How single mothers hold America together
TheGrio...
OPINION: Single mothers are quietly holding America together, and our policies are making them work harder.
Editor’s note: The following article is an op-ed, and the views expressed are the author’s own. Read more opinions on theGrio.
Just under a year ago, on a chilly March afternoon in Minneapolis, I spent time in a hotel lobby listening to hundreds of mothers from across the country talk about their lives. They were part of the Jeremiah Program (JP), a national initiative that supports single mothers with young children through education, childcare, housing, and community support. What struck me wasn’t the program itself but how these women were building community out of necessity, patching together care, support, and survival in a country that too often leaves them to do it alone.
One by one, they described how they were getting by. Some were alumni of the JP program; others were just beginning. What united them was a shared reality: raising children under the age of eight while trying to build stable futures in a country that offers little margin for error. They checked on one another daily, cheered each other on, watched each other’s children when shifts ran late, helped with homework, and exchanged advice on navigating non-residential fathers or intrusive family members. No one used the word community. But that’s exactly what it was.
Single mothers are quietly holding America together, and our policies are making them work harder.
I began thinking about who checks on the people who hold our neighborhoods together.
Who shows up before the government does, or when it doesn’t?
Who performs the quiet, daily work of care that makes survival possible—watching children, organizing childcare, delivering food, clearing debris after storms, or simply calling a neighbor to say, “I’m here”?
For five months last year, I’ve been leading a national series of conversations with Chastity Lord, CEO of the Jeremiah Program, about parenting during turbulent times. We’ve brought together mothers and community members in Fargo, Las Vegas, Rochester, and Minneapolis to share strategies, fears, and the everyday actions that keep families whole. Chastity said something simple that has become impossible to ignore: community is a verb.
Too often, we talk about “community” as if it were a place or a feeling. But community is indeed a verb. A verb connotes action. A verb means doing. In this moment, with child poverty rates rising, safety nets fraying, and global instability on the rise, we must affirm community as action and support it through laws and robust policies, not just praise.
Similarly, the women I was listening to in the lobby weren’t building community as a lifestyle choice. They were responding to a set of policy failures. Their careful choreography of childcare, check-ins, and shared labor existed because formal supports were thin, temporary, or disappearing altogether. Programs like JP offer meaningful—but time-limited—scaffolding. Beyond them, there is no universal childcare system, no guaranteed paid family leave, wages often trail the cost of living, and key safety nets continue to erode. For these women, the burden of survival falls squarely on mothers’ shoulders.
According to the Urban Institute, nearly 30 percent of U.S. households in 2023 were led by single parents, and roughly 80 percent of those households were headed by single mothers. The Institute notes that single mothers represent a large share of American families while facing disproportionately high rates of poverty and material hardship—and are often poorly served by the social safety net.
The numbers are stark, and the stakes are high. Nearly 14 percent of women in the United States live below the poverty line, compared with about 10 percent of men. Among single mothers, the rate climbs to nearly 27 percent. Women also perform roughly three times as much unpaid domestic and caregiving labor as men—work that sustains families, schools, and neighborhoods yet remains largely invisible in economic and policy calculations. When systems fail, women—and especially single mothers—become society’s shock absorbers.
Recent policy shifts have only intensified the strain. New SNAP work requirements now require parents of children aged seven to seventeen to work at least 80 hours per month to qualify for benefits. Married households with children in the same age group, however, need only one working parent to meet the requirement. The message is unmistakable: single mothers are expected to absorb more risk, with fewer supports.
The consequences of this neglect ripple outward. Decades of research show that unresolved caregiver stress and disrupted attachment are associated with higher rates of behavioral challenges in children. When mothers are overwhelmed, children are more likely to struggle in school, disengage from learning, and encounter the criminal justice system earlier in life. These outcomes are not individual failures. They are predictable results of structural decisions that treat caregiving as expendable.
We are all experiencing turbulence in the form of economic uncertainty, climate disasters, and political instability. For far too many Americans, that turbulence feels like driving on a bridge that’s starting to crack. In those moments, who steadies the course? Who shores up the support? Across the United States, it is overwhelmingly women, especially single mothers, who perform that work. Their effort is not rooted in idealism; it is rooted in necessity and survival.
Supporting mothers, then, is not a sentimental gesture—it is a public investment. And there is growing evidence that policy can reduce strain rather than compound it. Regarding education, Tennessee’s statewide Tennessee Promise scholarship has been evaluated by the Tennessee Comptroller’s Office and shown to increase college enrollment and credential completion rates—a model that states can adapt by providing additional supports for parenting students. While not designed exclusively for mothers, its success demonstrates that when cost barriers are removed and pathways are clear, adults balancing work and family responsibilities are more likely to persist and complete credentials.
The same principle applies to after-school care. A broad review conducted under Every Student Succeeds Act identified more than sixty afterschool programs with strong evidence of positive impacts on academic outcomes, attendance, and behavior. For working mothers, reliable afterschool programming is not enrichment; it is essential infrastructure that determines whether employment is sustainable or collapses under pressure.
Mental health and family support programs show similar promise. States like Pennsylvania fund evidence-based home-visiting models, including Nurse-Family Partnership and Parents as Teachers, that have been rigorously linked to improved maternal health, reduced caregiver stress, and better developmental outcomes for children. These programs recognize a fundamental truth: supporting children requires supporting the adults who care for them.
Together, these examples make clear that solutions are not theoretical. When states invest in education pathways, childcare, afterschool systems, and evidence-based family supports, they reduce the need for mothers to improvise to survive. They replace exhaustion with stability, and crisis management with care.
Community, after all, is not just a feeling or a place. It is a verb.
It is what mothers in Minneapolis do when they call each other at dawn, watch each other’s children, and absorb the shocks left behind by failing systems. It is what single mothers across the country do every day—quietly holding families, neighborhoods, and institutions together without adequate public support.
If we want our communities—and our nation—to thrive, we must confront this reality. When we invest in mothers, we invest in the stability of neighborhoods, the futures of children, and the resilience of our society. Community is a verb. And now, more than ever, our laws, policies, and priorities must reflect it.
Dr. Janice Johnson Dias is an Associate Professor of Sociology and Graduate Faculty in Criminal Justice at John Jay College. Her research centers on mothers and children living in poverty. She has extensive experience evaluating and building collaborations among social service and community organizations. Johnson Dias is the Founder and President of the GrassROOTS Community Foundation, a national public health and social action organization supporting community-driven solutions for women and girls. She works closely with policymakers to translate research into policy and advance structural change that improves health outcomes and long-term well-being.
Chastity Lord is President and CEO of the Jeremiah Program (JP), a nationally recognized two-generation strategy advancing economic mobility for single mothers and their children. Founded in 1993, JP supports more than 2,000 families across nine campuses nationwide. Chastity has spent two decades working to dismantle systemic inequities, with senior leadership roles at Color of Change, Achievement First, and the Posse Foundation. A first-generation college graduate, her commitment to equity is both professional and personal. She holds a BA from the University of Oklahoma and an MBA from Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management.