Single motherhood.



Since coming to college, I have learned that my experiences growing up were far from the norm. My of my friends grew up inside a nuclear family with a puppy to match, but that was not the case for me. To summarize my childhood existence, I attended school at a private, Catholic elementary school which taught me all about the love and support one receives from marriage. They also taught me that divorce was bad. My demystification, if you will, of my education and the culture around me all started in second grade when my parents got divorced.

From then on, my life consisted of carting around my life twice a week to spend shared custody with my parents. I love my dad and spent a significant amount of my childhood with him, but for the purposes of this blog I want to focus on my mom. Jane Juffer, author of Single Mother: The Emergence of the Domestic Individual writes much of her book on the single mother and how they are represented in society. While reading this, I found myself vigorously shaking my head yes throughout most of Chapters 1 and 2 where Juffer further explains the network between mother and child. 

My mom, much like Juffer, held a full time job while I was growing up. I spent hours in daycare after school when my mother was busy being a director of a mental health services center. While in 4th-6th grade, I didn't see my mother on Mondays and Wednesdays, she was busy getting her masters degree in Mental Health Administration. Juffer states that "single mothers are household managers as well as business entrepreneurs, showing the intersections rather than the exclusion of those realms".  My mom was busy raising three children, heading a household, working full time, and getting educated all at the same time, trying to live her own life. All the while, she was being misrepresented in our society. 

Fortunately, many people understand how good of a mother and woman she is, and many of her friends go out of their way to tell me how lucky I am to have her as a mom, but she still struggled while raising us because her work did not have child care assistance and she had to make ends meet with only one salary. Not to mention, me and my sisters were only in her custody a little over half the time, so when we were with her, she had to balance work, school, and the desire to spend all her time with her children. 


Juffer states that single mothers constantly question their parenting, asking themselves "how much of my child's identity is a product of these transitions, this living arrangement?" I think I have come a long way from believing what my religion teacher was preaching to me in elementary school that the only way to live a happy life is in a marriage. My mom definitely struggled to make her way, and me as her child was definitely affected by it, but I think seeing her constantly overcoming struggles to help her children is inspiring. I think I have become a hard worker because of watching her. I have also learned never to complain about work load in front of her. 


My mother, like Jane Juffer millions of other single mothers all over the world are continuing to use agency to change the misrepresentation of the phrase 'single mother'. This lifestyle might not have been what my mother initially thought she was getting herself into, but I'll be the first to say she has done a damn good job at it.

 

While researching for a paper on the topic of African American Dance in the Harlem Renaissance I stumbled across a quote that made me think about our Literary Theory and Criticism class. In the book entitled simply Dancing the author Barbara Glass states that "Africa is a large and complex continent more than three times the size of the United States. Today, there are nearly a thousand African cultural groups. Thus, there is no monolithic African language, perspective, or way of life. Instead, there is enormous variety in speech, art, customs, and beliefs from the Mediterranean to the Cape of Good Hope, and from Senegal to Somalia". This quote succinctly states what Binyavanga Wainaina writes about in his article "How to Write About Africa". 

Last summer, as previously stated, I traveled to Tanzania, Africa for a month long trip. I was emotionally struck when reading Wainaina's sarcastic article. He states that one needs to:

 "treat Africa as if it were one country. It is hot and dusty with rolling grasslands and huge herds of animals and tall, thin people who are starving. Or it is hot and steamy with very short people who eat primates. Don’t get bogged down with precise descriptions. Africa is big: fifty-four countries, 900 million people who are too busy starving and dying and warring and emigrating to read your book. The continent is full of deserts, jungles, highlands, savannahs and many other things, but your reader doesn’t care about all that, so keep your descriptions romantic and evocative and unparticular."

900 million people. 54 countries. 

These numbers are what people don't understand. When explaining my trip to family and friends I heard so many questions asking if I stayed in a hut, worked with dying people suffering from AIDS or malnourishment, or the worst one-if I contracted a disease just by being there. I will be the first to admit that my knowledge of Tanzania was very limited before I spent a month there. But, by experiencing only very little of one country in the massive continent my knowledge increased a little. My stereotypes were demolished and I get rather frustrated when I hear people grouping together so  many rich cultures, histories, and societies into one-one that most always has a negative connotation. 

Tanzania by itself is extremely diverse. The country encompasses so many different climates. There are big cities with shopping malls, restaurants, hotels, cars, and thousands of people. There are small villages that are run by Catholic monasteries. There are islands off the coast of the Indian Ocean that are 95% Muslim. There are sick people. There are healthy people. There are rich people. There are poor people. 

It is difficult to explain that Tanzania is just like anywhere else in the world, because it is in the continent of Africa. We need to start to get rid of the stereotype by not having Africa be romanticized into some mystical place or described as a dark continent with primitive inhabitants. The continent of Africa
 is fruitful, the countries having citizens with intellect. Not every child there is starving. Not every country is in a civil war. Wainaina's article sheds light on the ignorance of the continent, and I hope people who read it take it to heart.