Single Mothers in the Fight Against Coronavirus, Discrimination, and Economic Recession

The most immediate and devastating aspect for single mothers during the pandemic is also the most widely shared, that being mass closures on a local and national level. From the public schools that reliably kept their children educated and engaged for months on end to the jobs that they labor over to keep a roof over their heads, parents had everything to lose in the wake of a hastened lockdown for their and their children’s well-being.

For most single mothers, however, having a job isn’t just an obligatory aspect of a responsible adult and parental life: It makes the difference between their children sleeping in a bed or sleeping in a shelter.

According to census figures, over 50% of single mothers in the U.S. have full-time jobs, with only 20% not meeting the criteria for holding a short- or long-term position. This is made more significant by the fact that 2 in 3 employed single mothers work at jobs that require them to travel out-of-home, meaning that most of the single mother population more commonly in contact with the public than with their own child. 

Furthermore, the very demands of raising a child restrict the ability of single parents to safeguard themselves in the event of a nationwide lockdown. The Center for American Progress reported in March 2019 that an estimated 2 million mothers had quit their jobs or sacrificed potential career paths due to the burden of childcare, and that inadequate pay for babysitters and insufficient maternity leave programs provided by their employers only further sink a nation of single mothers into increased discomfort. Now, with many unemployed and turning to government-subsidized payment programs as a substitute, the question of “how” to keep their childcare consistent with conditions pre-COVID lingers among millions of single mothers.

In a situation where job loss is inevitable and career prospects are severely limited, the most common outcome for single mothers during the pandemic is a sharp incline into systemic poverty. Without a consistent source of income, many single mothers find themselves relying on welfare programs for basic goods, such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). Even with government help satisfying the basic needs, savings tend to be scarce due to the costs of child-rearing consuming most of their income. This means that for the three-quarters of single mothers who face debt and late housing installments (financial burdens that fall under state jurisdiction, thus the lack of federal relief), most will have to prepare for their financial hardship to grow worse as local and national economies remain shut down well into 2020. While stimulus payments from the government may remedy this in the short term, recent lifts on rent and mortgages in the summer threaten millions of potential evictions–of which single mothers, like many others, do not find themselves impervious.

The problems do not end with lack of employment forcing millions of single-parent families out of their households. With school cancellations forcing more than 30 students back in the home in March, single parents must tackle seeking financial relief from not having a job as well as ensuring that their children are engaged with distance learning, a phenomenon made worse by widespread inaccessibility to technology and a stable internet connection. While the virus has reached a peak during the summer season, when millions of students are not enrolled in classes, school districts are nevertheless racing against the clock to ensure a reopening plan in the next two months to introduce the presence of a structured education in otherwise unstructured domestic environments. The lack of uniformity in how schools plan to return is further exacerbated among struggling parents as President Trump politicizes school closures and threatens to withhold federal funding for districts that seek to remain closed, again leaving parents in the dark about how to catch their children up to the countless hours they stand to lose in their classrooms. This especially hurts single mothers who, already facing opportunities lost in a limited job market, now must act as a schoolteacher on top of a caretaker and breadwinner.

Due to conditions in the status quo, single mothers can always use a helping hand to juggle their duties. But with the arrival of Coronavirus, many have had to let those hands free for the betterment of public health. Babysitters and other outside help are no longer an option in the era of social distancing, and those who are fortunate enough to have family or friends to look after their children still deal with the risk of bringing coronavirus into their households. The National Domestic Worker’s Alliance in March 2020 was among the first to outline that nannies and other employed caretakers should remain at home, unless the parent(s) in question fell under the criteria of an essential worker. As a result, single parents as a whole must inherit the responsibility of 24/7 supervision: having to choose between leaving their children at home or exposing them to Coronavirus, many single mothers are going to far lengths to perform essential tasks without potentially endangering themselves and their children. One Texas mother went as far as placing a sign on her daughter informing grocery store-goers to “stay back 6 feet” from her and her mother, as they were ineligible from using delivery services to gain access to food and other goods and thus were tasked with endeavoring into the public at the peak of the pandemic.

The challenges brought on by the pandemic affect almost every aspect of the modern single mother and their struggle to keep their family afloat. But the pain does not stop in the public health whirlwind of this virus. 

While the short-term effects of the Coronavirus continue to plague single mothers nationally, what is arguably more important comes in the long-term effects. While domestic and financial stability remains key concerns for mothers, another formidable threat lies on the horizon of our nation’s peaks: economic ruin. As of July 2020, what economists deem as “The Great Lockdown” stands to shrink the US’ GDP by 38% and increase nationwide unemployment to up to 10% for the next two years. Over 17 million jobs in the service, retail, and hospital industries have been previously lost, and hundreds of thousands of smaller and newer businesses found themselves reliant on federal programs under the $2 trillion CARES Act like PPP to skirt complete eradication. Due to these factors at home and similar economic instability in other countries, organizations like the National Bureau of Economic Research urged that the recession many feared occurring pre-COVID isn’t just around the corner, but rather has already arrived and plunged the global economy into utter darkness–without anyone ever noticing.

Altogether, the United States is facing an economic implosion worse than potentially that of the Great Depression in the 1930s. And it’s not just the businesses and markets that make up the country’s backbone that faces imminent danger. For the majority of single mothers living below the poverty line, a recession is far from another obstacle in the tumultuous journey of motherhood. It’s a death sentence.

A lethal amalgamation of strained welfare programs, lack of adequate health services and childcare, and a discriminatory job market will set back single mothers several times over as the dust from the pandemic settles and the recession takes full charge. As evidenced by the 2001 and 2009 recessions, average earnings among single mothers plummeted for a number of reasons:

Firstly, because of outdated welfare systems largely controlled by state and local governments. Although reforms in the late 1990s would pave the way for highly influential programs like TANF and SNAP, these initiatives continue to endure the aforementioned problems of discrimination and disproportional issuance of aid. This can be widely attributed to the power that the federal government grants to state governments in determining who should be eligible for aid and who should not; criteria like reliance on other welfare programs, willingness-to-work, and the number of children in a household were among the varied reasonswhy poor and minority single mothers fail to receive coverage under these programs. Without a consistent stimulus plan in motion for an oncoming recession, the shortcomings of the safety net can be devastating: previously mentioned problems surrounding debt and employment have the potential to transform beyond that found within the current crisis and upend the lives of a single-parent household completely. 

Secondly, while mothers continue to struggle with obtaining benefits, the crisis of federally- and employer-subsidized healthcare in the event of them or their children contracting the virus remains a mystery. Because many workers rely upon healthcare provided by their employers, Coronavirus represents a lose-lose situation as one of the strongest safeguards against the virus is eliminated along with their livelihoods, albeit temporarily. According to data released by the Kaiser Family Foundation, an organization dedicated to studying public health issues, over 15% of COVID-positive individuals are hospitalized, and the average cost of treatment as of mid-2020 hovers around $30,000. For families that make less than that in a year–no less than in a few months to offset the costs of hospitalization–the prospect of one or more members needing professional attention is fiscally unfathomable. This is particularly problematic, as medical debt in the United States is among the highest in the world, with over 137 million Americans facing financial hardship due to gradual or emergency medical costs, thus crippling their gross income.

Thirdly, although many of the above points of concern may cross-apply to single fathers, one reality that still uniquely affects mothers is the gap in income equality between men and women as well as the general discriminatory structures of private sector employment. According to data released by the Department of Labor, while unemployment among adult men and married adult women rose to 13% by the end of May, adult unmarried women unemployment shot up to 15.5% and remains over 1% higher than the average rate among all unemployed workers post-lockdown. At one point constituting a larger share of the workplace, women are now facing a widening participation gap as the demand for college-educated workers for entry-level jobs increases. Job displacement is further endemic of a system that functions against working-class women, as positions that were shuttered in past recessions, such as service and hospitality jobs, more commonly employed women over men, whereas higher-paying, white collar jobs remained prevalent among men. The struggle for smaller businesses to recover in the face of a pandemic not only hurts single mothers’ abilities to weather the storm of an economic recession, but also other aspects as well. During the housing crisis, childcare payments to the over 41% of custodial single mothers who are separated or divorced substantially decreased as many laid-off fathers were hit with economic hardship themselves, further shifting the hurt onto the children of these parents. The issue of childcare-reliant single mothers persists even today as automation threatens the existence of low-skill wage jobs, limiting the market for men and women as a whole.

The conflicts of the past, the disasters of the present, and the dangers of tomorrow place millions of poor single mothers at their worst disadvantage in modern American history. With schools both public and private failing to draft manageable and balanced plans to return to class, the prospect of the most widely homeschooled generation of students has grown from a dreadful forecast to an inescapable reality. Widespread unemployment will force single mothers from their already historically lackluster jobs into fewer, lower-paying jobs, or potentially into no job at all. On top of a quickly-spreading disease that statistically leaves them and their children more likely than their rich counterparts to die in the absence of adequate healthcare, there is little room for optimism for a system that is predicated on human suffering and political cronyism. As their local, state, and national governments continue to fail them, they struggle to unite together in search of an ally.

The obvious solution to this comes in the form of a widened safety net in the ongoing pandemic. Under the CARES Act, multiple programs for loans and financial relief for small businesses were established, and provisions that allowed companies with fewer than 500 employees to receive tax credits in exchange for providing paid leave to employees dampened the potential nuclear blast to the vast majority of non-essential workers in the US. But as a second wave of Coronavirus washes over the population, the July 31 expiration date for many of these benefits and special provisions seems to be nearing faster than ever. Such is why experts and economists lobbied Trump in June to secure support for a second stimulus check, which he reluctantly agreed upon without providing many other specifics–much to the chagrin of the general public. Combined with the imminent rent and mortgage crisis heading for August, single mothers have been justifiably on the tip of their toes regarding further federal action.

The problem doesn’t stop there, however. Many of the problems facing single mothers, in the form of income inequality, job discrimination, and improperly coordinated welfare programs, are nowhere near as new or exclusive. Thus, it has become more than abundantly clear that systemic reform is needed to permanently reduce poverty and remedy single motherhood.

One potential solution in mind is implementing a basic income system for single mothers. Considering the pitfalls of previous welfare programs, the Basic Income Earth Network in July 2017 observed that a universal system is the most efficient way to raise single mothers in particular out of the vicious cycle of poverty, as having increased economic freedom across the board can alleviate the costs of living exacerbated by the pandemic. This is especially beneficial as a stipend of several thousands of dollars per month skirts the discriminatory habits of past welfare programs while also working in tandem with them to maximize a single mother’s ability to utilize aid and focus on pursuing a career path. While the tolls of the pandemic may not provide enough flexibility on a federal level to target all single mothers, this basic income can be provided to single mothers living around or below the poverty line, who are the most affected by income inequality and recent widespread job losses. 

The marginalization of single mothers in this age of turbulence symbolizes the wanton betrayal of common human empathy among an important subsection of our population. But it goes bigger than that. Knowing that all human beings come from a mother’s womb only goes to show the oneness of humanity as a whole, the uniform nature of all persons far and wide. When we lose sight of that, we fail to understand that mothers are citizens too, with needs and specifications beyond the antiquated notion of child-rearing that has unduly limited their engagement in society. As the powers that be bite the hands that raised them, the touch of motherhood is at risk of fading away. Coronavirus may one day be defeated, but the struggle for equality among single mothers will beat on.

Originally published in Mission for American Resolve.