Poor single mothers

THE LOCKDOWN forced by the COVID-19 pandemic has exposed Jamaican families that are in crisis. There are more and more stories about the plight of poor, single mothers with multiple children who lived on minimum wage in good times but are now unemployed as the lockdown persists.

Several of these desperate mothers have been in the news lately, asking for, and receiving, generous help from kind-hearted Jamaicans here and abroad. However, despite these generous responses, one-off assistance will not sustain these children, for they will continue to need care, including proper nutrition and education, for many years to come.

The question that many are not prepared to ask out loud is this: Where are the children’s fathers? A woman may explain that once she became pregnant, the man walked away or claimed it was not his child. This happens over and over, so the woman ends up with six, eight, or 10 children, with no father to care for or guide them.

One of the factors that play into creating these large families is the belief that children are God’s gift and that women ought to be fruitful and multiply. But how is it possible for a woman who lives in poor circumstances, who is unskilled and uneducated and often jobless, who has no partner, to look after multiple children? Yes, these children will go without food and other necessities.

NEEDS TO BE ADDRESSED

It is a societal problem that needs to be addressed. A woman does not single-handedly produce a child, so single parenting is not the ideal way to bring children into the world. Producing a child brings with it a lifetime of responsibility, so couples need to understand the difference between a committed relationship and a sexual relationship.

We recall the successful ‘70s campaign run by the National Family Planning Board (NFPB) called ‘Two is Better Than Too Many’. The organisation, founded by Dr Lenworth Jacobs and his wife, Beth, was dedicated to providing sustained family-planning services.

Back then, women were educated to understand that having multiple partners placed them at risk for not only pregnancies, but also life-threatening sexual diseases. The women were empowered to take charge of their reproductive health and were exposed to the contraceptive options so that they could avoid unwanted pregnancies. From all assessments, the message got through to many women, who made the decision to opt for contraception, with the result that the birth rate fell from 4.5 births per woman to two children per woman in 2009.

With the recent spotlight on so many single women having multiple children, it seems that the publichealth message of decades ago needs to be forcefully reinforced and repackaged in 2020.

Community groups would do well to weave into their programmes public education about reproductive health, including the importance of birth spacing and the level of care required before, during, and after a child’s birth. It should be made easy for these women to access family-planning counselling and resources.

A MATTER OF SURVIVAL

Poor women with many children face enormous challenges, and without intervention, it will not be possible to break the inter-generational cycle of poverty. The typical minimum-wage earner has to cut and carve to survive. When one adds the feeding of the multitude, then a certain agility has to be found. It is admirable that some women do manage with a combination of government safety nets or the help of family and kind benefactors.

The other side to this dilemma is that there are too few fathers in Jamaica who are committed to shouldering the responsibility of looking after their children. There are dozens of poor, single mothers who overcome the many hurdles and have successfully reared their children to become productive members of society.

Despite this, the evidence is clear from numerous studies conducted by professionals in the healthcare and social science fields, which conclude that children who grow up with both parents have a better chance to achieve familial stability and overall success in life.

The opinions on this page, except for The Editorial, do not necessarily reflect the opinions of The Gleaner.