Do kids need a dad? Ask single moms.

It's Been a Minute

NPR

News, Religion & Spirituality, Spirituality, Society & Culture, News Commentary

4.6 • 8.8K Ratings

🗓️ 8 December 2025

⏱️ 23 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

More women than ever are choosing to raise their children by their self. Is it time to hit reset on what we mean by "family" in America?

America has some deeply held prejudices toward single moms, but some studies show that 40% of babies in the U.S. are born to unmarried women. In this episode Brittany looks into the joy and challenges these women face - from freedom and agency to affordability and loneliness.

Brittany is joined by Pallavi Gogoi, NPR's Chief Business Editor, and Danielle Elliot, writer and a single mother. You can read Pallavi's reporting here.

(0:00) Hitting reset on the definition of "family" and "single mom"
(5:42) The power & agency of being a single mom
(7:30) Does your child need a present father?
(15:11) The struggles of being a single parent
(18:29) Tips for raising a kid by yourself

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Transcript

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0:00.0	This message comes from the podcast Vibe Check.
0:03.0	Join Saeed Jones and Zach Stafford as they make sense of what's going on in news and culture.
0:08.6	Your favorite group chat come to life.
0:11.0	Listen wherever you get your podcasts.
0:14.3	I think increasingly the picture of families in America is completely shifting,
0:20.8	and it really is time to hit reset
0:23.1	on the narrative of single motherhood, because it is shifting in a way that is pretty dramatic.
0:30.3	It's not the old narrative anymore.
0:33.8	Growing up, I knew a lot of single moms.
0:37.3	Play aunties, church family, my friend's moms, you get it.
0:41.3	They were great parents, responsible and engaged and honestly a lot of fun.
0:46.8	But even then, I knew that in our society, single moms had a bad rap.
0:52.2	From reading the Scarlet letter in high school.
0:54.6	Hester Prynne, so that all men may know you are guilty of the sin of adultery.
1:00.5	Where the protagonist, Hester Prynne, who has a child out of wedlock, has to wear a mark of shame.
1:07.1	The scarlet letter A.
1:10.2	To learning about a twisted form of 80's royalty, the welfare queen.
1:15.3	She has used 127 names so far, posed as a mother of 14 children at one time, seven at another.
1:22.9	This was a stereotype of black single mothers who were said to be scamming the government by abusing the
1:27.8	welfare system. No one doubts that welfare programs were designed with the best of intentions,
1:33.2	but neither can anyone doubt that they failed. And then there was MTV's contribution to the
1:39.6	single mom discourse. Their hit reality TV shows 16 and pregnant and teen mom.
	...

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