Single Moms Vs Single Dads: Are There Double Standards?
In today’s day and age, the definition of a family is not the same for everyone. You may have brothers, sisters, or both — or maybe your dog counts as a sibling. You may have one parent or two — two moms, two dads, or one of each. Or maybe your grandparents or aunt and uncle adopted you. Whatever your family may look like, we can all agree that there is not one way of defining “family.”
With that said, I think we can all agree that raising a family — however that may look like — is not easy. Many logistical factors must be considered among the adults raising their kid(s). How are we going to put food on the table? Who will be working? Who will be watching the kids? How do I ensure the health and happiness of my family? Just thinking about these questions can be daunting for many.
While, of course, this is true for households with two parents/guardians, this is especially hard for single-parent households. So how many single-parent households are there in the US? According to the Pew Research Center, “Almost a quarter of U.S. children under the age of 18 live with one parent and no other adults (23%)” which is about 16,790,000 children. If the average person in the US lives in a home of 3.4 people, then that means about 4,938,235 US adults are single parents (Pew Research Center).
So does being a single parent automatically put you at an economic disadvantage? Using data of Colorado counties from the 2022 Census data, I created linear regression models for family households consisting of married couples, single female parents, and single male parents and where each county ranks on the Gini Index. According to The World Bank, “The Gini index measures the extent to which the distribution of income or consumption among individuals or households within an economy deviates from a perfectly equal distribution. A Gini index of 0 represents perfect equality, while an index of 100 implies perfect inequality.” In all three models, as shown below, there are no relationships found. This suggests that no matter the composition of your family household, that does not influence whether you live in a Colorado county that is perfectly or imperfectly equal in the distribution of wealth.
In order to further investigate how married couples may differ in financial hardships compared to single-parent family households, let’s look at the relationship between family household composition and utilization of public assistance/Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). For context, SNAP is a federal program that grants low-income individuals and families nutritional benefits through vouchers or credits to purchase foods at stores (USDA).
Based on the linear regressions above, there is a clear difference in the utilization of public assistance/SNAP across different compositions of family households. For one, family households comprised of married couples are negatively correlated with the use of public assistance/SNAP (correlation = -0.186). This is not surprising, given that, generally, with two working parents there is more income to support a family, so less help may be needed from outside sources, like the government. On the other hand, family households with single female parents are positively correlated with the use of public assistance/SNAP (correlation = 0.416). Family households with single male parents reveal a zero slope which, in other words, indicates that no matter the greater or lesser presence of single male parents, single male parents do not tend to seek public assistance/SNAP (correlation = 0.026).
With such a stark difference between family households with single female parents versus single male, why might this be the case? Well, this could be telling of the societal expectations we have of single moms in comparison to single dads. As Dr. Collins points out in Parents about single moms being judged more than single dads, “[it is] because women are supposed to be ‘naturally’ capable caregivers in a way we don’t assume for men.” Whether we want to admit it or not, ingrained in our society are gender expectations. It’s possible that single moms often seek public assistance/SNAP because of the pressure they face of being a “good” single mom through society’s eyes, even if they may be putting in the same (if not more) effort as their male counterparts. In the same vein, it’s possible that single dads tend not to seek public assistance/SNAP because they face little to no criticism about their parenting.
Whether or not this is truly the case, we must remain conscious of the way we treat single moms versus single dads. They are both deserving of appreciation, and neither one should be thought of more highly than the other on the basis of gender.
