Growing Number of Single Moms Really Victims of Patriarchy?

Despite readily available birth control, more single women are getting pregnant—but choosing not to marry to the biological father—than ever before, in part because the social stigma associated with unwed motherhood no longer exists and in part due to the lack of availability of economically-stable male spouses.

Two researchers claim that, while this coupled with the ranks of divorced mothers, is a mark of women's new-found independence, these single mothers are now even worse victims of the old male patriarchy. Why? According to the authors,

• College-educated men still have the greatest access to "the most influential and highest paying jobs" in large part because "women are still much more likely than men to drop out of the labor market when children come."
• The patriarchal system continues to extend to males "political power—the ability to secure laws reflecting male preferences and perspectives over female ones."
• The patriarchal system has made alimony and child support for women less common (especially to mothers who earn more than fathers), while at the same time awarding more shared custody to fathers.

The authors' conclusion is that there is no "new matriarchy" to celebrate:

The word “matriarchy” suggests power, and it is hard to see what power today’s struggling single mothers exercise. Their hard-won independence, in a world where they do not have the power to create better relationships or stronger communities, is under assault. They might be better off unmarried than married to unemployed boyfriends who still live at home with their mothers. But with children to raise, bills to pay and multiple jobs to go to, do they really have any other choice?

Feminism's American Caste Society

Feminists were dead wrong: The single-motherhood revolution "has been an economic catastrophe for women," writes Kay Hymowitz, who calls it the makings of a caste society.

Defenders of the single-mother revolution often describe it as empowering for women, who can now free themselves from unhappy unions and live independent lives. That’s one way to look at it. Another is that it has been an economic catastrophe for those women.

Poverty remains relatively rare among married couples with children; the U.S. Census puts only 8.8 percent of them in that category... But over 40% of single-mother families are poor [and] of the two-fifths of bottom-quintile households that are families, 83% are headed by single mothers.

The Brookings Institution's Isabel Sawhill calculates that virtually all the increase in child poverty in the United States since the 1970s would vanish if parents still married at 1970 rates..."

Hymowitz highlights several studies that show married mothers (including 'shotgun' unions) are economically better off than single or co-habitating mothers. So are married fathers, it turns out.