Single Mothers a Public Health Problem? Depends on Who is Asking the Question

“Unwed mothers suffer long-term health woes,” read the headline in the Los Angeles Times on June 2. I felt myself cringe as I took it in, not just because of the significance of this statement, but also because of the use of the term “unwed mother.” After reading the full article, my initial cringe turned to anger at the blame-the-mother logic that oozed out of it.

I cringe at the term “unwed mother” for a few reasons. First, it is a relic of past generations when women were ostracized and stigmatized (more than they are today) for not being married when giving birth. To couple the words in this way suggests that mothers are supposed to be wed, and that to be “unwed” is undesirable, abnormal, and wrong. Second, to use the term is to deploy a (still largely) heteronormative and marriage-centric logic of how adults are supposed to live and raise children. This rhetoric suggests that nuclear family style procreation is the norm, when in fact it is not, nor has it ever been. Between 1990 and 2000, the percentage of married couples with children fell from twenty-five percent to about twenty-three percent, illustrating that this model is not the norm for the general population.

While the use of this dated and prejudiced term made me cringe, it was the reported findings of a study published in the most recent issue of American Sociological Review (considered by many to be the leading journal in the field, though this sociologist finds it to be often problematically conservative). The Los Angeles Times reported that the study by Williams and associates titled “Nonmarital childbearing, union history, and women’s health at midlife,” found that women who are not married when they first give birth report poorer health at age forty than women who are married at first birth. According to the Times, the researchers argued that this finding suggests that the consequences of giving birth while single constitutes a public health problem.

My reaction to the summary of this research reported by the Times was, “Fuck. That. Noise.” Single women having babies is a public health problem? Seriously? That there was no discussion of the actions (or inaction) of fathers in this causal equation is what really got my blood boiling, because I live in a world in which the under-participation of fathers in parenting is a public health problem.

According to the Census Bureau, in 2007 about seventy-seven percent of custodial mothers owed child support received some of what was owed, while only forty-seven percent received all. Rates are quite similar for custodial fathers owed child support: seventy-four percent received some and forty-five percent received all. While it would seem that men and women custodial parents are equally disadvantaged by underpayment of child support, the disparity in the numbers of men versus women parents complicates this. Sandy Smith of Vanderbilt University reported in a fact sheet for the Sociologists for Women in Society that twenty-four percent of children are cared for by single mothers, whereas only about five percent are cared for by single fathers. This means that overwhelmingly it is women who are negatively impacted by underpayment of child support, which would suggest that it is not childbirth that constitutes the public health problem, but the irresponsibility that follows it.

Giving credit to my fellow sociologists, I thought best to read the published study in its entirety before passing judgement on their research and conclusions. “Perhaps the reporter for the Times misrepresented the study,” I thought. So, I read it. Unfortunately in this case, giving these sociologists the benefit of the doubt was overly generous of me.

It is not that I do not appreciate their interest in investigating the health of women who are mothers. In fact, I applaud their efforts to draw public and political attention to health problems suffered by women who parent alone. Understanding and addressing the long-term hardships of solo parents throughout their life course is critical, and responding to them in meaningful ways is even more so.

What I take issue with is the structure of the study, the analysis the researchers bring to the data, and the conclusions they make about their findings. While the researchers accounted for whether women who were single at first birth subsequently married the child’s biological father, another person, or cohabited with another adult, they did not measure actual contributions in parenting from these people. To compare the health of married mothers to single mothers without taking into account participation of fathers or other co-parents in the child-rearing process side-steps a factor that is certainly influential in a mother’s health. While I do not think that this was their intention, conducting research this way gives credence to those who would blame women who give birth while single for hurting society, and justifies criticism of their parenting capacity and skills.

How we ask questions as researchers is fundamentally important to shaping the results we yield and influences how those results are interpreted by the public. It is particularly irksome to me that the address of this topic would lack a feminist approach to conducting research. Some of the earliest critiques feminists and other critical scholars made of social science was of the approach to studying social problems and the framing of research questions, which is to say, the standpoint from which we approach the world. It seems a more pressing and critical question might be: Why do women who are solo parents suffer poorer health than married mothers? An even more illuminating study would also examine whether men who are solo parents report similar assessments of their health. Questions such as these would approach the problem in a way that takes account for the gendered disparities that we already know to exist in society.

A note to readers: The published study in question is only available online at a cost, unless one is a member of American Sociological Association or a student or faculty member with educational privileges. Interested parties should feel free to email me at nickilcole@gmail.com to receive an e-copy.

Posted by Nicki Lisa Cole on Jul 11 2011. Filed under News & Critical Thinking. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry