Karen Kiernan, the director of One Family, a single parent support group, had a letter in 
yesterday’s Irish Times, praising an article in that paper on the “love and determination shown by President Obama’s single mother”.
She wrote: “It is so rare to read positive stories about the achievements of single parents and the success of their children, although there are many stories to be told.” Ms Kiernan said that the work of single parents needs to be “celebrated and supported”.
Undoubtedly, there are many such inspirational stories of lone parenthood, and many single parents do a fantastic job. No serious person doubts this or claims otherwise.
But ironically Kiernan’s own letter implicitly concedes that in general it’s best for a child to be raised by both of its parents because she admits that single parents “often do have to work twice as hard as other parents”.
She mentions US cultural ambassador, Dr Brenda Flanagan, who spoke to One Family recently. Dr Flanagan described how, as a single parent, she indeed had to work twice as hard as other parents. This included getting up “at 4am every day” and focusing “15 years of her life on her children and her education”.
Barack Obama’s mother also used to get him out of bed at 4am to do extra school-work because at one point in his early life he was falling behind in school.
But having “to work twice as hard as other parents” is, well, hard, and it would be less hard and less draining if the task of raising children was shared by both parents together. It hardly needs to be added that marriage remains the vehicle that most reliably commits a man and a woman to one another and to the welfare of their children.
Given that he is held up as an example of a successful product of single motherhood, it is also ironic President Obama himself seems to agree that it’s generally best if fathers and mothers raise their children together.
As a candidate in 2008, then Senator Obama said that the high number of African-American children being raised by single parents was harming that community.
Speaking on Father’s Day, 2008, he said: “But if we are honest with ourselves, we’ll admit that what too many fathers also are is missing – missing from too many lives and too many homes. They have abandoned their responsibilities, acting like boys instead of men. And the foundations of our families are weaker because of it.”
He added: “We know the statistics – that children who grow up without a father are five times more likely to live in poverty and commit crime; nine times more likely to drop out of schools and twenty times more likely to end up in prison.
“They are more likely to have behavioral problems, or run away from home, or become teenage parents themselves. And the foundations of our community are weaker because of it.”
He acknowledged just how tough a job being a single mother is. Society needed “to help all the mothers out there who are raising these kids by themselves; the mothers who drop them off at school, go to work, pick up them up in the afternoon, work another shift, get dinner, make lunches, pay the bills, fix the house, and all the other things it takes both parents to do,” he said.
“So many of these women are doing a heroic job, but they need support. They need another parent. Their children need another parent. That’s what keeps their foundation strong. It’s what keeps the foundation of our country strong”.
If President Obama can acknowledge that children who are raised by both of their parents rather than one have a better chance in life, why can’t we?