Not the Whole Story: Challenging the Single Mother Narrative

NOT THE WHOLE STORY: CHALLENGING THE SINGLE MOTHER NARRATIVE Lea Caragata and Judit Alcade, Eds. Waterloo, on: Wilfrid Laurier Press, 2014 [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Not the Whole Story: Challenging the Single Mother Narrative offers its readers an intensive exploration into the gendered discrimination that affects the lives of lone mothers every day. As a single parent, I resonate with the notion of developing more vocabulary with which to articulate the intersecting factors including race, poverty, age, and ability, that make single mothers' lives so difficult. Started as a longitudinal social research project titled, Mothers: Building Social Inclusion by the book's editors, Lea Caragata and Judit Alcade, Not the Whole Story gives voice to the realities of single mothers whose struggles with education, alcoholism, sexual and domestic violences, and the social assistance system demand our attention. In spite of the women's horrific experiences that this book describes, it offers insight to multiple readers, from academics and policymakers, to students and general public through the hope and growth inherent in its pages. Not the Whole Story opens with a compelling introduction that explains the Lone Mothers project from which the 16 stories in the book developed. With the intent to bring critical examination to the subject position of single mothers in Canada, this five-year sSHRC-funded project, began in 2004 as a collective project with single mothers to challenge public discourse about them. The strongest part of the book is this introduction, which offers a social policy and historical context for the stories (Evans 2007; Little, 1998; Vosko 2002). The introduction also briefly explains the ways in which the methodology informs the structure of the book, and the issues that shape poverty, single motherhood, and social status. The evolution of the single mothers telling their stories is fascinatingly informed by Paulo Friere's Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1970). Concomitant with feminist participatory action research, the Lone Mothers Project gives voice to marginalized women who, through a guided group process, gain insights into their own situations and thus free themselves of self-blame discourse and mobilize for positive social change. Each of the women who participated in the Lone Mothers project had the opportunity to tell their personal stories of sole motherhood. It comes as no surprise that systemic and domestic abuse, inequalities in employability and earnings, the virtually non-existent Canadian child care policy, immigration status, racism, and gender inequality all colour the ways in which sole mothers in Canada must navigate their experiences. …

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