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Being a single mom myself, here's why I think being a single mom makes you so strong - nothing like real life experience as a teacher!
Being a single mom myself, here’s why I think being a single mom makes you so strong – nothing like real life experience as a teacher!
Single mums are ‘easy’. Single mums have no morals. The children of single mothers will become failures.
As single mothers, these are some of the things that we hear every single day. It’s a damaging rhetoric that throws our entire moral compass into question. Our sex lives are under assumption, our parenting skills are dismissed as second rate. It’s no wonder that single mothers are the social demographic with one of the lowest levels of self-esteem in the world. Google Searches such as ‘Can a Single Mum find love again?’, ‘I feel so lonely as a single mother.’ are evidence of a global pandemic, a midnight worry that blossoms into a self-fulfilling prophecy.
When we become less than adequate in our own eyes, we start to mirror the judgement of everyone around us.
It’s the look on the faces of men, older women, the other parents at the school. They question: ‘How did she end up alone?’, they reason that somehow it must have been our fault. That the abuses of men, the death of a father come secondary to our own demoralising behaviour.
According to the Kids Count Data Centre, 16% of families in Asia are single parent families. Compared with almost 30% in the USA. This is set to rise in the next decade, as the nuclear family is on the decline. Women are now seeking parental autonomy with the uprising of feminism and a lower tolerance for domestic violence. Women are being educated and are seeking degrees; we no longer need a man to survive the economy.
The ideal mother is portrayed as the homemaker, the one who greets her husband as he comes in from work; briefcase in hand. The mere suggestion that a woman can do both is abhorrent in many Indian social circles. To shun the matriarchal duty for a more ambidextrous occupation-as the mother AND the earner, seems to big a task. One that the media loves to tear apart with it’s well sharpened claws.
It’s true; single mothers have less access to medical care, are more likely to live in poverty and are assumed to have less religious values than their married counterparts. However, this must not deter us from changing the impression of the judging masses. We must strive to break free of the chains of poverty, become entrepreneurs and examples for the next generation. Even if that means starting a YouTube channel for beauty tips, cooking or seeking education abroad.
Let’s remind ourselves of why we are strong and take the next day by the horns.
Image source: a still from the movie Nil Battey Sannata
Single Mother, Student, Blogger, Writer read more...
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UP Boards Topper Prachi Nigam was trolled on social media for her facial hair; our obsession with appearance is harsh on young minds.
Prachi Nigam’s photo has been doing the rounds on social media for the right reasons. Well, scratch that- I wish the above statement were true. This 15-year-old girl should ideally be revelling in her spectacular achievement of scoring a whopping 98.05% and topping her tenth-grade boards. But oddly enough, along with her marks, it’s something else that garners more attention – her facial hair.
While the trolls are driving themselves giddy by mocking this girl who hasn’t even completed her school yet, the ones who are taking her side are going one step ahead – they are sharing her photoshopped pictures, sans the facial hair, looking nothing less than a celebrity with captions saying – “Prachi Nigam, ten years later”.
Doctors have already diagnosed her with PCOD in their comments, based on photographic evidence. While we have names for people shamed for their weight – body shaming, for their skin colour- racism, for their age- age shaming, for being a female- sexism, this category of shaming where one faces criticism for their appearance has no name. With that, it also has zero shame attached to it.
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