How did my mother's own experiences help to shape me as a mother? What is the influence that my mother’s single motherhood had on me, and how does it connect to and impact my own parenting journey?
Influence
demonstrates influences from one single mother to her daughter, allowing for an understanding of how these influences have affected how I raise my own child and have chosen to live my own life.
My mother was a great role model in how to be a leader in general and how to blur gender lines and how to be a good parent and a good person
woodwork, construction, knitting,
Identity
Different races, education, socioeconomic backgrounds
My own and my mother’s identity as a single/lone mother was shaped in some form by our surrounding culture at the time
She had vastly different experiences than me, but she also had a different cultural narrative in which to process such experiences and articulate responses the way I do today
I have been able to process my experiences through my life choices. My decision to move abroad and travel. To actively live in a way that ensured that I could not be pressed into a stereotypical single parent mold.
I have been able to process my experiences of stereotyping and prejudice through my education. I have encountered those who unapologetically believe that my family structure is detrimental to my child. I have heard this stated to me by another who, like me, was raised by a single mother, but unlike me, grew up feeling that life was lacking due to the lack of a father in the house. What was it that my mother did to ensure that I did not feel this lack? Academia around absence****
I have been able to process my experiences through my writing, both personal writing as well as for publications
How was my mom able to process her experiences of discrimination? How was she able to navigate them? What tools did she have to do so? Did she speak back?
Media
2000's
Gilmore Girls, The Switch, the Backup Plan
1990's
Murphy Brown
My relationship with my mother
It has shifted and altered over time, with noticeable and occasionally startling parallels to my relationship with my own son.
Parallels in single motherhood: my mom's life, my life
I did not become a single mother because my mother was one; however I do wonder at my ability to steadfastly and contentedly remain so.
Did we both experience prejudice and discrimination?
While I did become a single parent, it had more to do with my child's biological father than my mom's own single parenthood *cite Great Walls.
