HW 10: Social Problems of Parents

And each of us can practice right ourselves, treating each other without discrimination, respecting each other's dignity and rights.
-Carol Bellamy

Discrimination in traditions, policies, ideas, practices, and laws exist in many countries and institutions in every part of the world. It is also present now in relationships between non-traditional families like single parents. Single parents especially the mothers are commonly discriminated by there inability of rearing the child and carry the consequences because they are women.

As what I have read an article entitled Discrimination and prejudice against single parents, it stated there that male single parents are not really considered to be part of a model of single parenthood. Even male single parents do not compose of majority, they do not feel that they are being discriminated unlike there female counterparts. Sometimes, they are seen as heroes because they were lone in rearing the child.

It is also stated there that "people who make discriminatory statements about race, religion, sexual orientation, and indeed single parents, tend to be uneducated, prejudiced, and unable to cope with the notion that anyone who has different life to their own or what they see as a 'traditional household' of a male and a female with children."

Moreover, some of the female single parents are also discriminated in the work force. For example, if a woman is undergoing a job interview and she was asked to tell something about herself, and she said that she  is only with her child without the husband figure, the interviewer might doubt in accepting her in the company because the have this misconception that she has the inability of balancing the work in the workplace. In some cases, if she fortunately passed the interview, the probability of being promoted throughout the stay in the company and more responsibility in the workplace is greater compared to those who are single(without children) and married couples.It seems that a common stereotype for a single parent is someone who would not be interested or able to make a move because they have children.

In our generation today, sexism doesn't really matter because today what men do can also be done by women like being a conductor and a driver in a bus, a welder, etc. Same goes with the female single mothers. They can surely do this for the sake of their child. At first, they might feel the struggles of being alone in raising their child, but as time passes by I am pretty sure that they can do it. Those discriminatory statements will not help them to overcome this situation, but can worsen it. Let us just respect there rights and dignity as a person.