I have a friend who while raising her children on her own, used to look longingly at families with both a mom and a dad, thinking that the children in these “intact families” were doing better than her own. Along the way she woke up and realized lots of children in lots of kinds of families, had issues, and that her own children were managing just fine with her love and support.
I mention this to introduce an article I saw today by Michele Weldon about single mothers, an article that bucks some of the bad raps they tend to get. I post the article to encourage those parents out there doing it on their own. Don’t have time to comment, but there is much food for thought here.
It is Mother’s Day, and let us celebrate single-mother households — not as half empty, but as half full of strong women. It is a good time to encourage children raised by women to see themselves as resilient, not doomed. And it is time, today and every day, for our culture to stop assigning blame and start offering help.
The 19.7 million children in this country with delinquent or absent fathers are not all headed for lives of crime, drugs, poverty and prison. To begin: Single moms have given us Olympian Michael Phelps, comedian Bill Cosby, Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton.
I can name many more, from my own life, and I’ll bet you can from yours. My sons’ good friend, Ellis Coleman, for example — the 20-year-old superstar also headed for the London Olympics for the U.S., the wrestler recognized worldwide as the originator of the “flying squirrel” takedown. The proud son of a single mom. Continue reading