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The Freedom to be a Single Mom

© Kerry Hook

“What is a single mom?”

Someone online actually asked me that that they other day. I paused for thought, but immediately recognized that the person asking the question had either been under a rock for the past few decades, . . . or else is from some place far, far away.

Turned out to be the later. They are far away all right, very far away.

So, I started to answer the question, “What is a single mom?”

“A single mom is a woman who is not married who has children, and is the one who is taking care of them, often without any help from the father of the child.”

Even though this explanation seemed simple enough to me - it apparently made no sense to this man who is physically half way around the world from me, and centuries away from me in time. He told me that I needed to read his Holy Book, and it would solve all these kinds of problems here in North America.

Hmm, well, it is a little more complex than that, so I told him I thought it was more cultural thing, and not necessarily a religious thing.

I continued, “Some women are separated, divorced, or widowed, some never were married – most work to support themselves and their children.”

I was told that this wouldn’t happen in his country – a woman in that situation would be “taken care of”.

Hmm, I wondered, that could have more than one meaning. Images of women who had been so shunned that they were left begging in the streets for food sprang to mind. These women had been left with no resources because they weren’t “allowed” to work. Images from the nightly news, of women being shot or whipped in these countries came to mind.

Oh boy, this was getting harder to explain by the minute, the communication gap was becoming a canyon. How could I explain a completely different way of life to someone who relied solely upon a holy book written by a man, to dictate their whole society? How can one reconcile a free society, such as ours, with a society dependent upon rigid dogma that dictates women’s behavior?

Should I go on, and explain that some women have even gone to a sperm bank to become pregnant . . . and that some single moms may even be lesbian, maybe I better not go there - that simply wouldn’t be comprehended.