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Jenn Iannello, Sarah Lurie, Sherry Lin

What does it mean to be a single mother in America?
 * Essential Question:**

To make Americans aware of the daily challenges and understand the struggles of single motherhood.
 * Challenge:**

Why is it much more demanding being a single mother than a two-parent family. Why do most people view single motherhood in a negative stereotype. What are the leading causes of mothers being single? What effect does growing up in a single mother home have on the child?
 * Guiding Questions:**

Set up an interview with a single mother. Search online for articles and information. Conduct a class survey.
 * Guiding Activities:**

The leading causes of single motherhood in America is by divorce or separation, the mother was never married, or because the father died. http://singleparents.about.com/od/legalissues/p/portrait.htm
 * Guiding Resources:**

Births to unmarried women constituted 36 percent of all births in 2004, reaching a record high of nearly 1.5 million births. Over half of births to women in their early twenties and nearly 30 percent of births to women ages 25-29 were to unmarried women http://www.singleparentsuccess.org/stats.html

http://prospect.org/cs/articles?article=the_consequences_of_single_motherhood "More than half of the children born in 1994 will spend some or all of their childhood with only one parent, typically their mother." Causes of single motherhood: divorce, choose to have their baby alone, or are widows. Single motherhood is typically denoted in a negative way. Statistics show that children that grow up in single parent homes (nearly always the mother) are more likely to have disadvantages. (drop out of school, be a teen mom, and in and out of work. Money becomes and issue since there is only one adult bringing in the income. What matters is not whether the parents are married when they are born, its the fact whether the parents live together while the children are growing up. Single motherhood has increased due to the uprising trends in marriage, divorce and fertility. Divorce rates have doubled between 1960-1990. Welfare payments help support the single mother family. The check does not explain the increase of single motherhoods. - THere is a growing economic independence of woman. those who can support themselves outside of marriage can be picky about who they marry because they do not need to rely on someone else. They can leave bad marriages because they can afford to raise their kid on their own. - it also has to do with the earnings of the woman.. now with womans rights, they are able to make the same or even more money as men. - In the 1960's there was a shift and reduced the thought that if a woman got pregnant at a young age, the man was supposed to marry her, but now with the job force open to woman, this is unrealistic.

http://www.bellaonline.com/articles/art53664.asp > Single Mothers by Choice http://www.singlemothersbychoice.com/
 * Single-parent families in today's society have their share of daily struggles and long-term disadvantages.
 * The issues of expensive day care, shortage of quality time with children, balance of work and home duties, and economic struggle are among the seemingly endless problems these families must solve.
 * =====As many single-parent households are female-headed, their economic burden is much greater than that of a single-father family. This issue results from the fact that single women typically do not earn the same income as a single man. (not to be sexist)=====
 * Single mothers often must work overtime shifts to compensate for the low salaries, therefore taking time away from their children.
 * It is very easy for someone to assume that a single mother got knocked up, or had the father run out on her but there are other reasons why a woman would want to and chose to raise a child on her own.
 * singlemothersbychoice.org is an online community created by Jane Mattes in 1981. She founded Single Mothers by Choice (SMC) after having a son by herself.
 * Over twelve thousand single women, mainly in their thirties and forties, have joined SMC during that time.

http://www.brainchildmag.com/essays/summer2011_mayor.asp