Eating the Wedding Gifts: Lean Years After Marriage Break-up

Janet Arnett is the former campus manager of adult education at Ontario’s Georgian College. She is the author of Antiques and Collectibles: Starting Small, The Grange at Knock, and 673 Ways to Save Money.

Parents, teachers, social workers, Big Sisters volunteers, and anyone
else who comes into contact with female secondary-school students need
to read this book.

Murphy uses lots of stats and a bit of Canadian social history to
establish her theory that a lack of post-secondary education is the key
contributor to the poverty of female single parents. Economic and social
factors doom women whose education is high school or less to low-paying,
dead-end jobs. When marriages fail, these women lack the resources to
establish financial independence. The demands of caring for children
triggers a lifestyle that is no stranger to social assistance, food
banks, inadequate housing, depression, part-time work while receiving
welfare, low self-esteem, and the double stigma of being a single parent
and a welfare recipient.

Other factors that contribute to female single-parent poverty are
reviewed. These include marrying young, having a child with an illness
or special needs, abusive relationships, injury, and too little support
and advice at critical decision-making points.

Murphy draws on interviews with 12 low-education single parents to
underline the struggles they deal with every day and the huge obstacles
they face alone, without the resources needed to adequately care for
themselves and their children. She then shares excerpts from interviews
with seven female single parents who have a post-secondary education.
These interviews make it clear that a higher education gives new
personal strengths and self-esteem, plus the ability to cope better
financially with their situation. While affordable housing, enforcement
of child support orders, higher minimum-wage rates, more joint-custody
divorce rulings, and a change in society’s perception of a “welfare
culture” would help, Murphy builds her case that the only pragmatic
solution is higher education. It is the only factor that spells the
difference for a single woman, between raising her children with
sufficient financial resources and raising them in poverty. This will
only be achieved with more mentors and role models, parents, and
educators encouraging girls, at the critical decision-making points in
their school life, to think ahead and plan to be able to look after
themselves throughout their life.

This is an in-depth look at one aspect of the “feminization of
poverty” in Canada: a very readable social study with a call to action
easily answered by ordinary people without the need to wait for
government intervention.