In Louisville, Kentucky, many single mothers live in poverty. Marcus Green recently wrote about it and the need to spread affordable housing. I include an excerpt:
Experts say the importance of blending low-income residents into middle-income neighborhoods is that it offers better work and education opportunities for impoverished parents and children.
“In these high-poverty areas, there aren’t a lot of jobs, a lot of viable institutions” such as parks, said Karen Christopher, a University of Louisville sociologist. “When you’re raising a family, that’s what you need.”
Expanding affordable housing into middle-income and affluent neighborhoods won’t directly pull single-mother families out of poverty, but it could influence their aspirations and behavior, Christopher said.
The housing coalition’s analysis of U.S. Census data paints a stark portrait of households headed by women, showing that 37 percent of those led by single mothers are impoverished.
Unfortunately, in a world where most two-parent households struggle, a single-parent home faces overwhelming obstacles.
I agree that spreading affordable housing can help allow single-mother families to escape poverty, but we must accompany it with other forms of social change.
We can best reduce single-mother poverty through prevention. We have to teach even young children about the difficulty in raising children alone. Then, teach them how to avoid it. Too many women have children without the resources to take care of them, namely a non-deadbeat father. Too many males run away from their responsibilities, thus leaving a woman to take care of children by herself. Beyond all of that, society needs to stop breaking up families. For example, needless drug laws and needless wars lead to fathers getting thrown in jail or sent to war–often never to come back.
Of course, we cannot change the past. So, we have to take care of the poor single mothers already raising families alone. In addition to affordable housing, we need to ensure that they and their children get food, clothes, shelter, healthcare, education, and employment.