Mother Nature: A History of Mothers, Infants, and Natural Selection

Section two, Law and Single Parents considers the legal framework that hinders single parents, notably mothers, from overcoming obstacles that negatively impact on their lives and opportunities for their children. Here, Dowd presents a balanced view of the strengths of the single parent family and the unique resources that single parents can offer to all parents. The laws ofthe United States (and through inference, other industrialized Western countries) foster the negative stigmatization of all single parent families. Dowd, however, recognizes that single parents can be positive role models for children and society. Utilizing the historical, cultural, and situational realities of black single mothers, she describes alternative family structures, not as deviant but as valuable. In the section on Law Reform, Dowd offers alternative policies for single-parent families and legal strategies to challenge the limitations imposed on single-parent families. Here she writes, Although we have shified away from this [traditional] model, we have not yet articulated an alternative model. Our notions of equality no longer allow for presumed gender-based assignment of family roles, nor for the limitation of workplace opportunities. As a family therapist and researcher who examines parental roles, I was hopeful but wary when reading this book. Dowd writes, however, with remarkable precision as she details the realities of the single parent experience. This she does without glamorizing, demonizing, martyring, or vilifying single parents or traditional families. She recognizes that the traditional two-parent family, like society, has changed it is time we looked at our structures, laws, and attitudes that, through omission or commission, have ignored these changes. In Defense of Single-Parent Families is a thoroughly researched work that defends single-parent families. I strongly recommend it.