Single Parenting

Ree is a single mom trying to navigate the rising cost of living, Ree has been feeling "stressed and upset" most days, with the battle only intensified by personal issues. Ree told Yahoo News Australia she was feeling anxious at the prospect of making ends meet before visiting her local Woolworths store.

However, two strangers' patience while she discarded several items at the checkout because she "couldn't afford" them truly made all the difference. She said, “The lady behind me asked the cashier to ring up everything I had put back because she was going to pay for them for me.”

After thanking the stranger and explaining that payment wasn't necessary, Ree was told the stranger was insistent on buying the discarded items for her. "I explained my situation to her and she said she knew how it felt to not be able to pay for things in the past."

In a time of emotional strife, the stranger's kind act has had a profound impact on Ree—one that she struggles to articulate. When asked what it meant to her, she simply replied with one word: "Everything. From the bottom of my heart thank you for making a truly awful situation so much easier in the moment. I walked out crying."

Possible Preaching Angle:

All of us are spiritually bankrupt with no way to pay our debt of sin. Jesus stepped up and fully paid the price for us (Eph. 1:7; 1 Pet. 2:24; 1 John 2:2).

The elderly, disabled, and working single parents are just some of the people on the receiving end of generosity in the South Hills of Pittsburgh. The mantra remained the same for Bethel Park High School football coach Brian DeLallo as his players traded dumbells for shovels: Use your legs and keep your back tight.

DeLallo said, “We would have been in the weight room doing squats, and bench press and power cleans.” But with one simple tweet, DeLallo changed the plan, finding the snowfall as an opportunity to allow his players to give back.

More than six inches of snow blanketed western Pennsylvania overnight. Before the snow started to fall, DeLallo relayed a message to his players through Twitter:

Due to expected severe weather, Monday’s weightlifting workout has been cancelled. Find an elderly or disabled neighbor and shovel their driveway. Don’t accept any money - that’s our Monday workout.

From sidewalks to long driveways all along the streets of Bethel Park, the team took the weightlifting practice to Mother Nature. The connection between the community and team makes Coach DeLallo proud. “You get a lot more out of this than ‘did you bench press 300 pounds today?’ This is really cool. It’s a chance to connect with the community and you don’t get many of those, so this is nice.”

The players tackled dozens of their neighbors’ driveways and at least 25 players texted Coach DeLallo to tell them they did it and felt great. One player said that he’s looking forward to some hot chocolate and watching a movie with his teammates as they defrost.

The number of homes in America with the traditional “nuclear family” of a married couple with children is now the lowest it has been since 1959, according to Census data. The Census Bureau's count showed that 17.8 percent of the United States' 130 million households featured married parents with children under the age of 18. That's down significantly from over 40 percent in 1970.

There are currently just 23.1 million American homes with those “nuclear families,” which is the fewest since 1959. The average age of a woman at her first marriage is now 28.6 years. In the 1950s and 60s, women typically married at 20.4 years old. The average age for men to marry for the first time in 2021 was 30.4 years old.

Over 37 million adults lived alone in early 2021, up from 33 million in 2011. As far back as 1960, 87 percent of adults lived with a spouse. The percentage of adults living with an unmarried partner also increased, from 7% to 8%.

Historical numbers show adults trending away from marriage. In 2021, 34 percent of those age 15 and older reported never having been married, up from 23 percent in 1950.

A recent New York Times article had the following title: “America’s Mothers Are in Crisis. Is anyone listening to them?” The article pointed to other headlines that repeat the theme like a drum beat: “Working moms are not okay.” “Pandemic Triples Anxiety And Depression Symptoms In New Mothers.” “Working Moms Are Reaching The Breaking Point.”

You can also see the problem in numbers: Almost 1 million mothers have left the workforce—with minority and single mothers among the hardest hit. In 2020, almost one in four children experienced food insecurity. Philip Fisher, a professor of psychology who runs a national survey on the impact of the pandemic on families with young children, notes that the stressors on mothers are magnified by other issues, including poverty, race, having special needs children and being a single parent.

Fisher told the Times, “People are having a hard time making ends meet, that’s making parents stressed out, and that’s causing kids to be stressed out. And we know from all the science, that level of stress has a lasting impact on brain development, learning and physical health.” Almost 70 percent of mothers say that worry and stress have damaged their health.

The Times wanted to give mothers across the country the opportunity to scream it out, so they set up a phone line. Hundreds responded with shouts, cries, guttural yells, and lots and lots of expletives. A thirty-year-old mom with two kids under four captured what many moms are feeling with the following message: “I don’t know how to feel sane again. I’m just stuck in this position for God knows how much longer.”

Tech writer Molly McHugh summarized why many mothers feel increasing anxiety about parenting. In short, McHugh writes, "The concept of 'It takes a village' [to raise a child] has been slowly dying. More than ever, people are accomplishing the intensely demanding tasks of child-rearing on their own." She quotes a pediatrician named Dr. Harvey Karp who says,

Today, people think that when they have their child, they know what they're doing, and it's normal to raise them on their own, and if they have a hard time with that they are wusses. But the truth is parents today have the hardest job because no one ever did this on their own and it's very hard to do … there was this idea [that] it was macho to sleep less?—?and there's this macha idea with moms: "I get up with my baby every time she cries." And it's not like you're a great mom because you've been awake 20 out of 24 hours.

Possible Preaching Angles: This story illustrates a crucial idea for Mother's Day—mothering is hard and lonely work. We need each other as we parent our children in our increasingly isolated culture.

As a single parent with a full-time job and three young children, I often listen to Christian radio as an extra source of strength to cope with my day-to-day responsibilities. One day, the sermon talked about how children are God's rewards to parents. Several days later a sibling skirmish broke out into shoving.

"Cut that out right now," I scolded. "Or you'll go to your rooms until you can cool down." Then my youngest piped up, "Now remember, Mom, we're your rewards."

Futurologist Alvin Toffler has written an insightful book titled The Third Wave. Toffler suggests there are three eras, three periods of history, three waves in American culture. Then he reflects on the implications of these three waves for the individual, the family, the church, and for society at large.

First came the agricultural wave: Little House on the Prairie, squatters' rights, the simple pioneer lifestyle; men planting crops and building a home; grandmas and grandpas, uncles and aunts living nearby, often in the same home.

The second wave was the industrial wave, when families moved from the country into the city. They moved from developing farms and croplands with their own hands to becoming part of a larger corporation, working with machinery and developing technology. The extended family was not always nearby. Often they were scattered in different and far away cities. Now we spoke of the nuclear family. The family became smaller; a husband and wife with two or three children was a family in the second wave.

The third wave could be called the information wave--the wave of computers, fax machines, and mass media. In this wave we see growing affluence on the one hand, a growing poverty on the other, and a shrinking middle class. The fast-paced, driven third wave has tremendous implications for the family.

Alvin Toffler says, "A powerful wave is surging across much of the first world today, creating a new and often bizarre environment in which to work, play, marry, raise children, or retire. In this bewildering context, value systems splinter and crash, while the lifeboats of family and church are hurled madly about. The third wave makes a quantum leap from what we have known of the familiar waters of yesterday to the uncharted course of tomorrow." He concludes, "If we define the family in today's third wave as a husband, a wife, and two or more children, and ask how many Americans still live in this type of family, the answer is an astonishing seven percent." Ninety-three percent do not fit the normative second wave model of a family. This is life in the third wave.