Being a parent is the toughest job on the planet, even with a partner and strong extended family to rely on. It’s even tougher for the 13.6 million single parents out there, most of them mothers. The numbers are set to rise sharply - today, 40% of the children born in the United States are born to unmarried mothers, up from 15% in 1980.
We should be doing more to help them and the approx. 21 million children being raised in single-parent households.
Outside of programs such as the Freedom Dividend to raise them out of poverty and support their ability to provide food and housing for their family, the best thing we can do for these parents is to help them find and build a support network.
Problems to be Solved
- checkSingle parents are trying to do the toughest job on the planet with very little support.
- checkOften they must balance a full-time job or several jobs with raising children.
- Being a parent has been an experience like no other - I can’t imagine going through it alone. We need to do all we can to support the single parents out there, particularly single mothers, as they have to balance more demands than the rest of us can understand. As President, I will make helping single parents a key priority of the Federal government in ways big and small. It's vital to the future of our society that single parents get the support that they need. It takes a village to raise a child, and investing in children pays off in healthy, productive adults.
Goals
- checkSupport single parents in the raising of their children
- checkHelp form stronger communal bonds for single parents and their children
As President I will...
- Invest in programs that provide support for single parents, including but not limited to:
- Universal Basic Income of $1k/month for all adults
- Mandatory family and maternity leave for full-time employees
- Tax breaks for child-care services
- Increased federal funding for pre-K programs
- The creation of responsibility-sharing networks, allowing single parents to work with each other for childcare and other responsibilities, and allowing these children to socialize with other children
- Investment in communal housing specifically for single parents to be able to pool resources and caregiving
- Initiate a campaign to assist single mothers and a national recruitment drive for Big Brothers Big Sisters of America for male volunteers to spend time with children of single mothers who would like a positive male role model (the waiting list for little boys looking for a big brother is twice as long as the waiting list for little girls).