An estimated three out of four female-headed households in Massachusetts don’t earn enough to pay bills and raise their children, according to a Boston nonprofit that is releasing a report Thursday on the income families require to meet their basic needs.
In Massachusetts, a single parent with one school-age child and one preschooler needs to earn at least $65,880 a year to pay for food, housing, transportation, child care, health care, and other household expenses, Crittenton Women’s Union reports in its Massachusetts Economic Independence Index.
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It would be interesting to see a breakout on what $65,880 a year buys.
You can get that info, state-wide or town-by-town, by going to the link in the sidebar of this article.
What about male single parents?
I bet this study used reality data to come to its conclusion unlike the fairy tale cost of living index, the socialists manipulate to stroke their unquenchable ego's!
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How did an article that is supposed to be about the woes of single mothers wind up talking about a married couple's struggles to make ends meet in Chicopee?
A Smith alumna should be making more than $27K a year. I smell a rat.
You smell someone who has chosen journalism as a career. Maybe not the best choice, growth-potential wise.
Liberal arts majors, no matter what college, need Master's degrees. The undergraduate degree looks good on paper only; it doesn't buy a high salary. Apply for a low-paying / entry level job, you will get a low salary, plain and simple.
And where are the fathers of these children???? If they provided at least 50% support, the mothers might be able to get better jobs.
I don't think you read the article completely. Even two-parent families are having a hard time. A family with only one bread-winner, female or male, is really difficult, child support or not. It's really about the growing economic divide -- if you can't make that jump to a good job, a good career, it is getting increasingly difficult. Where once a college degree really helped pave the way, not so much anymore.
Oh, I don't know. My daughter's boyfriend got snapped up by Google as soon as he graduated from MIT.
I agree, where are the fathers of these children? Why aren't they paying for their support? Why do the rest of us have to continually pay these messed up families? The fathers of these kids should be arrested for non support and prosecuted. No one is held accountable today for their actions.
I agree as well. Articles lke this never even mention the fathers. It is as if these children were born by immaculate conception.
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Beyond the very real economic realities so many people face that have been exacerbated by globalization, advances in technology and industrial automation that have not only stagnated wages, but also lowered wages and eliminated jobs, the focus should also be on the miserable fact that 41% of all children in the United States are now born to single parents homes up from 17% 30 years ago. This is a societal and cultural problem, it's wrong, it's destructive, it's the leading driver of poverty and just about every miserable behavioral and crime statistic,look it up. All these folks should be called out to stop this nonsense, the way we publically call out individuals with the potential horrors of smoking etc. This is personal responsibility issue based on the individual choices individuals make. This is the personal responsibility decay factor in our society and it's one of the greatest risk factors to our society. It gets to a point where the biological parents are being selfish, irresponsible and destructive putting innocent children at risk for a life filled with societal mine fields. We can all understand a biological parent, in good faith, with love, hope and dreams for the future deciding to have a child as a single parent, things happen, but 2,3,4,5 children with multiple partners that's insane, it's wrong, it's destructive and next to no one, our politicians, the media calls anyone out on this insanity. Why?
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" 41% of all children in the United States are now born to single parents homes up from 17% 30 years ago"
Please cite a source for this. 41%? nearly half? I challenge.
Advocacy groups are fine, but they don't provide "research" they provide "reports" that are biased and intended to achieve the advancement of their group. For instance, how is it that "single mothers" are suffering, but not "single fathers" when the court system in Massachusetts is so biased against them and when "single mothers" who are divorced often get so called "child support" even when the father has the kids? Further, the "child support" guideline amounts are patently unfair.
I don't know what a "single mother" is. Is she divorced? Is she the one who filed (80% of the time it's the mother who initiates the divorce)? Or did she just get pregnant by "mistake" and stick the father with the "child support".
You know, the reason we go to school, get training, get skills is to get a better more satisfying job that often pays more. If you don't do that. If you just decide to have kids that you then have to support. If you get divorced from the father just so you don't have to work things out in your life, then you pay a price. Does that mean that the state should support you?
If the "single mother" is divorced does that father have equal sharing of the kids so that he stays involved, or is he being treated like a wallet -- pay the child support and have "visitation" (with his own kids) evey other weekend.
Think about it: the reason that the term "single mother" is used is to make the circumstances opaque. If she's a widow, and didn't get a big insurance payment from the death of her spouse, then there is no fault to her for her situation. Otherwise it is often the "single mother's" own doing.
Why should society pay lots of money to support "single mothers" and their brood when the a so many individuals -- homeless often -- who can't even support themselves.
I have to agree. I know longer automatically sympathize when I hear "single mother". I no longer have the image of a young widow or a woman who was duped and left by som dirt bag. I know of several cases where the baby out. Of wedlock was planned with the expectation that all these "entitlements" be it at work or from the taxpayers would fill the gap.
I feel sorry for the kids but maybe this will be a lesson to a lot of women from teens on up. Babies were expensive. Yes there are all sorts of "celebrities" that become single mothers. Money isn't a worry for them and too often they are "role models".
Excellent post jkupie. Pretty much common sense, and I'd like to see how "single mothers" survived in the 60's, the 40's, the 20's. Something tells me that throughout history living in an urban area on one income and a child was a severe struggle.
Whew, the comments on this article are depressing. Predictable, but depressing.
I think the point of the article is that we used to have a shared value in this country that a person who worked full time should be able to support a small family on that income. It used to be that the idea of the breadwinner was male, but the idea was that one person's wages should be able to support a family with two children. Now maybe they might not be able to afford a home, but they should be able to afford to send their two children to college, have a little put by for a vacation once a year, maybe a camping vacation but vacation, and either have a pension or earn enough to save for a comfortable retirement. We used to value workers.
The point of this article is that such a breadwinner just to stay afloat in Massachusetts needs to make $65K. Most workers who work full time aren't making anywhere near that, not even here, a state with strong worker protections. The answer is not to subsidize these single-parent families, the answer is to strengthen the power of workers so they receive a decent income for the work that they do, enough income to support a family.
You are looking at history and reading in things that were not there. It wasn't a "shared value" that "a person who worked full time should be able to support a small family on that income". Houses were smaller, simpler, and cheaper, cars were much simpler, less luxurious, and cheaper. The wife took care of the home and kids. The husband worked in the most advanced country providing stuff to the world where the world could not compete because there was no internet to ease knowledge and skills transfer and communications.
Now, there is less open land to build houses on. Cities are more congested and must pay much more for roads and parking garages. Low wage workers from the 3rd world can compete in an area with much lower costs.
Governments spend much more on things that are unproductive. Just look at the cost of jailing all those soft core drug users. The money is being "invested" in lieu of investing in infrastructure, or simply reduced taxes. Look at all of the, often hidden, support and advocacy groups providing free food, shelter, counseling, health care, etc, etc, etc. That is a good thing in the abstract, but it often leads to entrenched "advocacy" groups that just want to feed more off the public. With all carrot and little stick it often leads to institutionalized welfaredom. Do we teach our disadvantaged to fish, or do we give them fish?
When you see articles like this one -- which ignore "single fathers" -- it's a tip off that the "information" being provided is not objective, not pro-active, does not address the problems of all the people, just the favored group. You can safely ignore those kinds of articles.
Wow, that's a great fairy tale. I mean, that was the way it seemed when I watched the Wonder Years, but I'm guessing that single women with kids struggled in the 60's as well. As jkupie pointed out, it also wasn't expected that you'd drive a nice car, have a cell phone, buy expensive clothes, etc....but that's the case for everyone, not just single mothers.
An article guaranteed to fire up the Comments. Perhaps part of our money that we spend to support these folks could be allocated to paying them to travel the state, talking to "at risk" groups about what life is REALLY like for single parents.
I was also saddened, but not surprised, that none of the kids in this article shared the same family name as their mothers.
Instead of escalating payments for each additional child, why not try reducing the stipend, if only by a small amount.
Patriarchy reigns. In my (married) family, each parent kept their own name. Each child had the last name of the parent of the same sex, with the last name of the other as a middle name. This is not the Middle Ages.
My wife kept her maiden name in 1981. I agreed to that without objection, I didn't care. Her next proposal was yours, that each child have the last name of the parent of the same sex. I objected on the grounds that grade school is hard enough for kids, if all their classmates had Dad's last name and our girls didn't, who knew what mischief and misery could result? My wife conceded that I had a point, so the girls (we had girls) took my last name. You can call it patriarchy if you want to but this was discussed, negotiated and agreed to, not dictated.
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The comments on this article are better than the article was.
Right On, Mr. Pitts............
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"Anne Desjardins, 39, recently got a job as a hotel revenue management analyst for $68,000 a year. The single mother of three was able to buy a condo and get off government assistance, but can’t afford to take her kids on vacation."
Oh gosh, gee, (sob)... she jumped from government assistance to $68,000/year? What kind of govenment assistance? Like maybe unemployment? What's her takehome now? Where did she buy a condo? What kind of vacation does she want to take her kids on? Like maybe a cruise from Miami to St. Lucia? Or a driving trip from London to Athens and back? The writer shouldn't have included this anecdote if the intent was to garner sympathy for all these poor, downtrodden, poverty-ridden single females with kids. A question not really answered is how many of them are single due to their own wishes rather than solid causes?
This is a useless article and does not mention why fathers are not given custody of their children. Also does not mention the TONS of money received by mothers for welfare, medicaid, food stamps, housing, emergency assistance, daycare, and more that are funded by taxpayers. Article does not mentioned how many are in their condition due to personal and gross irresponsiblity in their lives. It's good that the Globe is going bankrupt and we know why.
Excellent insights, "rsox2007".
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Lets face it, we live in a world where "we" do not have to be responsible for our acts....its the other persons problem. When I decided to have a family, I considered the financial burden. I also bought a house that was very modest, as is my way of living. My wife and I do not have college degrees....I stuck it out with a job that ending up being a career. I live within my means, and yes, go away on a nice vacation every year. I have two kids....would have liked more, but it would have required a bigger house, making concesions in our lifestyle that I did not want to sacrifice. Now we live in the age of little to no accountability....where throwing money and aid at the problem becomes the fix, not fixing the root of the problem.
If you were starting out today, without a college degree, your odds of sticking with a job and having it become a career, being able to buy a home, a good-solid middle class lifestyle, would be very low. Not saying impossible, just very difficult. Economic opportunity has really changed in the past 20-30 years.
If that were the case, I probably wouldn't have had kids. I definitely wouldn't have had kids and be looking for public assistance.
Maybe Huey Long was right after all. We should have a country with none too poor and none too rich.
This is news? Dumb choices yield undesirable results? If you want to be successful do what successful people do.
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I clicked on the link and the first thing I noticed was utility bills for $184.00. There is no way I could heat my home for that amount.
Because the fathers are losers and deadbeats, the woman have sex and don't think of the consequences of getting pregnant, they have kids, can't support them and then taxpayers are expected to pick up the tab. You need a license to sell insurance, drive, sell real estate, get married, become a plumber, etc. but people can pop out kids they can't pay for and the mentality is the federal goverment and states will take care of them. Put the deadbeats on lockdown, tell woman, sorry, your bad!
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1) You don't know what you're talking about
2) And what about the kids? We should put babies on the streets because you are incapable of feeling empathy?
Too many bastard children being born to unmarried women. Some of them have four or five kids, each with a different last name. That's where the problem begins.
Sometimes they don't know the last name so they wing it with the name of someone it might have been.
The children aren't bastards, the two that concieved them (you really cannot call them parents) are.
for those who still don't know what this article is about:
http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2013/03/21/podium-income/h94F6KdLUKZoLTp0E5JCpK/story.html
75+% of divorces are filed by wives....so obviously (many) men are doing something wrong in the "relationship/family department" due to the way they are raised (in households with misogny and sexism)! Sorry the state has to pick up the tab when husbands/fathers fail, but it's really not fair to blame single mothers who make a healthy decision to walk away from bad relationships. The SOLUTION is to raise boys better -- they need to be taught how to be good husbands and fathers, so their wives don't want to divorce them later (and end up as single mothers on benefits).
How about raise girls better to realize the choices they make have long term concequences? Once again putting women in the role of a victim needing saving. Usually by the government.
The article does not cite who was divorced, who never married, etc.
Nice that this article is addressing the income disparity in MA, but fathers are not faring much better, I'm afraid. We squeak by on $62,000 a year, a large chunk of which goes to child support to the ex-wife, who by the magical loopholes in MA law, manages to get an income of well over $300,000, plus living expenses paid, but can claim in a court of law "no income." So she pays no income tax. Meanwhile, we are losing our health insurance, but are ineligible for the state-subsidized plan (that caps out at $57,000). The state doesn't care that our real income is well below $57k. Maybe if the state and federal government took a closer look at all those tax cheats (men and women) who are permitted to claim "no income" or very limited income, when they are living high on the hog, there'd be a little less economic disparity. There's a significant amount of abuse of the system. Bottom line: the rich, the liars and the cheats win. You have to be out of your mind to have kids in MA if you are middle class. BTW, two able-bodied young men should be able to do something to earn a little cash, rather than sit on their bums playing video games while mom (or dad) struggles!