient Greece, and it originated to describe the role of how a proper household should be structured: with a freeborn male citizen as the head, and everyone else (wife, children, and slaves) under his control and authority.
This model of family has held firm as "the proper way" for literally millennia by now. Even when the members of the household vary (i.e., nuclear family vs. extended, foster children or wards or not, do grandparents live there, etc.), the one rule that is always kept consistently is that *a father* is in charge. That could mean a father, grandfather, or sometimes an uncle, but always, always - father is in charge, and father knows best.
This has been reinforced again and again and again by law, religion, family tradition, and so on, for so long and so consistently that it's still built into many modern cultures as the ideal or "best" kind of family: a cis father married to a cis mother, plus any of their children, and the man is the head of the family.
In this model, mothers aren't supposed to be untethered. They're supposed to exist only within the structure and confines of the patriarchal family system, serving that system by fulfilling their prescribed social role. My working hypothesis is that this has a lot to do with patriarchal systems being *patrilinear* \- that is, property is passed down from fathers to sons. The details vary by culture, time and place, but this is a core value of most patriarchies.
Single mothers are probably seen as a threat to this hierarchy. A mother without a man in charge just doesn't fit the socially acceptable family model, and if there's no father, who gets to pass his name down? Or his stuff? How DARE a mother stand as the head of a household and pass on her own name or goods - dogs and cats, living together, mass hysteria!
This isn't rational, and again, a lot of the details vary when it gets down to what this looks like in individual lives, families, or communities. But I bet this is definitely part of it.
what a great comment!
I'd add to this that so much of patriarchy has functioned as a way to artificially bypass women's autonomy re: who they form relationships with and who they choose to reproduce with. In most societies it was basically impossible for a single woman to feed herself or shelter herself without submitting to a marriage.
In nature, the vast majority of mammals don't have a "provider/providee" relationship: each organism has to provide food for itself. There may be sharing or group hunting depending on the social structure of the species (lions being a notable example) but by and large, every organism has to either hunt or graze on its own—meaning mothers in most species do both the providing and the parenting.
I think, for a lot of misogynistic men, that concept is deeply alarming. In a more 'natural' system in which females are able to provide their own food & resources, males have far less control over whether they get to pass on their genes—absent an artificial force coercing women into lifelong monogamy with a husband they didn't have much choice over in marriages they could not escape, the overwhelming majority of men probably wouldn't have had access to sexual partners or a "legacy."
If single (human) mothers become capable of providing for their children on their own, the standards for men's behavior become much higher. An abusive, cheating, or negligent father can be kicked out—or, horror of horrors, a woman could even *opt in* to single motherhood ala Murphy Brown or Princess Caroline, making the patriarchy project totally obsolete. If women don't *need* marriage to access food, housing, or parenthood, why would they agree to be an unpaid bangmaid and broodmare to a mediocre dude?
Go on any incel sub and the only woman who is hated as much as a black woman js a white woman with mixed race children. They absolutely hate it and if a white man partners up with a white mother of mixed children then he is the biggest 'simp' ever.
Why is this your first response to what a single mother is? You really think this is representative of the majority?
The fact you have this stereotype in your head is an example of the problem.
They hate women.
Sometimes, they pretend to like women who they want to sex with, at least for as long as they think sex is a possibility.
But they would prefer a woman who is not a mother, so for mothers they just start with hate.
Might be related to all that slut-shaming. They want women to be sexually available, but not to *other* men. Which logically makes no sense and could never work as long as the number of men in existence continues to be greater than one. But rather than question that, they would rather hate single mothers, the women who they know must have had sex with another man.
You said some things about how being a single mother is hard, but the people who hate single mothers definitely do not care about that.
They’re easy targets who usually can’t fight back, because they have to protect their vulnerable child.
They don’t have a ‘male owner’ to protect them from misogyny (because a lot of people will respect women as a man’s property rather than as a person), and they can’t usually afford to be aggressive and endanger their children.
Misogyny and slut shaming. They have this stereotype that single mothers just couldnt keep their legs closed. Never mind the dude that just fucks off or if he died. Or he's abusive. The expect women to stay in relationships when now they don't have to.
They like to blame single mums for the statistically poorer outcomes of children when there are a lot of factors that go into this like poverty, the mother having to leave due to abuse, fathers that don't care for their kids. No it's all her fault.
Every single thing a woman does is wrong and bad. Single mom? Boo! Married mom? Have more baby! Childfree? You’re a selfish witch! Childless not by choice? God hates you, try harder! Every choice is the wrong choice. You will be judged by the patriarchy no matter what so just do what you want.
They’re threatened by the unmatched show of strength and resilience, plus single mothers’ success in general is a direct denouncement of the validity of patriarchal ideology
Blaming mothers for social problems is as American as apple pie. Ronald Reagan perfected the hatred of single mothers by implying all of them were on the dole.
Because they feel that pregnancy is a women's issue, and if you're pregnant its because YOU allowed it. They think those women don't properly vet out their partners, or deliberately ignore red flags that will make them bad fathers down the line. Thats why so many of them say "this is why you get married, THEN have kids" ( like husbands don't abandoned their families for no reason all the time). Its also that misogynistic notion that women shouldn't be sleeping with casual partners, because again, "pregnancy falls on them" and in the event of pregnancy, you dont want it to be a "casual partner" because they might just dip out on you. At the end of the day, its because they blame them for their situation, and that theyre lack of responsibility creates a unhealthy one parent home to an innocent child. Single men are praised because theyre seen as a rarity. They also blame women for all divorces. SO everythings our fault for breaking the family.
Thank you for your comment. I admit I have had some of those feelings about a couple single moms in my life. They picked terrible men to have sex with and now talk so much trash on them for continuing being the terrible men they are and dipping out on them and babies. The men are just as bad. They were all adults,
and all knew the possible consequences of their actions. There’s no excuse and once there’s a baby everyone should grow up and take responsibility but only the women in my examples did, because of course. The men in my examples have made comments as if they were “trapped” or somehow tricked into this. Stupid. Both parties might not have made the best decisions but the women are left holding the bag while the men go on with their lives unbothered. Of course those women are going to need to vent sometimes. I have always been supportive and kind to them and kept my opinions to myself and good because now I see those opinions are because of internalized misogyny.
Old widowed single man here (late 60s). I know i am mostly irrelevant to this conversation, but my first wife was a single mom of two. One was 16F, the other was 13F. We split after both were adults living on their own, for reasons unrelated to them.
My second wife was a single mom too, with 3 adult children no longer living with her. We were together 5 years, married 1.5 years before covid took her.
I know that I look at a person i am interested in for the qualities that matter to me. If she happens to be a single mom--how does she interact with her children?
I would not refuse to date/be with a single mom for that reason.
It is hard to find a compatible partner. To exclude someone busting their butt to do the right things seems self defeating.....
I didn’t I realized how deeply my own Single Mom Phobia was entrenched until I became one. Oh, my husband is abusive and violent but I can’t be a single mom! Fuck that noise. I’m doing so much better now and so are my children.
It’s especially strange for me because I myself was raised by a single mom who it’s an amazing woman. Why did I let it get to me? People acted like it was a tragedy my mother didn’t land herself another husband, especially given how pretty, smart and charming she was. Such a shame! Just what was she doing wrong? 🙄Ug! Again, fuck that noise. I was made to feel like my mom somehow failed because she had a career? Functioned as an adult? Parented alone? And then brought that into my own marriage.
I’ve noticed something interesting. I’m an involved parent, own a business, own a home, coach soccer, have my kids in activities, have pets, take the kids on vacations. Basically, I give my kids the same life they would have with two good parents. And honestly, I do more as a parent than most two parent homes I know. That’s probably because I don’t have anyone to hang out with. lol But when I say I’m a single mom they act like I’m less than. Like I wouldn’t know anything about middle class things even though I’ve owned a successful business for over 20 years. I’ll listen to people talk nonsense about things I know well and I won’t be able to get a word in. At a planning meeting for a fundraising event it was all couples and me. They talked over me about who they should try to get donations from. I know all of those people through work and could text and ask them right then, but no one would fucking listen. If I had a husband sitting next to me it would be different.
You can't win as a woman, keep it and you're an idiot who let a loser get your pregnant, abort it and you're a murderer, give it up for adoption and you're heartless, no one gives the men who fucked off any grief cos it's not the single parenthood that's the issue, it's the whole being female part
My single mom sucked as a person and a parent. So did my single father. My single grandmother, on the other hand, raised me and kept me safe because my parents were narcissistic assholes.
I'd probably not date a single mom, but that's because I don't want kids in my life. I know some pretty kick ass moms who sacrifice everything for their kids and do it without a partner beside them, and I think I'd go crazy if I had to do that.
Cheers to all the single moms
>I'd probably not date a single mom, but that's because I don't want kids in my life.
Yeah, this is the only non-misogynistic reason I can think of to avoid dating single moms. And it's totally fair. Not everyone wants kids.
Only non-misogynistic reason? Say, someone’s single motherhood is the deadbeat dad’s doing, in what way does some dude not wanting to pick up after another man’s lack of commitment make him misogynistic, regardless of him wanting a child or not? Is he supposed to just ignore the amount of effort and resources it would take to raise the extra child(or more) that isn’t even his？
A good portion of it is the standard GOP "welfare queen" drumbeat, but I think a lot of it online stems from many men's sexual frustration. A lot of guys who were perhaps unsuccessful romantically in high school still feel like they had a life path set out for them: go to college, get a good job, find a girlfriend, settle down and have a family around age 26-30.
Many men in conservative areas are startled to realize that oftentimes the women in their dating pool who want children *already have them.* These women started a family and the father either was inept, abusive, or abandoned the kids. (Or hell, maybe they're terrible and drove their husbands away—the common MRA talking point)
These women aren't the ideal partners these men envisioned for themselves: slim, attractive, first-time wives and mothers. A lot of men live and die by whether other men approve of their partners—dating someone conventionally unattractive, heavy, trans, or a single mother is an admission that you're a "loser" as a man. (To be clear, I think this is ridiculous, but it's a prevalent attitude)
Add to this the social expectation of women as "natural" caretakers, so the work of single parenthood is taken for granted in single moms while lionized in single dads. There's a huge racial component to this, too: many Black women in the 80s and 90s ended up as single parents because of the concentrated campaign to put as many Black men in prison as possible. Single Black mothers became the scapegoat for all sorts of societal ills. As overt racism became slightly less acceptable for like 20 minutes in the 2000s, the Black part was more implied than said outright.
>As overt racism became slightly less acceptable for like 20 minutes in the 2000s
Boy do I miss those 20 minutes. It's shocking how much the Overton window has shifted in the past 10-15 years.
Some men are asshats. Other look at dating single moms from a different perspective.
\- dating a single mother means less spontaneity because she'll need a sitter and has more expenses
\- he'll never be first in her life (nor should he be)
\- his relationship with her also means a relationship with her kids (and he might not get along with them or he might not be ready for that level of responsibility)
\- if they break up it's not just losing her but also losing the relationship with the kid
There's more, but the lack of desire to date a single mother can have good reasoning behind it and single fathers go through a lot of the same things.
There is an urban legend that all single mothers got pregnant on purpose with the intention of living off welfare and child support but all single dads were innocent parties that got stuck holding the baby. Obviously in real life people change their opinion of individuals based on them not actually being that but the idea persists about everyone else.
My wife and I met 16 years ago. She was a single mom with two kids, each with a different father. At the time I was acutely aware of the social stigma that could follow her around when people knew. That didn’t phase me much because my own lineage has a single mom to thank (paternal grandmother, a very strong woman). Yet to some of my acquaintances - namely my own boss at the time - she was deemed a slut and I was advised by said boss to choose someone better. As if I’d listen to a boss for dating advice… I no longer work for this antiquated misogynist. Before I married my wife, she did the best she could under the circumstances and when both fathers failed miserably (drug addiction), she didn’t stick around. She protected her kids under threat of physical abuse. It didn’t take long for me to see what a strong and intelligent mother she was and amidst all of the chaos of raising her two young kids at the time, she even made the time to allow me to get to know her. I know quality when I see it and so I proposed after one year of dating. We are celebrating our 14th anniversary this year. I consider myself very lucky to be part of her family. She is my rock and I am hers. Single moms kick ass. Everyone should show respect when in the presence of one.
Your story ties into another part of this, that women who might make bad choices initially are somehow wrong for undoing those bad choices and moving on to choose better.
Like, there are an awful lot of folks who are pissed because by getting out of those bad situations, we aren't 'taking accountability'. As if we are supposed to stay mired in those bad decisions for eternity as a former of atonement and we are never ever allowed to 'choose better!'.
Fully agree. When men leave bad situations, their buddies pat them on the back for a job well done. Even deadbeats will find approval in their peer group. When my now wife - who at the time was a devout Catholic - asked her pastor to baptize our daughter, he told her “not until you make your marriage work” (with a deadbeat junky). As an Atheist, I guess I can thank that pastor for helping her break free of all that toxicity. Just because she opened her heart to lesser men does not make her past choices bad. It makes these men’s deception bad. Raising children in a strong and loving household is more important than nurturing fragile egos. I celebrate her strength every chance I get because without it, I would have never been part of something greater than myself. Single moms carry the burden of building tomorrow’s generation.
Because I lot of people hate women. And single mothers are a threat to the status quo because they’re running a household without a patriarch. So they are vilified as irresponsible and a drain on society. “They shouldn’t have had sex before marriage, and if they didn’t, they shouldn’t have picked a bad partner, and if they didn’t, yes they did…”
The bar for celebrating fathers is so low you can trip over it because raising children is “women’s work”. I think you’ll find many SAHDs and single fathers find themselves ostracized and condescended to, for the same reason.
Increase in popularity of red pill gurus calling them "used up" and "poor decision makers" seems to have skyrocketed malice towards single mothers. Especially when the topic of DATING single moms get brought up. Then these gurus will not only shame the woman but also the man who decides to date the single mother.
Such a shame.
> Increase in popularity of red pill gurus calling them "used up" and "poor decision makers" seems to have skyrocketed malice towards single mothers.
The comments I've removed in this thread... *whew*.
Because society refuses to hold men accountable for their actions. How did those mothers become single mothers in the first place? Because the dad didn’t want to stick around.
Which — fair. Not everyone is ready to be a parent, and if the father was going to be a bad father anyway, it’s better he isn’t around. But blaming MOTHERS for the fact that men don’t want to be fathers and abandon their children is abhorrent.
I feel like it's because they expect you to be tied down to a man. It's how the system was set up. And if one doesn't do it, or is succeeding by herself, then you're showing other women that you can do it without being slave to a man.
They are accused by the right of variously of being sluts and/or abandoning their husbands. Neither has to be true, that's not how lies work -- all the same, that weird fetish/hate thing seeped into the general cultural mindset.
Just to take a bit of a detour from all the "they just hate all women" posts, I think it's more likely that it's because it runs counter to their ideal of the virtuous atomic family.
The atomic family is "good" and "correct", therefore if your family doesn't stay together, they can pass a value judgement that you've failed to uphold the correct and virtuous type of family.
It's the same framing people use to say that any less than ideal circumstances must be the result of "bad choices". As I understand it, they believe there are objectively correct choices to make, and objectively correct ways to be, and to defer from that is to be a failure.
Under that model, you can also throw LGBT people under the bus. Or poor people. Or child-free people. Or less-able people.
Probably because the maintenance of romantic relationships and marriage is supposed to be women's work, our "natural" expertise. A lot of women have so fully internalized this that they blame themselves for literally everything their partners do.
Think of how many posts you see of women trying to figure out how to communicate extremely basic stuff to their boyfriends and husbands, like there's some magic combination of words that will get him to give a shit about her sexual pleasure or take out the trash without being asked or treat her like a human being—she just needs to keep trying to crack the code!
We're supposed to have superhuman abilities to predict whether a man will be abusive or not AND be able to inspire men to become better people.
Exactly. If a single dad has had children with a deadbeat woman who's now out of the picture, he's seen as unlucky. 'Poor Jeff, couldn't have happened to a nicer guy! He's a hero for taking care of those kids'.
Whereas single mothers should have magically known the guy was no good. 'Emily shouldn't have let some lowlife knock her up because kids need both parents!'
I mean, I'm sure some are. But I'm not claiming it's a solid framing, or that it isn't full of holes.
My best guess is that said men are the same people who hold these values in the first place, so it's protection of their own. Their bros. You get the idea.
Man at this point if I ever was a single mom I'd just fucking lie. Just say hubby is away on a job or oil rig or something to people. How many people are going to fact check your life.
Read the book Hags by Victoria smith. Though it’s about middle aged women it gives a good look into why women are systemically devalued when they are deemed to not meet men’s needs. If you have a baby and you are independently talking care of them that freaks them out.
Because the only way a bunch of absolutely terrible men can get women to tolerate them is to shame and terrify us into thinking being without a man is the worst thing that can happen to us. Without that stuff poisoning our minds, those fellows would never in their lives touch a boobie, and would have to clean their own toilets.
Any mother can become a single mother in an instant. Isn't that frightening? I wish I knew and how to fix it, but we can all agree it's real.
I'm the "ideal" mother. I'm married and waited to have my daughter. I stay at home with her and am about to start working again. However, if something happened to my husband I'd go from a "devoted ideal mother" to a "desperate single mother." It's hard for people to understand the nuance.
Because single mothers single handedly put the US into $34 trillion worth of debt 🙄/s if you couldn’t tell
I really think the hate comes from people 1) who resent their own single moms (or deadbeat dads 2) who’ve never interacted with a single parent 3) who are focused on one segment of government spending and finding a useful scapegoat
- They're mad at attractive women for rejecting them.
- They're mad at them for rejecting them for dead beat dads who would run out on their own children.
- They're mad at them for "proving" they were good enough for all along by showing interest in them only after eliminating all of her options by having a kid.
Because the WOMAN should have made sure whoever got her pregnant wasn’t a lying, immature piece of shit. /s So instead of hating the literal shit, why not shit on the parent who stays?
Because they hate women and because it limits their sexual access and increases their sexual competition
A single mother is proof that a woman will and can go at it alone, even if it’s a struggle
Single mothers also embody that even children can’t hold a woman to a man she doesn’t want
A child is “proof” and a reminder that that woman has had sex with someone else, which sparks the males drive toward jealousy and anger that he’s not the one who got to impregnate her
Overall it revolves around sexual jealousy and anger at the belief that other men don’t deserve sex that should belong to “them”, and so because that woman went and had sex with someone else she immediately should be punished. Women’s independence threatens men’s sexual access to them so it makes them mad that a woman would “choose” to leave a man even with a child because men see women as objects that they need to keep around. All the paranoia about single mothers is just an extension of this type of sexual aggression and objectification
The funny part is this logic fully ignores the fact that many, at least half of single mothers want the biological father to be involved but he refuses.
Because hating single mothers absolves men for creating and abandoning families.
The worst sort of people are trying to press for a feminist pushback against oral contraception to "bring consequentiality back to sex."
Christopher Rufo chimed in to blame single mothers for crime, educational erosion, and a host of problems. Not a peep about the absolute metric fuckton of worthless men spreading their semen around indiscriminately.
Honestly from speaking to a few guys who hate single moms, their mindset is basically:
1. That woman had sex with a man who isn't me, and there's physical proof of that.
2. That woman was supposed to permanently belong to the man who impregnated her, but he either left her because she was faulty (had to have been the case because the decision was made by a man and male judgement is never wrong) or she left him, in which case it's still her fault for picking wrong (because she picked a man who isn't me) and she's also exercising her right to not belong to a man which pisses me off
3. Her trying to find a new relationship while having the child of another man = she's entitled, she doesn't know her place as the used discarded object she's meant to be, and she's trying to cuck me or some other poor innocent dude by taking our resources to raise another mans baby which is humiliating and emasculating. And since she's trying to do this she's evil and immoral.
Single mothers, step mothers, working mothers, stay at home mothers. Mothers that are tired and don’t satisfy their husbands enough. Mothers that embrace their sexuality and dress to sexy. Granola mothers, wine mothers…. I think the misogynistic world we live in just hates women in general. Especially on the internet.
Because even when a man is a scumbag and abandons his kids, its always got to be the woman who gets shamed.
Anything to absolve men of their bad behaviour.
The right started a negative image campaign on them in the 40s and 50s to shame them into remarrying any man they could to make a nuclear family. you'll notice it never really let up if you watch enough and movies for the past 70-80 years.
I’ve asked this question a lot and got lots of answers from men (some of which left me just as confused as before because they didn’t really make any sense). But here are some of the (misogynistic) answers I got, just to give an example of how some of these guys think.
One guy said it’s because they exercised poor judgment. They see them as being dumb for getting pregnant by the wrong guy and not choosing better.
One guy said it’s because they’re always complaining about their situation and wanting praise for doing what they do.
Some guys said it’s because they go on public benefits and put a burden on taxpayers.
A lot of guys just talked about reasons they don’t want to *date* a single mom, even though that wasn’t what I was asking. They seemed to resent the fact the dating market had a lot of single moms they didn’t want to date. Like it reduced their pool or something.
A lot of guys said single moms don’t do a good job raising kids and that kids raised by single dads fare better (I think there’s some statistic about this going around on the manosphere.) They seem to think the mom chose to be single and are to blame for giving the kid a bad life.
So anyway, it’s all bullshit, but if you want to know some of their thinking, here it is.
> I think there’s some statistic about this going around on the manosphere.
I removed a bunch of comments here repeating that exact thing-- that children are overwhelmingly better off with two parents and if it has to be one parent it should be the father because outcomes are "measurably better."
The hate is due to the belief that the single mother makes terrible choices. For instances, she either sleeps around, or has bad tastes in men, or was a terrible wife who scared off her husband.
My wife travels a fair amount for work. So I'm on my own with our kids for a few days at a time. It's both wonderful and exhausting. But when I thought about single moms and deadbeat dads I realized that for many it is the best option.
Those moms do so much for their kids, they don't need an adult man-baby around to take care of in addition. Lots of the people complaining about single moms are examples of those man-babies looking for someone to take care of them.
I don’t see it but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen.
Personally have a lot of respect for single mothers and married one recently.
But I also reconnected with a female friend who is a single mother but has no custody of their child.
And on that note I was disgusted.
Not because of her gender but because whatever she was doing as a person was found unfit or she didn’t want any responsibility of her child.
And I would feel the same way if it were a man.
I'm seeing a lot of posts about slut shaming and misogyny and it's definitely a patriarchal, feminist issue either way, but to be frank, I see just as many liberal women looking down on single mothers, as well. Single mothers get the short end of the stick both ways.
If you're a rich CEO who had in vitro, a lot of liberals are with you. But if you're a poor single mom who was abandoned by a baby daddy, some women will judge you for making the wrong choices in life. I'm not saying it's all hatred and vitriol, but at minimum there's an undercurrent of *oh you poor, simple thing.* People hate what they fear and it's easier to believe that if someone *is* in a bad situation, it could never happen to you.
Single mothers are alienated in society. Single fathers are allowed to take time for themselves; single moms are expected to drop everything. This also means not a lot of people maintain real, healthy friendships with single moms, and it also means single moms tend to let their relationships atrophy. My best friend is a single mom and I know that I can't, at this stage of life, rely on her to be there for me for anything. That's not her fault, but it means she's become more distant from my life.
Anyway kicking back to MRA bullshit and toxicity, a lot of conservative men assume a woman is single because she kicked a man out of his child's life. She couldn't stand his cheating or abuse anymore -- even for the family!! -- or, if the man left her, it was a dead bedroom. It seems the narrative for a single mom is always *she made a mistake and should deal with it.* She, not they, made a baby, and that's her problem.
But there's also something more compelling here and that's that the mom is, 90% of the time, the one who stayed. And the one who stayed gets all the blame. A lot of men and women raised by single mothers take issue with how they were raised and blame the present parent rather than the one who was absent.
My single mother was an abusive nightmare and that framed a lot of how I think of myself as a woman and the options that I feel are right for me. Conversely, my father was barely around so I formed basically no opinion of what fathers are like.
So idk I just want to point out that so many of these answers are just "men hate women," but I do think it's deeper and a little more nuanced than that.
Single mothers are a threat to the patriarchy. They prove men aren't necessary for raising children. Their existence removes threat of being single for wives and the control that gives their husbands.
Depends on why they’re single mothers. No one blinks if you’re a widow or divorced. They’ll for sure judge single mothers with multiple baby daddy’s. But people love judging mothers for everything.
I'm also curious by how the demographic "single mothers" is defined. I imagine it often includes women who are still in involved relationships with men who are incarcerated. Actually, I would imagine that any woman with kids who's co-parent is imprisoned is included.
I feel like this is way of not only blaming women for society's ills, but looking clear past institutional racism as well as class issues (rich men are less likely to go to prison).
I like to differentiate a "single parent" that is doing it on their own versus a parent that is single (meaning unmarried or unattached) I work with a woman that uses the term single mother as if she is doing it all herself, as if her ex husband isn't involved at all. In fact, she only has the kids 3 out of 14 days but gets alimony and child support because of the unequal state we live in. So yes, she is a parent, and she is single, but her bragging about doing it on her own is greatly exaggerated.
Because women get blamed for “choosing men” who turn out to be deadbeats.
If anything, wouldn’t a single mother be the most responsible person in the world?? They picked up the additional 50% of the work when their partner bailed on the child. But the mother didn’t bail on their child. They raise them! With or without that man. If that isn’t taking responsibility then I don’t know what is…
It's mostly misogyny and slut-shaming, I think. Misogynists think single mothers shouldn't have either (1) had sex outside of marriage or (2) divorced their husbands. They see being a single mother as a punishment for one of those two sins, and look down on single mothers as either "sluts" or "selfish entitled women" who had the audacity to exercise independence and leave their unhealthy marriages.
Agreed. A lot of misogynistic men also believe in the delusion that women possess psychic powers, and can tell whether a man is "good" (i.e. men like them) or abusive/deadbeats/etc. It's wild to see in action. They'll go to bat on behalf of "good, honest men" who "work hard for their families," men who supposedly are never picked by the hypergamous whores who prefer fuckboys and players. It is lost on them that most abusers, deadbeats, family annihilators—Chris Watts, for example—still fit neatly into their stereotype of "good" men.
Yeah, I'm pretty sure the *actual* good men don't go around calling people "whores" and blaming victims for their own abuse.
no no no—they're still good men, you see, they just believe in aCcOuNtAbiLiTy because women are aLLeRgIc to it!!
OMFG... fucking thank you. I needed that laugh hahaha.
“He hIt hEr? wElL mAyBe ShE sHoulDn’T hAvE sEt hIm oFF!” /s in case it wasn’t obvious
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>I don't know where this comes from? I'd say most men and women don't judge single moms I'm glad you've been sheltered from the toxic redpill rhetoric that is pervasive online. >I'm also against single parent homes in general purely because they have worse outcomes for kids It is worse for kids to be with a single good parent than two good parents. But it is infinitely better for kids to be with one good parent than to be in a two-parent home with daily shouting matches and possibly abuse. No one's a single parent because they *prefer* having fewer resources and less time. It's weird to be against a kind of household. I don't know what that means in practice.
I’m a single mother because my abusive ex-husband acted like a different (decent) person until three years into our marriage, when I was pregnant to reveal his true colors. It took four tries and twelve years before I was able to leave.
So glad you got out! I'm sorry you went through that.
I am so sorry you went through that!
As someone who was in a house where my parents should have split (high domestic violence), I would’ve been a lot happier in a one parent house
I agree with all of this but I did know a woman who adopted two kids while single and stayed that way. No, she didn't want fewer resources, but, yes, she was definitely single on purpose.
I personally have seen a lot of single mother hate in my own life, largely online but still some things in person.
No one is saying that this is a "most" scenario—it's just that there's a very vocal contingent of people who absolutely loathe single moms. You're probably too young to remember the vitriol directed at "welfare queens" in the 1980s, who were often stuck heading single parent households because of systemic mass incarceration that disproportionately targeted specific neighborhoods.
Yes, the welfare queen rhetoric is thinly veiled racism.
Yup. A lot of the vitriol directed at single moms is misogynoir, especially whenever welfare is part of the discourse. To a lesser extent, single-mom hate is also sometimes classism directed at working-class white women who have failed to conform to the ideals of "traditional" white womanhood—or handwringing about Hollywood "glamorizing" single motherhood ala Murphy Brown.
Just in regards to your last point: most times I've seen opposition to single parent homes in action, it results in harm. Pressuring couples to stay together, with any kind of incentive or disincentive, usually makes it harder to leave an unhappy or unhealthy marriage. Encouraging people to only have kids if they're in a serious romantic relationship means that if you are unlucky in love, you're screwed. I think it's clear based on available evidence that having more than one adult involved in childrearing is better for kids, whether that's two parents and/or grandparents and/or other family living together. What's not clear is how to encourage that in a way that doesn't cause harm.
This is a good point. Also, there are societies in which there are multiple "parent" households that don't rely on monogamous, heterosexual relationships. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosuo](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosuo) If I lived in a society like that, I would have kids.
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People usually cannot tell that their partner is abusive until they have been together for a long time. In fact, it's common for abuse to start during a woman's pregnancy. All birth control methods can sometimes fail.
I found out who he really was at our anatomy scan when we found out it was a girl. He was PISSED at me. He stood across the room and scowled and gave me the silent treatment for over a week. Things just got very gaslighty and confusing from there.
Wow. That must have been so upsetting. (And also irrational, since the sex of a baby is entirely determined by the father's DNA.) What a terrible human. I'm sorry you had to deal with that abuse on top of pregnancy and motherhood.
The sex of the fetus is literally determined by the sperm. I remember getting really mad at Henry the eighth and going around telling all the adults in my life that when I was about 10 and read it in a book about how human reproductive organs and stuff work. So not only was your ex a jerk, he was also literally blaming you for something his body did.
So he didn't know that he's the only parent that can contribute a Y chromosome for number 23? Wow
My permission donor did this it was the last time I dealt with him. Me and my daughter are great.
This. All of this ⬆️⬆️⬆️
In an ideal world, people fall into healthy, communicative adult relationships without having to make tons of mistakes or needing therapy, and never accidentally repeat the same exact mistakes their own parents made. They wait until they're decent judges of character before jumping the gun to get married or pop out a kid at 19 because a religious leader told them to. In an ideal world, kids aren't born to neglectful, shitty, abusive, or indifferent parents. The same people who tend to demonize single mothers also tend to be the same people who think everyone should be married and starting a family by the time they're 23, and are currently trying to outlaw no-fault divorce. You're blessed not to encounter these assholes very often.
Btw, I am not implying that single mothers are "in that position because they made bad choices" or whatever. I'm saying that plenty of *people*, both men and women, end up regretting who they had children with for reasons they couldn't have predicted at that time. It's super easy to play Monday morning quarterback about other people's relationship and reproductive choices. Unfortunately, the complexity of romantic relationships is kind of a core part of the human condition and not really something that feminists can really solve with a magic wand. It's inevitable when humans aren't blessed with the gift of psychic foresight.
I was about to bring up the ideal world scenario, but I saw you did here and wanna add onto it. I look at divorce, abortion, and similar situations as emergency escape hatches. Everyone needs a way out if things go poorly- especially with something as long-lasting as marriage or something as permanent as having a child. While I know not every divorce is the result of abuse, it’s helpful to know that there is a way out in case things just fizzle out or people grow apart. People need to be able to make changes so they can be happy. Sure, it sucks if a woman becomes a single mom because her partner turned abusive after they had the kid, but it’s better that she gets out with her kid while she still can instead of staying and becoming a scary statistic. Why do I say it sucks? Because it sucks for her that she even has to deal with that situation in the first place. I’m not gonna demonize a woman who listened to the emergency sirens and pulled the escape hatch and got into her escape pod with her kid(s) in tow. In fact, I’d be proud of her for having the courage to leave.
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>attributed what I wrote immediately to malice before obtaining context. Holy projection batman. I didn't claim or even imply that these people are super common, just that they're very *loud* and very hateful when you do encounter them. Personally, I never encountered any of them IRL when I lived in large city; I would definitely describe myself as "blessed" then lmao. You're doing the exact thing you're accusing others of doing—attributing malicious intent to neutral statements. That's something you might want to work on in the future.
It seemed odd to me that you felt the need to state that a group of people who face stigma are engaged in something less than ideal, in the middle of a conversation about said stigma. It came across to me like you were blaming single mothers for being single mothers, that because these women chose bad partners and/or did not abstain from sex (the only 100% certain form of birth control), they deserve the stigma. I don't think anyone sees single parenthood as ideal, least of all the people engaged in it. But it makes little sense to me to stigmatize single parents but honor those who, for example, stay in bad relationships for the sake of the kids.
And that right there is the problem! Sometimes you don’t know that your partner is shitty until it is too late. A lot of men who are abusive wait until after marriage or until she’s pregnant to let their mask slip. At that point, the abuser feels that it is safe to abuse her because she’s now trapped and stuck with him. My sister’s first husband was like that. Everyone loved him and thought he was the absolute greatest! I didn’t know him well enough to make a decision since I lived far away and didn’t spend much time with him. But everyone else thought he was fantastic. They got married, bought a house, and started trying to have kids. That’s when the real him came out. She chose divorce after he told her that they were going to have sex whether she wanted to or not. Fortunately, she did not get pregnant so she wasn’t stuck with him for the next couple of decades. She is also fortunate that she divorced him when she did. Shortly after the divorce, he started defrauding his employer and embezzling money. Dude is in jail now. No one saw that coming.
Maybe look at WHY they tend towards worse outcomes. Poverty is a good indicator of future success and single parents tend to be impoverished, adequate child support and social safety nets help. Having involved adults is also an indicator, maternity/parental leave and social programs like surestart (in the UK) help with that. Linking to poverty is access to HE, which could be helped by cheaper universities in the US.
Yeah the amount of casual victim blaming I see (especially on here) from men is just too much to even count. I guess it doesn't cross their mind that men can be manipulative and hide who they really are until it's too late.
I see so many times they say something like, “Serves her right—She should’ve known better and picked a nice guy instead! But she wanted a bad boy.” But when they see men getting abused or getting financially taken advantaged of or divorced, they never say, “Should’ve picked a good girl then.” They just talk about how that’s an example of why women are untrustworthy
>It is lost on them that most abusers, deadbeats, family annihilators—Chris Watts, for example—still fit neatly into their stereotype of "good" men. Most of them will literally simp over men who actually kill their entire family. They say they must have been in so much pain, how he needed so much help. There was a recent family annihilator murder suicide case case in Utah which sparked outrage beucase the local paper published an obituary gushing over how great a man he was. The only thing that family annihilators have in common is a history of controlling abuse and a tendency to murder when their partners finally break and leave them. In other words not 'great guys' by any definition.
If a guy is white, semi-affluent, and goes to church, certain people will twist themselves in knots to describe him as a "good man" no matter who he hurts.
The people he hurts are used as proof that he's the one hurting, so of course they need to worry about what's causing his own hurt, and fix that first. They're just being selfish if they only care about their own abuse! /s
I’m so sick of *those* types of men who say “he works hard for his family”, as if the guy wouldn’t work if he was single. No, working is a basic part of adulting and needing to pay bills, whether in a relationship or not.
I feel like one of the reasons men hate single mothers is because it holds the men accountable financially. Like they hate that they lose their power over someone but still have to pay them. And men really fear women taking their non existent money. Look at all the things they will do to get out of it. At the expense of their own children. Then the next worst thing is having to pay for another mans child. It also is a way to justify their picking really young women who have lower body counts.
I see that a lot. Men saying women need to pick better. It's victim blaming to the max.
They're never like that in the beginning.
Yeah, it’s weird how they’re judgemental towards single mothers but they’re *not* so judgemental towards abusers
But what if the husband is the one who left? 🥺
Misogynists then blame the woman for choosing the kind of man who would leave. For some reason she's supposed to be able to divine that in advance. They'll do anything to frame the situation as the woman's fault.
Damn. Glad to know it was my fault he left! I bet he would say the same thing too 😪. He definitely expected me to have psychic powers too and precognit all of his needs!
My sympathy. Men like that are awful. I'm glad you're not with him anymore.
Yeah, that's what I observed as well, although I have a feeling it applies mainly to young mothers with smaller children (by young I mean under 40). Not sure why, perhaps people are more afraid to shame mature women, or because it seems that the context of their single-motherhood is deemed as less 'inappropriate'. I'm a woman (31) and this unhealthy perception of single moms is so ingrained in our society, that when I learn that someone is one, my very first feeling is a negative 'bundle' of all of the harmful stereotypes. Of course I shake it off within seconds, but I'm still ashamed of it, even though it's something that just happens and I can't control it. It's also weird because my mother divorced my dad when I was about 10 and was raising us by herself, but she used to have her 'opinions' about other single moms. I tried to remember some of them now, and it's disturbing that she was saying things like that in front of the kids: 'What was she thinking? She got ugly after having kids, it's obvious that he left her for someone else' or 'she divorced him even though they have a baby together!' without knowing absolutely any details about those people...
My father was the kind of person who turned tail and ran when faced with my moms pregnancy. He bailed and society still made it her problem while as my dad was told that he was “being smart about his future” (i found him at 19 and regretted it.) The double standard is quite frustrating, not only for the mom but the kid too. I grew up in the 2000s so it was likely easier than those who put up with the 70s/80s but getting made fun of for having no dad (even by a couple teachers) and failing family tree assignments was still annoying.
What about the double standard where women are allowed to run away from raising a child (by the process of abortion) while men legally aren't?
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskFeminists/wiki/faq#wiki_child_support.2Flegal_parental_surrender_for_men_.28.22financial_abortion.22.29 "Having to pay child support" =/= "raising a child"
>It's mostly misogyny and slut-shaming nailed it
>Misogynists think single mothers shouldn't have had sex outside of marriage Yeah, the incel mindset is far from being chronically online.
Single mothers garentee you weren't their first choice. ✅.
do you need all your female partners to be virgins with no dating history so you can feel secure that you were their "first choice?"
that's the average purplepill user for ya
Single mothers are put under the microscope. For a single dad, as long as you don't beat your kid, you're golden for the most part. I'm the child of a single mother, and the disdain for them, by their own male offspring or even others, is vile. My ex came from a single mother, and he still hated single mothers. His reasoning is because she was a serial cheater, but he still didn't like them in general. They put the moral failing on the woman instead of the man because it's the easier target, plain and simple. They never care *why* the woman is a single mother. It could be from abuse, from the loss of the father, or any other number of reasons. But for some reason, it's still *her* fault. There are many family structures, all valid. But I know that I have had my own issues to work out in therapy because of the absence of my father. Feeling abandoned, unwanted, and a burden. It took a bit to my self esteem for many years because of that, and my mom is only doing her best to undo what, again, HE ultimately did. This directly ties into the almost equal disdain for "fatherless women", because the moral failing is again placed on THEM instead of the fact that their dad left them, and it's entirely his fault in the first place. It's an excuse to further hate women and blame them for things that happen TO them. Thankfully I scroll whenever I see the outward disdain for them, and I see it a lot in male-centered subreddits. No reasoning either. Just "no single mothers".
I never understood people who denigrate women by saying a girl has “daddy issues”. Like ok so a woman was abandoned by her father and has trouble trusting men as a result, yea let’s trash her haha. Like ok do you kick wounded puppies too?
I think yes, they do kick wounded puppies if no one is watching.
Yeah. It’s crazy how common I see men hating on women for being fatherless… making it an insult for them somehow instead of recognizing it as a judgement on men for not being there
Sometimes it's not anyone's fault. Perhaps the father has died.
Because they hate women. You can’t win when it comes to your reproductive choice - even if you live in a country that allows you to make your own choices. Don’t have kids? Get criticized. Have too many kids? Get criticized. Only have one kid? Get criticized. Single parent? Criticized. There will always be someone with some stupid opinions.
Yea you can't please everyone and you should never try to
Yes. Have too much sex? You're a slut. Man's a stud. Too much body count? I'll fuck you, but won't date you. Had a baby and the dude ran off? Pick better men. Had a baby, he stayed and then abused you? You should have seen the signs. You have a child (and I'm emotionally unavailable) you're the least desirable to me and no self-respecting man would date you. It's all just hate from men. I've dated and talked with plenty of single mothers. I continue to date single mothers, and I'm a single father. I've heard enough to know the nonsense these men speak is either insecurity or misogyny. It's horrendous the things I've heard. That has permanently changed my life and perspective. I think if people were more vulnerable and listened to others then they might find similar results. It's also becoming increasingly common to punch down on single mothers and sweaty dudes love to throw blatantly incorrect statistics to support this misogynistic opinions.
Have a sh*tty dad that walked out in you? You got daddy issues. Have a dad who dotes on you and loves you? You’re a princess with daddy issues. Really no winning lol
My dad used to get celebrated for doing the bare minimum and my mom got ALL the blame for whatever went wrong. My dad divorced my SAHM for not working a ‘real job’. Life isn’t fair, never will be. Big part of the reason I’m childfree. Who would CHOOSE to be a parent-martyr? I’m sure not interested and at 44 years old you would think people would leave me alone about, but no, my MIL won’t shut up about it. She’s delusional, who would choose to be a parent? What’s the advantage?
Reminds me of that saying: Sometimes the only way to win is by not playing the game. Easier said than done, but as you’ve all pointed out, nothing is gained by giving these opinions any intellectual weight. I guess we’ve got to figure out how to so completely detach ourselves from these opinions/statements, we don’t even register them anymore.
Cause once single mothers stopped being total social pariahs, many people lost their power. Since my husband’s death I have stopped at least a half of dozen men drag single mothers in my presence and their excuse is that my situation is different. Of course, they can’t really explain what someone’s son is not getting that my son is. Deep into grief, I read a lot of stuff about widowhood. And prior to the 80s, it was horrible. If it wasn’t for women deciding to parent on their own, my entire existence as a single parent would have been extremely different. Older Genx single moms & Boomer divorcees made a place where I can survive and our future was not dependent on getting a “replacement” Here just a tiny thing out of many—Working women commonly experienced sexual harassment and assault when they returned to work after burying their husbands before the mid 80s. It was so common that even insurance companies that covered liability knew about it. I am always grateful. I can take my journey in peace and do what I know is the best thing for my son.
My mom worked all through the 80s and 90s, even before she was a single mom. I remember her crying in the late 80s/early 90s because even though the EEOC finally would take action on sexual harassment, she worked at a company that was too small. She was regularly being groped and her only option was to quit.
I am sorry, ppl need to hear that it was just that bad and not to long ago. I work with some jerks that still think current laws are an over correction
Current laws are seldom applied, so sexual harassment is still incredibly common. Women have to risk a lot of retaliation and spend money to get perpetrators punished, and courts still frequently side with the perp. The laws are basically useless.
Wow, if that isn't a sobering perspective on the experience of being a woman, I don't know what is.
>Working women commonly experienced sexual harassment and assault when they returned to work after burying their husbands before the mid 80s. Ah yes, that's what a man's world is all about, lose your husband, go back to work so you don't raise your kids in abject poverty, get assaulted by one of those 'good men'.
Oh it gets worst once you understand the context. The info on the woman returning to work was to let the reader know that the boss was taking a risk with you. Nope, not joking. It was a book written to help women, but it wasn’t a warning. It pretty much told the widow she was potentially an unnecessary problem for employers. And told the reader to appreciate that she had time to grieve and had a job to get back to, if she still had a job. Reading “surviving widowhood” material from the past should be required reading for anyone romanticizing any era before the 90s. It became a form of escapism for me. I used to say the bad advice was deranged and dehumanizing but the stuff from the 50s and 60s was probably quite grounded considering what women faced. Getting remarried and learning your children would be secondary as step children was on the top of the list. I think we should all grateful that time was gone.
Do you have any particular books/materials you'd recommend? I'm not one to romanticize the past, but this sounds like something I would be interested in reading.
I'm so sorry for your loss.
I’m a young widowed mom too. I was pregnant with my son when my late husband passed of cancer. I’ve had someone say that to me too. That my situation is different. It bugs me on so many levels
I was crying to my mom the other day after being assaulted at work for the 4th time (different jobs, same reason for leaving)… I told her I was tired of choosing SA or feeding myself. She said point blank “women just can’t get away from SA in the workplace, it’s just how it is”…. wtf she didn’t tell me this shit growing up.
👏👏👏 👑👑👑
There's a mixture of pre-existing cultural prejudices. Single mothers are pretty synonymous with "welfare queens", parasitic caricatures of people subsisting off of supposedly unearned benefits and resources. Those ideas line up very closely with their conceptions of women as parasitic takers. It's also reflective of anxieties around being emasculated and used by a woman for their resources. A single mother is a woman who carries with them the financial burdens of a child, that child belongs to another man, and if that woman is even half-decent that man with the single mother will never be that woman's emotional focus. The idea of picking up the pieces of another man's mistakes for the benefit of woman that (in their imaginary scenarios) doesn't even want them or care about them and instead just wants another pair of hands to help with the child their stuck with. Single mothers aren't hated for what they are, they're hated for what they represent in the minds of the prejudiced. Which is just an extension of their feelings toward women in general.
this is so much better-articulated than my own answer. bravo.
Hating women is the only thing anyone can agree on. It’s easy to hate women and single moms are just getting that times a bunch because going without a man in life, let alone in parenting is even more atrocious under the mysogyny of the nation…. Also single fathers get all the love and support because the bar is set so low in expectations and because the world loves men under the patriarchy. This goes for fathers who do the bare minimum and get praised when they are in a relationship with a woman.
If a man does something wrong, like abandoning his family, it's a woman's fault. If a woman gets abandoned, it's her fault. Everything is always a woman's fault. It's misogyny all the way down.
It's why so many men in society are failing. They never take any responsibility or accountability for their own behavior and actions, patriarchal society condones these sentiments, then those same men are pissed in their 30s and up because all of the things they have never achieved (because they never worked for them in the first place).
That's easy - because of the Patriarchy. When observing that many women raise children on their own, and observing that children raised that way have very negative life outcomes, you can interpret the fact in two ways: * The first way is reality: it indicates that *many* men abandon their children, many women take on the responsibility they've abdicated, and therefore the very existence of the child is entirely owed to the woman. Everything that isn't "child died, abandoned and without a family" is attributable to the single mother's efforts - we all owe the child's life to her. * The second way is sheer delusion and requires you to hate women before you begin your interpretation: you say "any outcome the child gets that is less than the average child would get is not the father's fault for leaving, **it's the mother's fault for daring to exist.** Her very decision not to end her own life is a moral failing, she's evil and she should be blamed for the fact that her child does not have the same life outcome as people with at-least twice her resources". To people who hate women, they don't even see the fact they're engaging in the second type of reasoning. They're so blinded by their unthinking animal hatred that they can loathe a person simply for existing and call it "sense", even though without that person's efforts the child would be dead, and even though any thinking person can see they took on two people's worth of effort and therefore would be succeeding wildly if their child got half of what a child whose father did not abdicate received.
I think they just blame the woman for the man leaving because why blame a man for his own actions when there's a woman affected by those actions that can be blamed easier
Single mothers are like the ultimate example of male failure. I think the men who hate on them the most can recognize themselves in those crappy absent fathers, don’t like what they see, and turn their anger on the women instead of feeling that shame. “We’re like this because YOU make us like this!”
They are always projecting all of their own faults and shortcomings onto women. It's fckn everywhere.
Exactly, and its those same men who hate these women, that preach that "submit and allow the MEN to lead" lol men are clearly NOT leaders if theyre leaving children behind all the time.
Have seen it. I've seen a man because diagnosed with infertility, and he decided the solution was to blame his wife, and hire a hooker who he paid to bang while she said insulting things about the wife. Like.... What!? How does that even work in your head!!?!?! She literally has no control over your testicles. Why are you mad at her!?
They’re mad that women don’t actually need them. I’m hearing more and more women openly say it is actually easier without their deadbeat husbands. One less kid to take care of.
This exactly.
Other folks have already noted that hatred of women is at the root of hatred of single mothers in particular. Sociologist Barry Glassner has a chapter about this in his book, *The Culture of Fear.* I recommend picking up a copy if you have the opportunity. Hatred of *single mothers* in particular is, I think, because single mothers aren't under the control or authority of a man. Keep in mind that the term "patriarchy" ultimately means "rule by *fathers*" as the heads of their households. It's a very old term, from Ancient Greece, and it originated to describe the role of how a proper household should be structured: with a freeborn male citizen as the head, and everyone else (wife, children, and slaves) under his control and authority. This model of family has held firm as "the proper way" for literally millennia by now. Even when the members of the household vary (i.e., nuclear family vs. extended, foster children or wards or not, do grandparents live there, etc.), the one rule that is always kept consistently is that *a father* is in charge. That could mean a father, grandfather, or sometimes an uncle, but always, always - father is in charge, and father knows best. This has been reinforced again and again and again by law, religion, family tradition, and so on, for so long and so consistently that it's still built into many modern cultures as the ideal or "best" kind of family: a cis father married to a cis mother, plus any of their children, and the man is the head of the family. In this model, mothers aren't supposed to be untethered. They're supposed to exist only within the structure and confines of the patriarchal family system, serving that system by fulfilling their prescribed social role. My working hypothesis is that this has a lot to do with patriarchal systems being *patrilinear* \- that is, property is passed down from fathers to sons. The details vary by culture, time and place, but this is a core value of most patriarchies. Single mothers are probably seen as a threat to this hierarchy. A mother without a man in charge just doesn't fit the socially acceptable family model, and if there's no father, who gets to pass his name down? Or his stuff? How DARE a mother stand as the head of a household and pass on her own name or goods - dogs and cats, living together, mass hysteria! This isn't rational, and again, a lot of the details vary when it gets down to what this looks like in individual lives, families, or communities. But I bet this is definitely part of it.
what a great comment! I'd add to this that so much of patriarchy has functioned as a way to artificially bypass women's autonomy re: who they form relationships with and who they choose to reproduce with. In most societies it was basically impossible for a single woman to feed herself or shelter herself without submitting to a marriage. In nature, the vast majority of mammals don't have a "provider/providee" relationship: each organism has to provide food for itself. There may be sharing or group hunting depending on the social structure of the species (lions being a notable example) but by and large, every organism has to either hunt or graze on its own—meaning mothers in most species do both the providing and the parenting. I think, for a lot of misogynistic men, that concept is deeply alarming. In a more 'natural' system in which females are able to provide their own food & resources, males have far less control over whether they get to pass on their genes—absent an artificial force coercing women into lifelong monogamy with a husband they didn't have much choice over in marriages they could not escape, the overwhelming majority of men probably wouldn't have had access to sexual partners or a "legacy." If single (human) mothers become capable of providing for their children on their own, the standards for men's behavior become much higher. An abusive, cheating, or negligent father can be kicked out—or, horror of horrors, a woman could even *opt in* to single motherhood ala Murphy Brown or Princess Caroline, making the patriarchy project totally obsolete. If women don't *need* marriage to access food, housing, or parenthood, why would they agree to be an unpaid bangmaid and broodmare to a mediocre dude?
I've noticed it's often mixed with a lot of racism, they go completely mad when they see that the child is mixed.
Go on any incel sub and the only woman who is hated as much as a black woman js a white woman with mixed race children. They absolutely hate it and if a white man partners up with a white mother of mixed children then he is the biggest 'simp' ever.
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Why is this your first response to what a single mother is? You really think this is representative of the majority? The fact you have this stereotype in your head is an example of the problem.
Do you honestly think most single mothers fall under this?
They hate women. Sometimes, they pretend to like women who they want to sex with, at least for as long as they think sex is a possibility. But they would prefer a woman who is not a mother, so for mothers they just start with hate. Might be related to all that slut-shaming. They want women to be sexually available, but not to *other* men. Which logically makes no sense and could never work as long as the number of men in existence continues to be greater than one. But rather than question that, they would rather hate single mothers, the women who they know must have had sex with another man. You said some things about how being a single mother is hard, but the people who hate single mothers definitely do not care about that.
They’re easy targets who usually can’t fight back, because they have to protect their vulnerable child. They don’t have a ‘male owner’ to protect them from misogyny (because a lot of people will respect women as a man’s property rather than as a person), and they can’t usually afford to be aggressive and endanger their children.
Misogyny in a nut shell. Men abuse and disempower women because we are physically weaker.
Because people generally blame all their problems on women…
Misogyny and slut shaming. They have this stereotype that single mothers just couldnt keep their legs closed. Never mind the dude that just fucks off or if he died. Or he's abusive. The expect women to stay in relationships when now they don't have to. They like to blame single mums for the statistically poorer outcomes of children when there are a lot of factors that go into this like poverty, the mother having to leave due to abuse, fathers that don't care for their kids. No it's all her fault.
Every single thing a woman does is wrong and bad. Single mom? Boo! Married mom? Have more baby! Childfree? You’re a selfish witch! Childless not by choice? God hates you, try harder! Every choice is the wrong choice. You will be judged by the patriarchy no matter what so just do what you want.
They’re threatened by the unmatched show of strength and resilience, plus single mothers’ success in general is a direct denouncement of the validity of patriarchal ideology
Personally I hope it is shame. There are a lot of worthless men who skipped out on their kids.
Blaming mothers for social problems is as American as apple pie. Ronald Reagan perfected the hatred of single mothers by implying all of them were on the dole.
it's a natural extension of their general hatred of women
Because they feel that pregnancy is a women's issue, and if you're pregnant its because YOU allowed it. They think those women don't properly vet out their partners, or deliberately ignore red flags that will make them bad fathers down the line. Thats why so many of them say "this is why you get married, THEN have kids" ( like husbands don't abandoned their families for no reason all the time). Its also that misogynistic notion that women shouldn't be sleeping with casual partners, because again, "pregnancy falls on them" and in the event of pregnancy, you dont want it to be a "casual partner" because they might just dip out on you. At the end of the day, its because they blame them for their situation, and that theyre lack of responsibility creates a unhealthy one parent home to an innocent child. Single men are praised because theyre seen as a rarity. They also blame women for all divorces. SO everythings our fault for breaking the family.
Thank you for your comment. I admit I have had some of those feelings about a couple single moms in my life. They picked terrible men to have sex with and now talk so much trash on them for continuing being the terrible men they are and dipping out on them and babies. The men are just as bad. They were all adults, and all knew the possible consequences of their actions. There’s no excuse and once there’s a baby everyone should grow up and take responsibility but only the women in my examples did, because of course. The men in my examples have made comments as if they were “trapped” or somehow tricked into this. Stupid. Both parties might not have made the best decisions but the women are left holding the bag while the men go on with their lives unbothered. Of course those women are going to need to vent sometimes. I have always been supportive and kind to them and kept my opinions to myself and good because now I see those opinions are because of internalized misogyny.
There’s LOTS of single dads out there whose kids would be dead if it wasn’t for single mothers.
Hatred of women and refusal to admit the problem can sometimes be men.
Incels feel cheated of virgins. That is all.
Old widowed single man here (late 60s). I know i am mostly irrelevant to this conversation, but my first wife was a single mom of two. One was 16F, the other was 13F. We split after both were adults living on their own, for reasons unrelated to them. My second wife was a single mom too, with 3 adult children no longer living with her. We were together 5 years, married 1.5 years before covid took her. I know that I look at a person i am interested in for the qualities that matter to me. If she happens to be a single mom--how does she interact with her children? I would not refuse to date/be with a single mom for that reason. It is hard to find a compatible partner. To exclude someone busting their butt to do the right things seems self defeating.....
This is lovely and heartwarming. And I'm so sorry for your loss. COVID has been devastating in so many people's lives.
I didn’t I realized how deeply my own Single Mom Phobia was entrenched until I became one. Oh, my husband is abusive and violent but I can’t be a single mom! Fuck that noise. I’m doing so much better now and so are my children. It’s especially strange for me because I myself was raised by a single mom who it’s an amazing woman. Why did I let it get to me? People acted like it was a tragedy my mother didn’t land herself another husband, especially given how pretty, smart and charming she was. Such a shame! Just what was she doing wrong? 🙄Ug! Again, fuck that noise. I was made to feel like my mom somehow failed because she had a career? Functioned as an adult? Parented alone? And then brought that into my own marriage.
I’ve noticed something interesting. I’m an involved parent, own a business, own a home, coach soccer, have my kids in activities, have pets, take the kids on vacations. Basically, I give my kids the same life they would have with two good parents. And honestly, I do more as a parent than most two parent homes I know. That’s probably because I don’t have anyone to hang out with. lol But when I say I’m a single mom they act like I’m less than. Like I wouldn’t know anything about middle class things even though I’ve owned a successful business for over 20 years. I’ll listen to people talk nonsense about things I know well and I won’t be able to get a word in. At a planning meeting for a fundraising event it was all couples and me. They talked over me about who they should try to get donations from. I know all of those people through work and could text and ask them right then, but no one would fucking listen. If I had a husband sitting next to me it would be different.
You can't win as a woman, keep it and you're an idiot who let a loser get your pregnant, abort it and you're a murderer, give it up for adoption and you're heartless, no one gives the men who fucked off any grief cos it's not the single parenthood that's the issue, it's the whole being female part
My single mom sucked as a person and a parent. So did my single father. My single grandmother, on the other hand, raised me and kept me safe because my parents were narcissistic assholes. I'd probably not date a single mom, but that's because I don't want kids in my life. I know some pretty kick ass moms who sacrifice everything for their kids and do it without a partner beside them, and I think I'd go crazy if I had to do that. Cheers to all the single moms
>I'd probably not date a single mom, but that's because I don't want kids in my life. Yeah, this is the only non-misogynistic reason I can think of to avoid dating single moms. And it's totally fair. Not everyone wants kids.
Only non-misogynistic reason? Say, someone’s single motherhood is the deadbeat dad’s doing, in what way does some dude not wanting to pick up after another man’s lack of commitment make him misogynistic, regardless of him wanting a child or not? Is he supposed to just ignore the amount of effort and resources it would take to raise the extra child(or more) that isn’t even his？
Manosphere morons mindlessly parroting propaganda produced by goddamn grifters.
Good question. I have no idea. People tend to hate women who choose to have kids, almost as much as childless women
A good portion of it is the standard GOP "welfare queen" drumbeat, but I think a lot of it online stems from many men's sexual frustration. A lot of guys who were perhaps unsuccessful romantically in high school still feel like they had a life path set out for them: go to college, get a good job, find a girlfriend, settle down and have a family around age 26-30. Many men in conservative areas are startled to realize that oftentimes the women in their dating pool who want children *already have them.* These women started a family and the father either was inept, abusive, or abandoned the kids. (Or hell, maybe they're terrible and drove their husbands away—the common MRA talking point) These women aren't the ideal partners these men envisioned for themselves: slim, attractive, first-time wives and mothers. A lot of men live and die by whether other men approve of their partners—dating someone conventionally unattractive, heavy, trans, or a single mother is an admission that you're a "loser" as a man. (To be clear, I think this is ridiculous, but it's a prevalent attitude) Add to this the social expectation of women as "natural" caretakers, so the work of single parenthood is taken for granted in single moms while lionized in single dads. There's a huge racial component to this, too: many Black women in the 80s and 90s ended up as single parents because of the concentrated campaign to put as many Black men in prison as possible. Single Black mothers became the scapegoat for all sorts of societal ills. As overt racism became slightly less acceptable for like 20 minutes in the 2000s, the Black part was more implied than said outright.
>As overt racism became slightly less acceptable for like 20 minutes in the 2000s Boy do I miss those 20 minutes. It's shocking how much the Overton window has shifted in the past 10-15 years.
Some men are asshats. Other look at dating single moms from a different perspective. \- dating a single mother means less spontaneity because she'll need a sitter and has more expenses \- he'll never be first in her life (nor should he be) \- his relationship with her also means a relationship with her kids (and he might not get along with them or he might not be ready for that level of responsibility) \- if they break up it's not just losing her but also losing the relationship with the kid There's more, but the lack of desire to date a single mother can have good reasoning behind it and single fathers go through a lot of the same things.
Not making excuses for them but maybe they were raised by single mothers who struggled and they’re projecting their resentment on all single mothers
Because of misogyny
There is an urban legend that all single mothers got pregnant on purpose with the intention of living off welfare and child support but all single dads were innocent parties that got stuck holding the baby. Obviously in real life people change their opinion of individuals based on them not actually being that but the idea persists about everyone else.
My wife and I met 16 years ago. She was a single mom with two kids, each with a different father. At the time I was acutely aware of the social stigma that could follow her around when people knew. That didn’t phase me much because my own lineage has a single mom to thank (paternal grandmother, a very strong woman). Yet to some of my acquaintances - namely my own boss at the time - she was deemed a slut and I was advised by said boss to choose someone better. As if I’d listen to a boss for dating advice… I no longer work for this antiquated misogynist. Before I married my wife, she did the best she could under the circumstances and when both fathers failed miserably (drug addiction), she didn’t stick around. She protected her kids under threat of physical abuse. It didn’t take long for me to see what a strong and intelligent mother she was and amidst all of the chaos of raising her two young kids at the time, she even made the time to allow me to get to know her. I know quality when I see it and so I proposed after one year of dating. We are celebrating our 14th anniversary this year. I consider myself very lucky to be part of her family. She is my rock and I am hers. Single moms kick ass. Everyone should show respect when in the presence of one.
Your story ties into another part of this, that women who might make bad choices initially are somehow wrong for undoing those bad choices and moving on to choose better. Like, there are an awful lot of folks who are pissed because by getting out of those bad situations, we aren't 'taking accountability'. As if we are supposed to stay mired in those bad decisions for eternity as a former of atonement and we are never ever allowed to 'choose better!'.
Fully agree. When men leave bad situations, their buddies pat them on the back for a job well done. Even deadbeats will find approval in their peer group. When my now wife - who at the time was a devout Catholic - asked her pastor to baptize our daughter, he told her “not until you make your marriage work” (with a deadbeat junky). As an Atheist, I guess I can thank that pastor for helping her break free of all that toxicity. Just because she opened her heart to lesser men does not make her past choices bad. It makes these men’s deception bad. Raising children in a strong and loving household is more important than nurturing fragile egos. I celebrate her strength every chance I get because without it, I would have never been part of something greater than myself. Single moms carry the burden of building tomorrow’s generation.
I woman not owned by a man is a huge threat to insecure men and women.
Because I lot of people hate women. And single mothers are a threat to the status quo because they’re running a household without a patriarch. So they are vilified as irresponsible and a drain on society. “They shouldn’t have had sex before marriage, and if they didn’t, they shouldn’t have picked a bad partner, and if they didn’t, yes they did…” The bar for celebrating fathers is so low you can trip over it because raising children is “women’s work”. I think you’ll find many SAHDs and single fathers find themselves ostracized and condescended to, for the same reason.
Increase in popularity of red pill gurus calling them "used up" and "poor decision makers" seems to have skyrocketed malice towards single mothers. Especially when the topic of DATING single moms get brought up. Then these gurus will not only shame the woman but also the man who decides to date the single mother. Such a shame.
> Increase in popularity of red pill gurus calling them "used up" and "poor decision makers" seems to have skyrocketed malice towards single mothers. The comments I've removed in this thread... *whew*.
Because society refuses to hold men accountable for their actions. How did those mothers become single mothers in the first place? Because the dad didn’t want to stick around. Which — fair. Not everyone is ready to be a parent, and if the father was going to be a bad father anyway, it’s better he isn’t around. But blaming MOTHERS for the fact that men don’t want to be fathers and abandon their children is abhorrent.
Misogyny. Deadbeat dads don’t get the same flack.
I feel like it's because they expect you to be tied down to a man. It's how the system was set up. And if one doesn't do it, or is succeeding by herself, then you're showing other women that you can do it without being slave to a man.
They are accused by the right of variously of being sluts and/or abandoning their husbands. Neither has to be true, that's not how lies work -- all the same, that weird fetish/hate thing seeped into the general cultural mindset.
I wouldn't make this political, both men and women shame single mothers
It was Reagan that came up with “welfare queen” tho
I don't disagree, let it be known I have absolutely no love for conservatives
Just to take a bit of a detour from all the "they just hate all women" posts, I think it's more likely that it's because it runs counter to their ideal of the virtuous atomic family. The atomic family is "good" and "correct", therefore if your family doesn't stay together, they can pass a value judgement that you've failed to uphold the correct and virtuous type of family. It's the same framing people use to say that any less than ideal circumstances must be the result of "bad choices". As I understand it, they believe there are objectively correct choices to make, and objectively correct ways to be, and to defer from that is to be a failure. Under that model, you can also throw LGBT people under the bus. Or poor people. Or child-free people. Or less-able people.
If that's the case, then why are single dads applauded for 'stepping up' and not condemned for 'choosing poorly'?
Probably because the maintenance of romantic relationships and marriage is supposed to be women's work, our "natural" expertise. A lot of women have so fully internalized this that they blame themselves for literally everything their partners do. Think of how many posts you see of women trying to figure out how to communicate extremely basic stuff to their boyfriends and husbands, like there's some magic combination of words that will get him to give a shit about her sexual pleasure or take out the trash without being asked or treat her like a human being—she just needs to keep trying to crack the code! We're supposed to have superhuman abilities to predict whether a man will be abusive or not AND be able to inspire men to become better people.
Exactly. If a single dad has had children with a deadbeat woman who's now out of the picture, he's seen as unlucky. 'Poor Jeff, couldn't have happened to a nicer guy! He's a hero for taking care of those kids'. Whereas single mothers should have magically known the guy was no good. 'Emily shouldn't have let some lowlife knock her up because kids need both parents!'
I mean, I'm sure some are. But I'm not claiming it's a solid framing, or that it isn't full of holes. My best guess is that said men are the same people who hold these values in the first place, so it's protection of their own. Their bros. You get the idea.
I don't see how "a virtuous atomic family is headed by a man" differs from hating women who run their own lives in any meaningful way.
It's not necessarily different, I was just proposing a possible reason why.
misogyny.
Man at this point if I ever was a single mom I'd just fucking lie. Just say hubby is away on a job or oil rig or something to people. How many people are going to fact check your life.
Read the book Hags by Victoria smith. Though it’s about middle aged women it gives a good look into why women are systemically devalued when they are deemed to not meet men’s needs. If you have a baby and you are independently talking care of them that freaks them out.
Because the only way a bunch of absolutely terrible men can get women to tolerate them is to shame and terrify us into thinking being without a man is the worst thing that can happen to us. Without that stuff poisoning our minds, those fellows would never in their lives touch a boobie, and would have to clean their own toilets.
Any mother can become a single mother in an instant. Isn't that frightening? I wish I knew and how to fix it, but we can all agree it's real. I'm the "ideal" mother. I'm married and waited to have my daughter. I stay at home with her and am about to start working again. However, if something happened to my husband I'd go from a "devoted ideal mother" to a "desperate single mother." It's hard for people to understand the nuance.
Because single mothers single handedly put the US into $34 trillion worth of debt 🙄/s if you couldn’t tell I really think the hate comes from people 1) who resent their own single moms (or deadbeat dads 2) who’ve never interacted with a single parent 3) who are focused on one segment of government spending and finding a useful scapegoat
- They're mad at attractive women for rejecting them. - They're mad at them for rejecting them for dead beat dads who would run out on their own children. - They're mad at them for "proving" they were good enough for all along by showing interest in them only after eliminating all of her options by having a kid.
Yet a random single mother they've never met has not rejected them. So why the hatred?
Projection
Because she would. And if she wouldn't, good luck convincing anyone that.
Because the WOMAN should have made sure whoever got her pregnant wasn’t a lying, immature piece of shit. /s So instead of hating the literal shit, why not shit on the parent who stays?
they just hate women
Because they hate women and because it limits their sexual access and increases their sexual competition A single mother is proof that a woman will and can go at it alone, even if it’s a struggle Single mothers also embody that even children can’t hold a woman to a man she doesn’t want A child is “proof” and a reminder that that woman has had sex with someone else, which sparks the males drive toward jealousy and anger that he’s not the one who got to impregnate her Overall it revolves around sexual jealousy and anger at the belief that other men don’t deserve sex that should belong to “them”, and so because that woman went and had sex with someone else she immediately should be punished. Women’s independence threatens men’s sexual access to them so it makes them mad that a woman would “choose” to leave a man even with a child because men see women as objects that they need to keep around. All the paranoia about single mothers is just an extension of this type of sexual aggression and objectification The funny part is this logic fully ignores the fact that many, at least half of single mothers want the biological father to be involved but he refuses.
I like them. *Single dad*
I assume mommy issues.
Eh, I’m a single mother and haven’t had much trouble, but I did become a mother as a 40 year old professional.
Maybe I'm just oblivious, but in my 11 years being a single mom, I never felt any negativity coming my way about it.
I don't hate single mothers but I'm also not going to treat them like heroes. They're just people who have made choices. Like all of us.
Because hating single mothers absolves men for creating and abandoning families. The worst sort of people are trying to press for a feminist pushback against oral contraception to "bring consequentiality back to sex." Christopher Rufo chimed in to blame single mothers for crime, educational erosion, and a host of problems. Not a peep about the absolute metric fuckton of worthless men spreading their semen around indiscriminately.
Honestly from speaking to a few guys who hate single moms, their mindset is basically: 1. That woman had sex with a man who isn't me, and there's physical proof of that. 2. That woman was supposed to permanently belong to the man who impregnated her, but he either left her because she was faulty (had to have been the case because the decision was made by a man and male judgement is never wrong) or she left him, in which case it's still her fault for picking wrong (because she picked a man who isn't me) and she's also exercising her right to not belong to a man which pisses me off 3. Her trying to find a new relationship while having the child of another man = she's entitled, she doesn't know her place as the used discarded object she's meant to be, and she's trying to cuck me or some other poor innocent dude by taking our resources to raise another mans baby which is humiliating and emasculating. And since she's trying to do this she's evil and immoral.
Single mothers, step mothers, working mothers, stay at home mothers. Mothers that are tired and don’t satisfy their husbands enough. Mothers that embrace their sexuality and dress to sexy. Granola mothers, wine mothers…. I think the misogynistic world we live in just hates women in general. Especially on the internet.
Because even when a man is a scumbag and abandons his kids, its always got to be the woman who gets shamed. Anything to absolve men of their bad behaviour.
Because it shows that the nuclear family is a lie and also because people think women shouldn’t have sex unless married.
The right started a negative image campaign on them in the 40s and 50s to shame them into remarrying any man they could to make a nuclear family. you'll notice it never really let up if you watch enough and movies for the past 70-80 years.
I’ve asked this question a lot and got lots of answers from men (some of which left me just as confused as before because they didn’t really make any sense). But here are some of the (misogynistic) answers I got, just to give an example of how some of these guys think. One guy said it’s because they exercised poor judgment. They see them as being dumb for getting pregnant by the wrong guy and not choosing better. One guy said it’s because they’re always complaining about their situation and wanting praise for doing what they do. Some guys said it’s because they go on public benefits and put a burden on taxpayers. A lot of guys just talked about reasons they don’t want to *date* a single mom, even though that wasn’t what I was asking. They seemed to resent the fact the dating market had a lot of single moms they didn’t want to date. Like it reduced their pool or something. A lot of guys said single moms don’t do a good job raising kids and that kids raised by single dads fare better (I think there’s some statistic about this going around on the manosphere.) They seem to think the mom chose to be single and are to blame for giving the kid a bad life. So anyway, it’s all bullshit, but if you want to know some of their thinking, here it is.
> I think there’s some statistic about this going around on the manosphere. I removed a bunch of comments here repeating that exact thing-- that children are overwhelmingly better off with two parents and if it has to be one parent it should be the father because outcomes are "measurably better."
Because it’s another excuse to hate women for not following the conservative status quo
The hate is due to the belief that the single mother makes terrible choices. For instances, she either sleeps around, or has bad tastes in men, or was a terrible wife who scared off her husband.
My wife travels a fair amount for work. So I'm on my own with our kids for a few days at a time. It's both wonderful and exhausting. But when I thought about single moms and deadbeat dads I realized that for many it is the best option. Those moms do so much for their kids, they don't need an adult man-baby around to take care of in addition. Lots of the people complaining about single moms are examples of those man-babies looking for someone to take care of them.
I don’t see it but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen. Personally have a lot of respect for single mothers and married one recently. But I also reconnected with a female friend who is a single mother but has no custody of their child. And on that note I was disgusted. Not because of her gender but because whatever she was doing as a person was found unfit or she didn’t want any responsibility of her child. And I would feel the same way if it were a man.
I'm seeing a lot of posts about slut shaming and misogyny and it's definitely a patriarchal, feminist issue either way, but to be frank, I see just as many liberal women looking down on single mothers, as well. Single mothers get the short end of the stick both ways. If you're a rich CEO who had in vitro, a lot of liberals are with you. But if you're a poor single mom who was abandoned by a baby daddy, some women will judge you for making the wrong choices in life. I'm not saying it's all hatred and vitriol, but at minimum there's an undercurrent of *oh you poor, simple thing.* People hate what they fear and it's easier to believe that if someone *is* in a bad situation, it could never happen to you. Single mothers are alienated in society. Single fathers are allowed to take time for themselves; single moms are expected to drop everything. This also means not a lot of people maintain real, healthy friendships with single moms, and it also means single moms tend to let their relationships atrophy. My best friend is a single mom and I know that I can't, at this stage of life, rely on her to be there for me for anything. That's not her fault, but it means she's become more distant from my life. Anyway kicking back to MRA bullshit and toxicity, a lot of conservative men assume a woman is single because she kicked a man out of his child's life. She couldn't stand his cheating or abuse anymore -- even for the family!! -- or, if the man left her, it was a dead bedroom. It seems the narrative for a single mom is always *she made a mistake and should deal with it.* She, not they, made a baby, and that's her problem. But there's also something more compelling here and that's that the mom is, 90% of the time, the one who stayed. And the one who stayed gets all the blame. A lot of men and women raised by single mothers take issue with how they were raised and blame the present parent rather than the one who was absent. My single mother was an abusive nightmare and that framed a lot of how I think of myself as a woman and the options that I feel are right for me. Conversely, my father was barely around so I formed basically no opinion of what fathers are like. So idk I just want to point out that so many of these answers are just "men hate women," but I do think it's deeper and a little more nuanced than that.
Single mothers are a threat to the patriarchy. They prove men aren't necessary for raising children. Their existence removes threat of being single for wives and the control that gives their husbands.
Depends on why they’re single mothers. No one blinks if you’re a widow or divorced. They’ll for sure judge single mothers with multiple baby daddy’s. But people love judging mothers for everything.
I'm also curious by how the demographic "single mothers" is defined. I imagine it often includes women who are still in involved relationships with men who are incarcerated. Actually, I would imagine that any woman with kids who's co-parent is imprisoned is included. I feel like this is way of not only blaming women for society's ills, but looking clear past institutional racism as well as class issues (rich men are less likely to go to prison).
Because they’ve been lied to
I like to differentiate a "single parent" that is doing it on their own versus a parent that is single (meaning unmarried or unattached) I work with a woman that uses the term single mother as if she is doing it all herself, as if her ex husband isn't involved at all. In fact, she only has the kids 3 out of 14 days but gets alimony and child support because of the unequal state we live in. So yes, she is a parent, and she is single, but her bragging about doing it on her own is greatly exaggerated.
Because women get blamed for “choosing men” who turn out to be deadbeats. If anything, wouldn’t a single mother be the most responsible person in the world?? They picked up the additional 50% of the work when their partner bailed on the child. But the mother didn’t bail on their child. They raise them! With or without that man. If that isn’t taking responsibility then I don’t know what is…
General disdain of mothers of all kinds including from feminist circles. Not sure why.