Unspoken Truths of Modern Motherhood: Revealing the Raw Realities

Silenced Single Mothers

I don’t understand why it is both so hard to communicate and for others to understand. What part of needing to be a mom and a provider in a world where I don’t get paid to be a mom and no one thinks I should make enough to be a provider doesn’t feel like a hopeless, demoralizing, and impossible endeavor.

Men always seem to be expectant of living wages because how else would they provide for their families? Sometimes I want to get a hysterectomy so that I may never experience the pressure of needing to be both a provider and an excellent parent ever again. Sometimes I wish I could die to escape it all.

It seems no matter how many times or different ways I try to explain my dilemma, my words seem to fall flat before they ever reach anyone’s ears. Half of the reason I want to die is from feeling so invisible, from feeling as if I am drowning and no one even notices.

Surely I can communicate this problem I am facing without a news headline reading “Single mother kills herself because…” Why did she kill herself? Why would a mother leave her child behind? She must have been struggling with her hormones, mental health, or postpartum depression. Any obstacle is always able to be overcome, especially the ones faced by women. Isn’t she supposed to love being a selfless mother anyway? It had to be hormonal. Loving mothers don’t just kill themselves because its hard. Mothers live for others. They live for the joy of seeing their children smile. Mothers don’t care about money, they care about their children.

Outside of being raped or talked down to, I never felt as though I was oppressed or marginalized, at least not as a white woman, before becoming a mother. Before motherhood, I went to college during the day, did waitressing at night and I lived alone. Sure being raped and stalked knocked me down, took away my confidence and independence but I could get back up again and I did. Then I became a mom, and the very person who comforted me and made me feel safe in the days that I was being stalked began breaking things in our home and scaring me. So I had to leave, I know the stories of the women who stay and that wasn’t going to be mine. Instead, my story is the one where I became a single mom and that seemed okay at first. Until 4 years and a bachelors degree later, I am still trying to be a present mother and working for low wages that are never enough to support me. I frantically look for as many opportunities to generate income and try tirelessly to figure out how I can convince other people I deserve higher pay. The truth is, I don’t know if I do, everyone has always seemed bewildered by this notion of mine, but I do know I need it to provide my daughter with her own room. Adequate mothers provide their children with their own rooms by working full time and part time jobs and also being home with their children, present and engaged. Most days I feel like I need a clone just to make up for the fact that I am parenting alone and then I realize I also need to be working all-of-the-time to keep up with the bills. Will the stress response I feel from this dilemma ever subside? Will I ever stop envying the childless working women, or the mothers who chose to establish their well paying careers before luckily squeezing having children into their very few remaining childbearing years? Half of the time society is right; I love being a mom and I live for my daughters smiles, the other half I long for the doctorate degree I will not be able to pursue anytime in the next 18 years and the forfeited work ethic I need to make a living wage, the wage I need to be a “good mom”.