In a self-described “first step” toward leveling the playing field for single mothers, university researchers released a study debunking the social stigmas surrounding being a single mom.

Despite high rates of divorce and an increase in non-marital childbearing, the study is the first of its kind to chalk up the difference in child care to a lack of available resources rather than personal deficiencies and to also provide a detailed look at the amount of time and level of interaction single mothers are able to devote to their children.

By using American Time Use Survey data – an annual federal survey that asks participants to fill out a detailed account of how they spend 24 hours – and surveying more than 1,800 single mothers and more than 4,300 married mothers with young children, researchers derived that regardless of marital status, there is not a big difference in the number of hours mothers spend caring for their children. These findings, they said, were surprising.

“We thought they would be really busy, but it turned out that they still spent up to 90 percent of the time with their children that married women do,” principal researcher and sociology doctoral student Sarah Kendig said. “That’s a lot of time.”

Despite the numerous challenges single mothers face, those single mothers surveyed, on average, spent only three to five fewer hours per week on child care than married mothers. The differences are statistically significant, researchers said, but can be explained almost entirely by a gap in available resources.

“Single moms have more constraints,” department chair and co-author Suzanne Bianchi said. “We start under the assumption that mothers want to do well by their children, but these mothers – particularly the never-married mothers – have very low percentages that have much education beyond high school … that implies what kind of jobs they can get and how many hours they would have to work to support a family.”

When compared to married mothers of the same socio-economic demographic, however, the differences in the amount of time devoted to child care disappeared, researchers said.

“We were surprised that the differences, given how different [single mothers’] situations are from married mothers’ – even though single moms spend a little less time with their kids – the differences aren’t huge,” Bianchi said. “We were able to show that if were to compare single moms to married moms who were similar in terms of education and work hours, they turn out to be very similar.”

Students from single-mother households said this study is common sense and should not be necessary to prove to the world that single parents are competent parents, too.”I was always around my mother when I was little,” said sophomore sociology and family science major Khrysta Evans, who was raised by her single mom. “I think, a lot of times, single parents are kind of better than married parents, because they don’t have anyone else to depend on, so they know that they have to do everything if it’s going to get done at all, whereas a married parent, to some extent, can push [responsibilities] off on their husband or wife. My mom was from a single-parent household, too, and she made sure she was there for me.”

But, researchers say single mothers typically get a bad reputation and those behind the study hope it will be seen as a step toward improving the image of single mothers.

“There’s this stereotype that revolves around single mothers,” Kendig said. “And it’s always bothered me how they get this bad rap. They’re not worse mothers. They do spend less time with their children, but it’s not because they care less. We can explain all the difference in the time by education, employment and opportunity, and that means that people don’t have to believe all these other reasons like how much they care about their children to explain anything. We need to break down these stereotypes.”

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