Myth Busting

Single mothers who have never been married are just as happy as married women with children according to a study published in January by Dr. John Cairney of the CAMH (Centre for Addiction and Mental Health) in Toronto. The study compared never-married single mothers, divorced single mothers and married mothers. Mothers who have experienced divorce were less happy than the other two groups, the study found.

"Studies tend to homogenize single parents," Cairney said in a phone interview from Toronto. "We want to differentiate [between single mothers] based on marital history. As amazing as that sounds that's a fairly new idea in the study of single parents," he added.

The fact that never-married mothers experience the same levels of happiness as married mothers "busts the myth of the issues surrounding teen moms" and "speaks to issues of considering the different ways that women arrive into that social status," he said. Some of this lumping together adds to a stigmatized picture of single mothers, he pointed out. He is now writing a book intended to explore the diversity issue among single mothers "with a mind to challenging this stigma." Although this particular study was not designed to look at marital transitions "typically the problems [for divorced women] are adjustment issues," he said.

Both Dr. Cairney and University of Western Ontario sociologist Dr. William Avison agree on the value of doing a study that looks at the effects of stigmatization on the well being of Canadian single mothers. "It has not been done but it would be a good thing to do," said Cairney. Indeed, he said, "there is stuff that gets lost," for instance, "when you talk in terms of absolutes, there are far more married women who are depressed than single mothers. If you want to look at the burden of mental health problems, they are with married spouses," he added.

Dr. Cairney's study is based on American data which, according to Avison, is translatable to Canada when looking at the stress levels of single mothers, but is not applicable to the analysis of the well-being of their children.

Woman looking in mirror image courtesy Library of Congress