Annotation 3 (SIRS)

Unmarried, With Children

The prelude of this article gives the comparison of the Leave it to Beaver family era to today's single parent homes. More than 7.5 million households today are headed by single mothers. A single mother today may be of any age or race. It is a especially fast growing catagory for white women. Because women are more educated and thus better able to support themselves there is no real financial need of a husband for motherhood. Women who can't find the "soulmate of their dreams" would rather stay single. This shows that more people value marriage today, and take it more seriously. Some of these women were children of divorced parents who don't ever want their children to suffer through watching a parent leave. Single motherhood is a long and hard journey. Being a single mother means that not all your time can be focused on just the child. Emotionally speaking, children of single mothers are the same as other children. Money, effort, and family can replace a missing husband or father. It is much worse for a child to go through the devastation of divorced parents than to live originally just with a single mother.