Christianity Today

Nice article. Wish it were more urgent and demanding. Also, I wish that it addressed the fact that Christian women need to encourage their fathers, husbands and the men in their lives to join the church's appointed diaconate in taking an interest in the single moms in the community and their orphaned children. Too often we don't have an active diaconate that is officialy appointed and recognized to help welcome and integrate the windows and orphans into our church communities, and therefore the men don't have a convering to do this work. I think that women need to help lead the way in this--and that all too often they consider the single moms a threat rather than an opportunity for Christ.

While your article is well meaning, it is steeped in implied accusation and shame for single mothers as exemplified by tha claim that they "... naively think they alone can make single-parenting work." Hardly. The vast majority of such women never intended to become single mothers. Even leaving aside the cases of those who are widowed or abandoned, the most frequently stigmatized case: that of a woman who is a single mother because she became pregnant out of wedlock forgets the most important fact about her. In this case she is raising a child without a father because, whatever the preceding mistaken decisions in her life, at that point she *choose* to affirm life and she *choose* to accept her responsibilites to that child. What you, your readers and all pastors should do in turn is to remember that we are called to be God's hands in affirming the correctness of her decision and that despite the difficulties "through God, all things are possible".

To the Editor, Could that possibly be caused by the fact that white women out number black women in the U.S. 6 to 1? This is still a grave misrepresentation of the facts.