Raise The Nation - Education Support Group

After spending a long afternoon worrying how I was going to make student loan payments and buy diapers...I turned to the Internet to look for financial help and resources.

It seemed that there was no assistance available for educated and professional single mothers, never mind that I don't make as much as a two parent family or even enough to get by with little else than the bare minimum basics. (70% of single parent women do not meet the criteria for public assistance. Most of us do not live below the poverty level...but that doesn't mean it's easy).

I started speaking to other women I knew that are single parents and heard one horror story after another. All of these women were educated, even with master’s degrees, but most went into the helping professions, which require the highest level of degree and offer the lowest level of pay. (Try being a therapist for high-risk youth making only $21,000 a year and trying to support 3 children...oh and pay back student loans for 7 years of education).

Some of these women were even forced to declare bankruptcy, as they could not pay their student loan debt and other debt they had also incurred along the way. So then, to top it off - their credit was ruined. Forget buying a house or financing a dependable car. For some even health insurance was just a luxury they had to live without. God forbid they encounter a financial emergency...they have no safety net. I also found out that student loan lenders can now garnish wages up to 10% and even take your tax return.

I graduated from college, gained some pretty impressive work experience, and waited until almost 30 to have a baby, not to mention continuing my pregnancy when faced with the difficult decision of going it alone. I thought I’d done all the right things. So did the women I interviewed. Was I now destined for a life of poverty as a single mother? That's what they told me. That's what I'm not willing to just lay down and accept.

So my head spinning, still astounded by what I'd learned from the women in my community, I started doing research on a national level about women, the economy and single mothers. I found that female college graduates aged 25-36 earned only 73% of what their male peers earned in 1993. Controlling for age, degree level, field of study, and occupation, about half of women earned only 87% of what men earned in 1999. (National Science Foundation).

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