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When I finished writing 7 Risks for Single Mothers; & the Art of Managing Them, I gave copies or extracts to the single mothers who helped me. And then abandoned it. Id learned what I needed to know for myself, and felt uncomfortable exposing my weaknesses as a mother and a human being any further. Who was I to give advice? Even though the you in the text is often me-the-writer, talking to me-who-wants-to-learn. But I built on one 7 Risks theme for my Master of Laws thesis, and am proud that my LLM was awarded with Distinction. Other themes made their way into my Creative Writing PhD, into my screenplays, andof coursestayed with me in my daily life. An extract from Chapter 4 is about to appear in Exercise Book, from Victoria University Press. Then one of my single mother mates had a clean up, came across her copy and sat down and (re)read it. Its good, she said. Useful. Why didnt you do something more with it? I explained. And then, Blogger came up with the Dynamic template. I decided to experiment with using it to publish a book, to learn if other single mothers think 7 Risks make sense and is useful,

and have ideas about how it can be better. My warm thanks to all the single mothers who shared their lives and their stories with me, over years and years, and to all the other people who helped along the way. I hope 7 Risks shows how much I appreciate you. When I wrote 7 Risks, I was on the Domestic Purposes Benefit, so it is also my warm thank you to taxpayers, a wee gift in appreciation of your support. I've left the original references, and plan to add more recent material soon. Please comment anywhere you want! I'd love to hear what you think! And I love to meet you on Twitter, too: @7RFSM

1. INTRODUCTION
How I came to write this book Single mothers in Sweden and England die earlier than those who have partners. And divorced mothers are more at risk, according to one part of the research. Thats what I read. As a divorced single mother I was shocked. I dont live in Sweden or England but perhaps being a single mother had been more dangerous than I realised. Scary stuff. Id been ill. Was I also going to die early? Just as my youngest child was about to leave home? It had never occurred to me that being a single mother might affect how long I could expect to live. The reasons for reduced life expectancy for single mothers are have not been established: in general their lifestyles in Sweden are different than they are in England. Id heard for years that children of single mothers are at risk. But Id never considered that single mothers might also be at risk. I began to consider what risks may have been present in my own life and to talk with other single mothers about common risks to our health and how we might manage and reduce them. This book is the result. Its put on your own oxygen mask before you help your child information, like the instructions that flight attendants offer on the plane. Because I believe that if were not healthy, our children are less likely to be healthy. And every single mother I know cares deeply about her children. Why is our health at risk? Ive found many reasons why we might get sick and why we might die early to add to those named in the articles. They all seem to arise from two basic conditions for single mothers: Mothering is a highly demanding and grossly undervalued occupation Single mothers are less valued than mothers in general and tend to attract criticism and hostility rather than support and affirmation: the word single attached to

mothering seems to further devalue the mother and the kind of mothering job she does. Isolation, loneliness, poverty, exhaustion, are words that I heard most often when I asked single mother friends and acquaintances what single motherhood meant to them. To manage the risks to our health we have to acknowledge these hard truths. Its necessary to find ways to value ourselves and our work (since others dont). We have to generate support and affirmation for ourselves. Because, as I learned when I read further, chronic stress very common among single mothers compromises the immune system. The emotional distress generated by stress has physical effects. Its not just having primary responsibility for a child or children that makes it hard. Single mother seems to be the worst of both words. If being a mother is hard work, being single as well can and usually does make it harder. Being single is usually seen as an undesirable state for someone who is a mother, the opposite of being respectably married or partnered. Furthermore it has none of the fun associated with being single for those who arent also mothers. If youre just single you get to play a lot. But to associate single mothers with this kind of singleness tends also to associate us with promiscuity and inevitable sexual availability. We are seen as predatory too, although many of us are not interested in finding sexual partners or new fathers for our children. A woman can be a mother or be sexually available but is dangerous if she is both. Mothering is hard work for anyone. Its been described as having a close and attentive physical and emotional involvement with children and offering them education in its broadest sense while preparing them for independence. It is a huge commitment. There are few immediate rewards, little societal status, and an uncertain future benefit. As Madonna whose mothering must be cushioned by an economic freedom that very few single mothers enjoy - has put it, mothering is like being pulled from every cell and nerve fibre and every hair, invigorating and exhausting. Single mother hood is even more demanding. Forget the invigorating. Often its just exhausting. Even for Madonna being a single mother was just OK. She really wanted her child. She characterises herself both as someone with perseverance, resilience and a sense of humour and as a tireless workhorse. But single motherhood was not what she wanted. Madonna was OK, but it was hard work. When she broke up with the father of her first child, she said, she wanted another child but needed to think that she would be with the next father for a very long time. She recognised that she needed support of a particular kind to bring up another child, as well as all the support that presumably she could afford to buy: nannies, housekeepers, cooks and so on. Ive come to believe that if single mother families are acknowledged as viable and good places for children to grow up in, that poses a risk to the survival of what is understood as the family, something often seen as sacred and to be protected. Negativity towards us comes from this desire to protect the family. So what exactly is the family?

The family
The family is defined in article 16 of the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights as the natural and fundamental group of society. This group consists of men and women[who]have the right to marry and found a family. This is the family referred to in discussion about family values or family breakdown leading to broken homes. This idea of the family, firmly embedded in our consciousness may be based on what my mother called good Christian values. These values exist also in other religions and cultures. The Industrial Revolution of the nineteenth century and colonisation of the Americas, Asia and the Pacific may also have something to do with the familys evolution into a very small, rigidly defined unit. Immigrants often lost their extended family and their family histories. During an era when transport and communications were slow it was difficult to keep up with family members gone or left behind. Many people wanted to break away from their families, or their families wanted nothing more to do with them. Migrants had to find (found) new families. Founding a family implies that each party comes to the activity without family ties, genetic or social, and there were and are many people in this situation. Ive also wondered if ideas about the family in the United States, in relation to the needs and desires of its immigrant and migrant populations, unduly influenced the family concept expressed in the Declaration of Human Rights. After all, the United Nations is based in New York and was substantially underwritten by the United States at the time the Declaration was developed. And lawmakers in the United States continue to use the language of the Declaration in legislation, such as the punitive 1996 welfare reform law that limited the time that single mothers can receive welfare support and which states that marriage is the foundation of a successful society. This law created Temporary Aid to Needy Families with the goal of ending dependency of needy parents on government benefits by promoting job preparation, work and marriage and encouraging the formation and maintenance of two- parent families. Barbara Ehrenreich points out that many welfare recipients are likely to marry men from a group whose wages have been declining since the 1980s. A woman would have to marry, she calculates, 2.3 of these men to lift herself out of poverty! Other countries have better systems for supporting single mothers with their responsibilities. But in general, the Declaration of Human Rights definition of the family is the one many people want to put themselves inside and single mothers outside. A family is the family, the only legitimate family unit. The family does not exist unless a marriage a marriage is a part of the equation. More recently the definition is sometimes extended, grudgingly, to include de facto marriages. But single mothers do not have a status that entitles them to call their immediate family the natural and fundamental group unit of society. Their households are unnatural. To keep the idea of the family going other families (however well they work for those who are part of them) are described in a negative way. A family that once included a married couple and their child or children (or maybe the unmarried couple and their child or

children) and which now consists of one parent, usually the mother and the child or children, is called a broken home. Ive always experienced this phrase as an especially violent one. The home I provide for my children is whole, a family system that works. Its taken me a while to understand fully how deeply my life and choices have been affected other peoples attitudes towards motherhood in general (often hugely undervalued whether or not mothers are part of the family), and single mothers in particular. Risks Some women become single mothers as the result of divorce or separation from a partner. Some become single mothers by accident or by choice without ever having a parenting partner. And however we become single mothers we are also as diverse in every way as the members of any other group that exists by chance rather than by choice. But we do have some things in common. Becoming single mothers changes our lives and exposes us to some risks that we didnt face before we were single mothers and are less likely to face if we cease to be single mothers. When I asked around, I learned from other single mothers that my single mother experiences and the risks I faced were familiar to them. We often come to single motherhood in states of shock, grief, pain. We are vulnerable, become quickly exhausted and unable to function effectively. Some cope better than others; and we all have different coping mechanisms. But the problems we face seem to be universal. My dear friend Maria who appears here and there throughout this book says that happiness is a matter of character, not external circumstances. And I agree with her. But for those of us who are less resilient than others, who find it hard, say, to move on from the effects of violent experiences, or a lifetimes poverty, the risks from single motherhood are harder to manage. Women who have been committed to the ideals of the family, and who benefited economically and socially as a result of being part of the family often find the transition to single motherhood especially difficult. Risk is present in everyones life, all the time. If ever I doubted this, New Zealands and Japans recent devastating earthquakes removed all doubt. But the conditions of single motherhood create everyday specific, ongoing and generic risks for those who are single mothers. If these risks are not managed effectively we both compromise our health and find it more difficult to care for our children, that all important next generation. This book presents the risks, and offers one way they can be managed. It is also meant to be optimistic. Once we come to terms with the often shocking reality of a single mother life, many women come to value our independence as single mothers, the great job we do in bringing up our children, our capacity to create satisfying and happy lives for our families. You may be a single mother who is already in this situation, who can meet with any challenge or risk and resolve it, and who doesnt need this book. On the other hand you might be a bit more like me and have temporarily lost the capacity to be happy or have never really had it. If thats your experience, some of the information that follows may help. I certainly hope so.

I have much in common with other single mothers. But my ideas about the risks we face also come from my own background and experiences. So before I go into detail about the risks we share, heres my own story. Skip it if you want to get straight into the risks themselves. My story Is my experience of single motherhood an unusual one? Am I overreacting in seeing my experiences as being dangerous to my health? Yes and no. I started with more resources than some single mothers and met with some good fortune along the way. But I still became debilitated and ill. Even now in a relatively peaceful middle age, its sometimes a challenge for me to manage day-to-day life as a single mother, as youll read later. Developing and sustaining a character that generates happiness has been hard for me. Not least because of the conditions I share with most single mothers. I didnt expect to become a single mother. I had a family: a partner I loved, two small children and two older children whose father shared responsibility for them. A little unconventional perhaps, but it worked (for me). Then it was gone. I had a new family of one fifteen month old child, two teenagers and me. It was a shock. I had no paid employment though there were projects I was committed to: I was working hard. And suddenly I was responsible for all the caring and the shopping and the cooking and the bedtimes. Family and friends did not offer help. I did not think to ask them for help: they had their own busy lives. I did not cope well. I became ill. I became isolated. I learned the hard way. And little by little things improved. I arrived at single motherhood fairly shattered emotionally and short on the skills to move me forward. I just wanted to escape the pain. I had few options for doing this. Booze and drugs make me physically ill. Im hopeless at casual sex. I most wanted to be left alone, to sleep, to read trash, just to be. This was impossible with three children, each with different needs many of which I could not help them fulfil. When I reached the end of each day and sometimes during the day I fell into bed exhausted. I was so engaged with feeling and with coping minute by minute that I didnt think much. So there I was, struggling. My life until then gave me some advantages. I was fairly well educated, with a degree and a professional qualification. I had a part share in a house close to town: no car but no transport problems. I was European in a place where pale people from an English background are well treated. I was in a country where at the time welfare benefits were adequate. As a child of migrants I was used to being marginal, on the edge of things, good practice for what was to come. And the unpaid work I was doing held many satisfactions. It continued to do so. With one group of friends I had published a novel. It became a best-seller and won a major prize during this time. With another group I wrote an art book that did well. Thanks to these projects I travelled internationally.

Then a friend asked me what I would wish I had done when I was seventy and it was too late. Id wish Id finished my law degree I answered. I went back to law school to finish it. I was admitted to the bar and practised for a couple of years. I wrote articles with another friend that were later used in judges training and in law school teaching in several countries. But I did not get a proper job. Perhaps because I didnt really want one. Eventually I borrowed money on my shared house and went with my youngest child to live overseas. Through all this I was intermittently unwell with immune system difficulties: cervical dysplasia that eventually led to my having a hysterectomy; toxoplasmosis; chronic fatigue; fungal infections. The illness continued overseas. It became too hard to live there as I became more ill. I came home. Then, suddenly, I was offered a university-based office to work from while I made some video archives and developed some documentaries. Then a job teaching in an art school at a small tertiary institution. I loved this, learned more about teaching and about moving images and digital media. I lasted two and a bit years before I got ill again. On the side I had been researching a thesis about the law relating to unreliable fathers. And that is when I found the articles about single mothers dying sooner than those who have partners. The organisation of this book Ive started with some frequently asked questions about single mothers. Then I introduce the art of managing the risks to our well being. Start here if youre a single mother who has an immediate problem or two to deal with. Then I move on to the risks themselves. They all arise from the demands of mothering within a society where mothers are not highly valued and mothers outside the family are actively criticised. Hostility and criticism that comes from beliefs about single mothers is the first risk. Whether or not it is conscious and overt it can undermine us and make us less effective. If we take on single mother as defined by others as our only identity and lose other aspects of our identity, thats risky too. So thats the second risk. Then theres the risk that arises from expectations -whether our own or those of others that our children cannot thrive without a father or male role model. Our experiences may suck us into a vortex of violence created by the beliefs and behaviour of others. These are the four primary risks that, I believe, place single mothers without partners at risk from an early death. If these risks can be successfully managed, the other risks become less dangerous: the risks of poverty; isolation and loneliness; and ill health. Each of these seven risks has its own chapter in this book. Research material Ive used my own life as a rich resource of research material. There may be aspects of some of my stories that are new or unrecognisable to people who were there at the time. So I emphasise that this is my version and that I have avoided using material that directly involves or might hurt others in my family. I am very grateful to the single mothers who

shared their stories with me. It helped me a lot to learn that I wasnt the only single mother in the world who had some kinds of experiences. Ive emphasised information and ideas that I havent seen detailed anywhere else and that I have myself found helpful. References are listed at the end of each chapter, sometimes at the end of two chapters if theyre useful for each. The articles and books themselves usually include further references. I have ignored information that said or implied that single parent families cannot work. This kind of information gets plenty of airtime. It is easy to find and it is not helpful in this context. Every researcher, like every writer has a story they want to tell. This is mine. References Weitoft G, Haglund B, and Rosen M (2000) Mortality among lone mothers in Sweden: a population study The Lancet 355 (9211) 8 April 1215-1219 White, Mark (2000) American Beauty HQ Summer 2000-2001 24-31 Whitehead M, Burstrom B and Diderichsen F (2000) Social policies and the pathways to inequalities in health: a comparative analysis of lone mothers in Britain and Sweden January 15 Science and Medicine 50(2) 255-270