TheRic_Admin is organizing this fundraiser.
In America every day, 11 million single mothers tuck their children into bed with empty stomachs, a cruel and sobering reminder of the harsh reality that is food insecurity. More than 5.4 million, including 10 million children, are food insecure, but single mothers and their families are particularly vulnerable.
Despite progress in reducing poverty rates and improving access to social safety net programs, single mothers continue to face disproportionately high levels of food insecurity compared to other household types. The challenges of juggling work, childcare, and household responsibilities while living on a tight budget make it difficult for single mothers to provide consistent and nutritious meals for their families.
2 in 5 households with children headed by single mothers experienced food insecurity this year, compared to 1 in 10 married-couple households with children. This disparity is even more pronounced among Black and Hispanic single mothers, who are nearly twice as likely to experience food insecurity.
In this context, understanding the root causes of food insecurity among single mothers is crucial for developing effective policies and interventions to address this critical issue.
The USDA reported that “single-mother households were more than three times as likely to experience food insecurity among children than married-couple households with children.”
Single-mother households experience higher rates of poverty than other types of households, which contributes to their increased risk of food insecurity. In 2020, the poverty rate for households headed by single mothers was 33%, nearly 7 times more than married women, for whom the poverty rate is 3.8%.
Single mothers who are employed still experience high rates of food insecurity. American women are twice as likely, compared to men, to work in low-wage, part-time jobs with few to no benefits, a majority of those women being single mothers.
Single mothers face unique challenges when it comes to accessing adequate and nutritious food for their families. For one, they often have lower incomes compared to married couples with children, making it more difficult to afford healthy food.
Single Mother Guide observes that “among children living with mother only, 38.1% lived in poverty. In contrast, only 7.5% of children in two-parent families were counted as poor.” This disparity is only exacerbated by the gender pay gap, which leaves women, especially single mothers, earning less than their male counterparts.
Furthermore, single mothers often face barriers to employment, such as a lack of affordable childcare or limited access to job training programs. This can make it difficult for them to earn enough money to put food on the table. Nearly one in five single mothers are unemployed, compared to one in ten married mothers.
Single mothers are forced to take on primary childcare responsibilities, and they often experience hiring discrimination because of their position as the sole caretaker of their children. An article in the Journal of Social Issues revealed that when researchers added the phrase “has a two-year-old-child” to a potential candidate’s bio, evaluators rated the person “less competent than an otherwise equal [candidate] not presented as having a child.”
The gender pay gap stands at 82 cents for women of all races, for every $1 earned by men of all races. For single mothers, it’s 71 cents. Single mothers that are Black (64 cents) or Latina/Hispanic (56 cents) face even greater disparity.
