Single Mothers

A single mother may be a woman with one or more children who was previously married but is now separated, divorced, or widowed, or someone with children who was never married. The marital status of a woman with children has long been an important signifier of her social status, because motherhood was, and still often is, expected to occur within a religiously or legally sanctioned union. Throughout history, women who were unmarried at the time they became mothers were labeled unwed mothers at best and promiscuous at worst, and their children referred to as illegitimate or bastards.

Although social attitudes toward nonmarital parenting tends to be more liberal in North America now than in the past, many teens and women may be avoided by family and community, and have difficulty accessing safe housing, foodstuffs, and other material and social resources essential for health and well-being. Some women who choose children but not marriage refer to themselves as mothers by choice. For this reason, the term lone mother better captures the range of women who are sole heads of household, while simultaneously according less significance to marital status and more significance to a woman's role as primary parent.