To me, single mother/father isn’t negative. It’s simply a way to explain their situation; that they are raising a child by themselves and for whatever reason they don’t have a partner.
Honestly the first time I’ve heard someone think of it in a negative way. Mostly I hear people say single mother/father with sincere respect as they know raising a kid is difficult, and can’t imagine doing it by themselves.
*Quick edit to affirm the fact that single fathers are relatively rare as we live in a patriarchy.
Even the idea of “raising a child by themselves” is variable. Separated parents often collaborate very well in raising children “together”.
The term “single mother” (or single father) doesn’t even really indicate custody. It’s a hangup on not being in committed a relationship.
I’ve seen single mother used in negative ways, mostly in conjunction with welfare.
one of my mother’s more unhinged rant topics was women intentionally keeping children away from their fathers as revenge for him breaking up with her and that if they don’t have the maturity to get married and stay married then they shouldn’t have children etc etc. She also talked mad shit about people who take government assistance to care for their children when my disabled sister has always been on as many benefits as my mother could get approved (she had good reasons though, unlike those lazy “other” people… 🤔)
ime I have seen mothers use their child coercively but it’s not usually by keeping them from the father, at least not successfully. It turns out family court actually favors fathers if they bother to pursue custody, which few do without a strong reason, either good or bad. It’s usually been women using the children to coerce family, friends, or a new partner into staying by getting them to bond with the child then being able to actually remove the child from them since they have no legal rights to the child. And I think the only reason I haven’t seen fathers do it more is because, as stated previously, many don’t pursue custody due to either internal or external expectations that childcare is the mother’s job.
Damn, I’m sorry you have such a negative experience on the topic. It’s really awful to have a batshit insane mother, isn’t it? My parents were also a bit fucky, and it’s something I think I’ll have to deal with for a long time still.
I suppose the mother coercing people is perhaps more of a stress response and navigating the fear of raising a child by themselves. Like indirectly asking for help.
I certainly agree that the courts favour the fathers, as they are basically the hub of anything patriarchal.
oh, no. The women I’m remembering were straight up abusive. One of them was too high to properly bond with the older male child when he was born so she really only wanted the younger girl but she refused to give up custody of him because she could get money out of the grandmother in exchange for being allowed to see him. Kid was like ten showing up to my friend’s mom’s house with handprint bruises talking about beating hookers and they couldn’t get CPS to remove the kid. Fucking sad. I don’t talk to that friend anymore for unrelated reasons but last I heard her sister had at least gotten back with the kid’s dad and was at least treating my friend’s nephew better in front of his biodad.
also idgaf if it is a stress response. It really damages the kids to not have consistent caregivers and to be constantly told that people who were positive influences in their life were actually bad. It’s gonna fuck up their ability to set healthy boundaries for the rest of their life. If they can’t “ask for help” without fucking a kid up for life then they are an unfit parent. Those women were just uniquely awful people whose kids might have had a better life if mom taking the kids in the break up wasn’t the societal default.
I was raised by a single father. He definitely “took us” from my mother with spite in his heart. Pretty rare yes. I think I was 8 years old when I heard him call her a whore the first time.
He got arrested when I was a teen for, being a shitty parent. Such a shitty parent, he got a ten year sentence, served 8. Should have been longer.
He fought “so hard for his kids” and then just completely dropped the ball. We had like 3 good years before it all turned to shit.
My mom’s dying this week. I … don’t know what I feel about it, but the wrong parent is suffering. I hated my mom for a long time in my youth because to me at the time, I couldn’t understand why she couldn’t be the superhero single mom you’d hear about all the time. She knew the bad stuff that was happening to us with our father, and yet claimed, she was powerless to help us.
Anyhoo, men who fight for custody usually get it, and it was very easy for my father (adopted step father technically) to spin my mother as crazy and unfit. Divorced 1993.
Cool slop bro
Why dont you contact the artist and discussing your your concerns with her?
The belt buckle is egregious. Either made by AI or the artist is trying to replicate slop
I’ve got a better idea. No. Take responsibility for the shit you post.
That absentee father outline is 100% Will Smith.
That’s not the only odd choice. This woman dressed as if from an 80s sci fi movie where robots kill anyone over 25.
I’m pretty sure it’s Billi Eilish too.
That belt buckle skirt situation is intense.
Why does she have a colostomy bag?
It’s AI slop. Look at the belt buckle.
I thought it was a 69 belt for a second, but couldn’t find the other person’s head. AI is getting better with fingers, at least.
ah, so it is.
fucking ai slop bullshit
Looks like a dude 69ing with a frog
Hey, I’m not here to kink shame anyone.
I was trying to figure out the fuck her pants were doing and figured “ehhh it makes little enough sense it’s probably some lazy AI generated bs”
In addition to what everyone else said, the terms just refer to completely different people. “single mother” obviously refers to the mother, while “children of absentee fathers” refers to… the children.
And it’s a strawman anyways - nobody’s out there using “single mother” as a pejorative. I’ve heard it used far more often in a good sense.
Deadbeat Dads
Dead
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That doesn’t even make sense.
The first is talking about the child, the second about the mother.
Isn’t this a very old and irrelevant way of thinking, but placed on a modern styled meme format, in order to maybe state a different problem?
Being single parents is not more derogatory that being a cat owner or having bangs
I feel like it would be about 5 minutes before someone decides that emphasizing the father’s role in the family (ie, absent) and ignoring the mother’s role is just another way for the patriarchy to erase women.
To me, it seems like the complete oppositeis the case.
A single father is more rare, exactly because of the concerns of the effect that the lack of a mother might have.
Single mothers is way more accepted than single fathers, but all in all I don’t see this as an issue or at least not any more.
You’d think so, but a lot of women are still looked down on for it.
Its one of those weird things that can be used as both a thing people look down on but also something people look up to.
Why are you assuming that “single mother” is a bad thing? Thats pretty fucking weird.
Thank you! Glad to see I’m not the only one in between all these comments praising this nonsense.
It’s because of fucking Reagan. He’s the dipshit who coined the term welfare Queen. Which painted a picture of single mothers that both Republicans and Democrats have held in their minds for the last 40 fucking years.
So? When I hear “Single mother” I imagine a famliy with only a mother. thats it.
Liked but gentle criticism, we have been shaming single mothers for millennia. Even religious texts had to spell out that they’re just women with kids, not leprosy victims. Reagan just modernized the stereotype that if you were black it was automatically worse for everyone else.
You also can’t assume why the father is out of the picture. Sometimes, the father could be falsely imprisoned or even passed away.
Also also, why focus on the absentee instead of the person with the potential problem? Help first, blame later if necessary.
My first thought too. I mean it is true society has a fucked up stigma about single mothers, but the blame lies with society not the term single mother.
On the flip side you hear single father, and society’s immediate response is “aww, that brave man!” That is not to say being a single dad doesn’t actually come with its own set of weird societal day to day problems and prejudices, but the broad surface level response to the terms “single dad” vs “single mom” certainly seems to trend towards “what an upstanding man” vs “what an irresponsible ho.”
Society is so fucking weird about present fathers! Taking the kids to the park “oh where’s mommy right now?” Handling a tantrum from the youngest while the oldest is asking for something “oh I see daddy’s on parent duty!”
I just want to parent my kids man, you don’t have to make it weird! Of course that’s also not addressing the subset of people who are convinced that the only men who want anything to do with kids must be pedophiles and couldn’t possibly just be present fathers
Well, he could have died. Just sayin.
That’s entirely his fault though.
/S
And I wish that people would stop trying to find new and inventive ways to find new definitions to screech about, especially when there is nothing wrong with said definitions.
“Single mother” means a mother who is single, without a partner (typically, not always a husband)
There is no judgement in there…
There is nothing offensive in there…
QUICK, LETS BE OUTRAGED ABOUT IT THEN!
Look, there are also children with single fathers, we don’t call them “Children of absentee mothers” either because we’re all adults and not a group of little children trying to virtue signal themselves to stardom, right?
Right?!
It’s not uncommon that people choose to be a single mother. So saying that it’s a problem is bad.
This kinda feels like right wing propaganda they are obsessed with “the father not being around”
I am not denying there are fathers who don’t take responsibility for having a child
Baring psycho religious idiots, do people really use “single parent” as a pejorative? I’ve only ever considered it an indication of the unique struggles the description entails, not as a judgment on them.
I have heard it. Some people feel better about themselves by looking down on others.
I genuinely don’t know anyone that uses it as a pejorative.
I’ve only seen it used in the pejorative sense when there was also a racial factor. So by people who were racist.
I always thought this was more for the child’s benefit. Rather than addressing them by what they are lacking addressing them by what they have might be gentler.
yeah I thought “single mother” was already a supposedly better replacement for “fatherless”, for exactly the reason you stated
