Mommy is Single; Blame Her

I quickly think back to Murphy Brown being criticized by Vice President Dan Quayle when he said that it was wrong to have a television character portrayed as a single mother. Did everyone forget about Kate and Ally? Two strong willed women raising their children together in the same house? Just because there were two parents doesn’t mean that they weren’t single.

My generation grew up with the great emergence of the single parent. It came with divorce and the casual social affair that we still call marriage. In my home state of Wisconsin last week, State Senator Glen Grothman introduced State Senate Bill 507. This bill would put direct blame of child abuse on being the cause from single parents. This is all placed to amend the current law that allows many grants to be provided by the Child Abuse and Neglect Prevention Board (CANPB). Grothman, according to the Huffington Post, has already been displayed as an opponent of the social welfare establishment that he believes encourages women to have children out of wedlock. With this bill, he would be able to redirect the money that CANPB grants social welfare programs and use it to assist in placing abuse and neglect charges on the single parents. This is how the first part of the bill reads:

Section 1. 48.982 (2) (g) 2. of the statutes is amended to read:
SB507,2,648.982 (2) (g) 2. Promote statewide educational and public awareness campaigns and materials for the purpose of developing public awareness of the problems of child abuse and neglect. In promoting those campaigns and materials, the board shall emphasize nonmarital parenthood as a contributing factor to child abuse and neglect.

When read in entirety, which is quick on how short it is, you see that there are no further actions that would be taken on the confronted single parents once they have been singled out. With this open ending, and it being without precedent, the outcome would be in the hands of the court. That is not something I cannot say the outcome because I neither know it nor want to imagine it: Especially with so many people who we see are prime example citizens raised by only one parent.

I do know though that as contraception is the main conversation that is on the campaign trail of our republican candidates, as this new bill in Wisconsin gets more attention, it will begin to come up in the larger view of those candidates and both sides of the media. I hope though, as popularity with this subject grows, that some actual statistics will be introduced. It would be great to see the actual numbers to reported abuse and neglect cases and in the cases of single parents, what was that cause? What position were these parents in that they “turned a blind eye” to their child being abused or neglected?

Over all, I get that this bill is yet another attack on women, like the contraception and ultrasound bills happening in New Jersey, Pennsylvania and a number of other states. As stated in the article from Shine Yahoo!, this bill helps to underscore "the role of fathers in the primary prevention of child abuse and neglect." A direct hit on single mothers! Where is Murphy Brown when we need her? Unfortunately on the occasional Nick at Night list of late night reruns. My belief is that we will get pass this absent mindedness and soon, very soon, begin to start looking at a root cause analysis of all of these social issues. I’m pretty sure that they are more related than anyone could have thought.