Health Outcomes for Single, Working Moms Under the Age of 30 with Young Children Not yet in School

In the United States, single motherhood is bad for your health. It may seem surprising that many decades later, after the children are grown, the added hardship of solo parenting could negatively affect women’s health as much as it does (Dusenbery, 2017). For this special population reference essay, we will look at lone, working mothers, under the age of 30, with young children who are not yet in school. Research suggests that lone mothers have higher rates of physical and psychiatric illness than partnered mothers. (Kühn, 2018). Policies to support single mothers to increase equality and decrease poor outcomes.

Historically, this population of women has been on the fringes of society. From at least the late 1800’s, women’s struggles for political and social rights, citizenship, and welfare had been closely linked with an emphasis on working class women and their poverty. In the United States, 1911 saw the first mothers’ pension law in Illinois. By 1919 thirty-nine states provided some form of mother’s aid (Bock, 1994; Leskošek, 2011). With the 1996 welfare reform law, the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA), single or poor mothers were expected to work in order to receive government assistance, instead of receiving welfare checks (Seefeldt & Sandstrom, 2015). Other policies, such as the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and access to child care assistance, were expanded to make low-wage work more appealing…