Single Moms — Web Outcasts
July 22, 2010 in Loved Ones by Karen
I’m frustrated by the lack of voice that single parents still have in online content. I half-jokingly remarked to a friend (also a web geek and also a single mom) that we single parents seem like web outcasts. We live outside of the “normal” communities. We have our own little enclaves of content, but we are not part of most of the large communities.
It’s not as if we aren’t out there – and contributing some great content: Single Mom Seeking, Dad’s House, Single Mom Says (check out the Singlemommyhood.com list for more).
So why hasn’t our voice been heard? Why are we regarded as an invisible minority?
I think it’s due to a few factors. One of them is misconceptions about single parents – who they are, what they are, and how many there are:
- only 24% of all households (US) are a married couple with children
- 45.8% of (US) marriages end in divorce
- single mothers are not just teenage mothers:
- teenage mothers are only 11% of births (US)
- almost half of all single mothers (US) are divorced single moms (3.392 million)
- 33% percent of single parents have never been married
- 11.2% of ALL (US) households are currently single parent households
- 27.7% of households with children are single parent households
- almost 30% of all US parenting content goes to single parent households
- 37% of (Canadian) marriages end in divorce
- 31% of all family households* (Canada) are not married:
- 15.5% of family households (Canada) are common law families
- 15.9% of family households (Canada) are single parents:
- 12.8% are single moms & 1.3% are single dads
- 31% of all Canadian parenting content goes to single parent households
In short: ONE THIRD of the US/Canadian parenting content consumers are single parent households.
Also worthy of note: Canada has a much higher single parenting rate than the US – in part because common law households and married same sex couples are more common (and legal) here in Canada.
Canadian crime rates are lower than US crime rates - and we have more single parent households (per capita) than the US.
This means that based on population numbers – every “parenting” panel, every “mommy” group of contributors and group of “parenting” content award winners should have more single parents. For every 10 married mom bloggers out there there we should also see at least three single mom bloggers and at least one single dad blogger as well.
Popular single mom bloggers and single mom community leaders are often regarded as “unusual” – while single dad bloggers and community leaders are as rare as hen’s teeth. The online market is saturated with married blogging moms. Unfortunately many content providers and marketers view married blogging moms as representative all parenting issues and priorities.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
What’s even worse is when a commercial community desperately attempts to market to the single parent demographic and they do a horrendous job of it. Like when Momversation deliberately chose to ask their panel members to represent an issue they don’t even have; being “a stressed working mom” or when they tried to bring in a single mom audience with the inflammatory and prejudicial question “can married moms and single moms be friends?”. Or how Blogher chooses to not have ANY single parent content or an editor for single parent content.
Imagine if someone tried to speak “for” another race or speak “for” another gender? Speaking “for” a group implies they can’t speak for themselves, that they don’t have a voice, are incapable of understanding their own issues, or that some other voice has more “authority”.
I can’t list how many times I’ve heard married moms compare themselves to single moms (or working moms) and outright stating what single (or working) mom issues must be because they think so.
They don’t ask what our issues are – they tell us.
One third of the market continues to be under-represented or to have our view presented “for” us – and the massive single parent audience is left with web content that is largely irrelevant, unappealing, useless, misleading, inaccurate and sometimes even insulting.
Why would commercial web communities exclude single parents? Is it a deliberate choice or an unconscious choice? Single parents recognize that we’re being excluded (unconsciously or otherwise) and we want to change it.
So we need to know why – and change what online communities know about single parents:
- publishers of online content are genuinely unaware of how large the single parent audience really is – and that the single parent demographic is growing much faster than the married parent demographic (we are one third of the market and growing – fast!)
- leisure time, lack of appeal or inclusion:
- working and parenting alone leaves single parents with much less leisure time than other parenting families for publishing content and participating in online communities
- single parents publish much less quantity content – but often publish higher quality content. Quantity of online publishers should be minimized and quality should be emphasized.
- do not speak for us - invite us to speak instead
- the image of the single parent – false perception that single parents are poor, uneducated, unemployed and inactive on line
- broken homes nonsense: the mistaken belief that single parent households are a sad and broken – a real “downer” for their audience. Single parents are often empowered and positive images out there – LOTS of us have IMPROVED our situations by becoming single parents, including higher income levels
- our discretionary spending power – the mistaken belief that single parents are raising only one child and that we do not have discretionary spending budgets. We often have entire households we maintain, more than one child – and the budgets to go with it.
- age range – single parents are NOT only (or even mostly) teen mothers
- fear of single parents as a negative “moral” influence – when many single parents are single parents because of their moral choices or beliefs
What do you think?
* Stats Canada counts households differently than the U.S. Census Bureau
Sources: U.S. Census Bureau, National Center for Health Statistics, Stats Canada
(This piece originally appeared in longer form at Momartfully, Karen‘s personal blog. We felt her points were so important that we wanted to share them here and publicly express our commitment to serving our members who are single parents. Karen is also the owner of our Single, Divorced and Widowed Parent Support Group.)
I’m a single mom who went through a divorce in public online (from a dad blogger). I wonder if part of it is because a lot of us who divorce online think more about the process of finding ourselves and less about problems that are specific to “single parents” out there. For instance, a lot of the burden and crap I deal with as a single mom is my normal stuff, just magnified OR alleviated because I’m on my own now. And a lot of the crap I deal with is because I live in a city that’s very hard to raise kids in without being constantly stressed.
So I wonder if it isn’t just really really hard to find one basket of common problems that single parents have. A lot of my problems are things partnered moms also have. Or they’re things about dealing with my kids’ father now that we don’t have to pretend to agree about things anymore, and that’s not something single parents who don’t have a former partner in the mix share.
I don’t know what the answer is.
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by JuliaRoberts1, Julia Roberts. Julia Roberts said: Single Moms — Web Outcasts: http://is.gd/dC50I [...]
Hi Moxie. I agree with you that there is a lot of overlap in parenting issues between single and not-single parents. Single parents also need to exchange advice, discuss issues, raise awareness and maybe even make changes to our society about the issues unique to us.
I know there are unique issues for single parents that never divorced parents never dream of. Everything from passports for children, child support enforcement, proactive communication tactics, how to balance work time commitments and a hospitalized child, entertainment choices that support single parents, dealing with family judgment, dating as a parent… the list is huge.
Regardless of why parents are single (always single, divorced, by choice) there are a lot of us out there – we just don’t have much of a voice in the mainstream “parenting” world.
Karen, I really appreciated your article. I have been thinking about it for a week and I’m still not completely sure what I want to say, or what I think about the issues that you’ve pointed out. I do feel it. I am single due to the fact of being a widow, though my late husband was trying to divorce me before he passed away unexpectedly.
The transition, for me, was so jolting. It was nothing that I had ever expected. I felt very alone. But surprisingly enough, I had a good number of people, formerly single parents themselves, treating me like “What is YOUR problem…you certainly aren’t the first single mom, people do it all the time.” It wasn’t helpful. In fact, I felt even more incompetent in light of that kind of response.
The grief played a role. The learning curve played a role (and still does as the children grow from one stage of development to another). The fact that I’d been under attack for a year played a role. I’m sure many more things played a role in my adjustment to single parenthood. It never even occurred to me that there might be an absence of single parent writing online. I began my limited blogging because I’d reached a place where I could start to write about my experiences. I don’t write nearly often enough. I am sometimes overwhelmed with just keeping everyone going where they need to be and when.
I appreciate you stating that the representation is low for single parents online. Somehow, it makes me feel less alone.
Thanks so much for the link to my blog — and to Singlemommyhood.com. I also really appreciate this post, and I’d love to hear more stories from Canadian single parents. It’s great to read these stats.
I think that as more and more single parents — what Dr. Leah and I call “real life families” — speak up on blogs, the rest of the world we see that we are educated, hard-working, resourceful, and very present parents.
Hey. Just wandered over from the interview thanks to the link at the bottom.
Karen, you are absolutely right about the representation issues. But I think the fundamental cause is something much simpler: logistics. Married moms have a lot more time to blog. I had a lot more time to blog when I was married.
That doesn’t change how infuriating it can be that so many online communities don’t notice that we aren’t there, or feel entitled to speak for us, I agree. Good lord. Almost all of my friends are married moms; I can’t believe someone would think that could be impossible.