Rosanna Eang’s article “Leading By Example” describes the bleak reality that many Immigrant families experience with their struggles with poverty in the US. Reading her article, I was immediately able to sympathize with many of her childhood and cultural experiences growing up, and relate to the sacrifices her mother made to support her family. Like Rosanna’s mother, my mother emigrated from the Philippines to the United States with no social capital and very little money, navigating her way through foreign cultural waters with undeterred resiliency and determination.
Reading Rosanna’s story made me more appreciative and cognizant of the numerous sacrifices my Mother made in order to ensure a brighter future for me and my brother. One of those sacrifices is her professional ambitions and career goals, a sacrifice that resonates with many women’s experiences balancing family responsibilities and career aspirations. Like Eang’s mother, my mother has maintained traditional cultural expectations of fulfilling household duties, whilst simultaneously working outside the home to help assist financially along with my father. However, taking care of household responsibilities and raising my brother and I limited her opportunity to pursue her own goals, sacrificing her aspirations for her children’s education. This is a serious repercussion of our gendered division of labor, imposing a double burden of cultural expectations and financial responsibility on mothers. For single mother families, the implications are far more disparaging.
Gwendolyn Mink’s article explores the political dimensions of welfare and the experiences of single mothers. She examines the passing of the Personal Responsibility Act and the severe implications it bears on women’s rights; the new welfare law distinguishes poor single mothers as a separate class, subject to a separate system of law by requiring them to work outside the home. The law not only made it harder for single parent mothers to provide for their children, it diminished the value and integrity of their work and further marginalized their status in society. Mink defends welfare as an affirmative right of poor single mothers, and claims that welfare (income support for caregivers) is a condition of women’s equality. Her re-conceptualization of welfare as income “owed” to a person who works inside the home caring for children illuminates the lack of resources, attention and respect our society gives to single mother households. The promise of the future lies within the youth of the present; making sure our society provides enough resources, support, and social services for single mothers to thrive is a necessary in order to ensure that future is bright.
Reading this post, I couldn't help but focus on the sacrifices my own mother has made for me. My mother sacrificed her work life and constant vacations to be with me. As young child I had severe seperation anxiety, which would constantly hold my mother back from doing things she enjoyed and even taking long vacations with my father. I can remember countless times I called my mother on vacations sobbing into the phone missing her. Only now as a mature 20 year old can I look back and realize the tool it must have taken on my mother, but never once did she complain or fail to help me through it. Rosanna's story shows how tough being a mother is, but also the extreme love and dedication mother's have for their children.
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