“Let’s talk about stigma baby, just you and me”
It’s been a revelation for me recently that the stigma to single parents is so prolific and entrenched. My personal experience is that the hard part of being a single parent has all come from the practicalities and the lack of shared responsibility and resources; and never about the way I have been treated because of my single parent status.
I’d go further again and say I am surrounded by the most incredible people who also happen to be single parents. I see their incredible careers, how successful they are with their children, their drive to make the world a better place, and honestly I don’t see any of them as a reason for negativity.
It’s dawned on me that the single parent stereotype is insidious enough that people don’t even realise that they actually have a preconceived idea of single parents as a collective noun. This then means that we subconsciously make a decision that ‘single parents’ are somehow ‘unworthy’ of support.
As a society we absolutely can accept that people we know are the exception to entrenched stereotypes, and more importantly that they are somehow different in a tangible way. An individual single parent can be inspirational; you can be awe of a friend who is a single parent, in the way that they manage their career and family life juggle; you can respect the efforts someone puts in alone to parent and be engaged in their child’s activities like sport or creative arts outside of the home.
What we really struggle with is the assumption that all single parents have a disadvantage when it comes to markers for loneliness, poor mental health and financial outcomes AND it is not of their own doing.
Why is this on my mind so much? Well here at SPW we have been trying to make the core functions of SPW sustainable. We want to make sure that regardless of projects we have grant funding for, the facebook group, website resources and creation and volunteer support can all happen and ongoing costs paid for. We've been really proactive in how we go about this too, from asking large businesses for sponsorship, to selling services and training, to fundraising initiatives; and without exception the biggest barrier to people supporting us is stigma.
Businesses don’t see their single parent employees as having distinct needs that they could support, so don’t want our training on how to apply a single parent lens to their HR policies. Donations are harder to come by as people don’t want to shout about supporting single parents or don’t feel it will help them garner the appreciation from their customers that this marketing is aimed at. Even schools, who will have roughly 25% of their pupils living in single parent homes don’t see it as a cause to support.
The stigma is internal as well as external too. We have a fundraising campaign ongoing at the moment ‘Steps for Connection’ and people don’t want to sign up to do it. The challenge itself is relatively achievable if you walk the school run each day, or do a couple of hours of walking on the weekend; the hard part is not in getting interest in walking throughout March, it is in signing up to do a local giving page and promoting it. Because in doing so you are advertising that you are a single parent. For too many people there is still a shame attached to that term and that feels incredibly sad to me.
As a single parent I am the person my son relies on 100%, he absolutely knows I have his back, I do all I can to make his aspirations a reality and to model being a conscientious citizen - how can it be the person who is holding the reins and takes 100% responsibility is the person who feels the shame? I know my situation isn’t the only single parent set up, but the fact still remains being a present parent is not the shame society has led us to believe it is.
I have long said that how a society treats the most vulnerable is an indicator of how well it is functioning. Single parents become single parents for a whole host of reasons, some incredibly sad like being widowed; some through circumstances that they’d never choose such as addiction or abuse; some through personal choice like IVF; and people are allowed to fall out of love and decide that they’re not in the right relationship. We have been fed a narrative by the media, government and through a culture of othering that single parent is a term reserved for those who are work shy, scamming the system in some way and of a certain class. In Wales, 1 in 4 dependent children are in single parent households - we are in all walks of life, professions and neighbourhoods. And it’s time we changed the narrative.
Never one to sit in the negativity, I feel like we need a call to arms in some way to tackle the stigma head on, and we can do this!
When you hear someone say something derogatory about single parents, challenge them if it’s safe to do so. Notice and complain to local councillors, media and government departments when the language used is not helpful or with a negative slant. Let’s start making noise!
Some less ranty pants options are talking about the realities of single parent life, the good parts as well as the tough parts. It’s easier for people to be compassionate and empathetic if they know the truth. Also you can shout out about Single Parents Wellbeing and the benefits of widening your support networks, and the positive impacts it’s had on your children.
If you’re feeling really inspired then please do actively talk about the work we do to colleagues, family members and friends as they may just be the person who can influence the decision to book us to deliver training or to fundraise for us. Let’s move the narrative away from the worthy and unworthy, to offering resources to everyone and people can take what they need, when they need it.