Part II: On Poverty
When Black mothers face the decision between staying with a violent partner or embarking into single motherhood, they are choosing between two grim realities: violence or poverty. Read Part I: On Violence here.
Despite there being 4.15 million Black single mothers in the USA, there is a stark lack of data to fully capture the Black single mother experience—particularly, how our plight connects to both chattel slavery and capitalism’s engineering.
This absence is intentional, as we will explore later.
To paint the picture for ourselves, we must overlay the general data about single mothers with the specific realities faced by Black women: wage disparities, poverty rates, and the foundational violences of gender-based racial discrimination, environmental racism, and the weaponization of the ideas and beliefs that underpin each of these violences.
Consider this: in 2021 the annual median income for all single mothers was $51,186 to the married woman’s $106,921. In 2024, 20.8% of all single mothers were unemployed for an entire year, 24.3% of all single mothers experienced food insecurity, 45.54% of all single mothers received food stamps, and 9.2% of all single mothers had no health insurance. Now add the compounding factors of being Black, unmarried, and a woman.
As recent as July 2024, 37.4% of Black single mothers are living in what will most likely be multigenerational poverty. Remember: poverty and Blackness are a distinctly preyed-upon set of realities that feed into multiple systems in our society. Together, they form a nefarious technology.
Given the literal cost of leaving a violent abuser, it is no surprise that Black single mothers are a demographic most susceptible to housing insecurity, eviction, and homelessness. As it is, Black women already deal with normalized wage discrimination, making $.48-$.62 to the white male dollar, tilting the scales out of her favor when it comes to creating a stable household for herself and her children. While many tend to fault one fleeing IPV for staying “so long,” data shows that abusers cost ALL victims just over $100k over the course of their lifetimes in both healthcare bills and stolen time (in contrast, male survivors lose $24,414). FreeFrom reminds us to consider IPV as an asset/wealth-building issue and not just a “domestic violence” issue.
According to their 2021 study, Making Safety Affordable, 60% of all abuse survivors lose their jobs because of abuse (being prevented from going to work by an abusive partner or having an untenable, further commute due to where “safe” was). Frustratingly, public subsidy/funding programs aimed to “help” IPV survivors employ bureaucracy, restrictive measures, and nuanced caveats, which are equally abusive on Black single mothers seeking to have basic living needs met as they rebuild their lives.
Remember: poverty and Blackness are a distinctly preyed-upon set of realities that feed into multiple systems in our society. Together, they form a nefarious technology.
Unsurprisingly, Black single mothers were the highest to report being behind on their rent and consequently face higher evictions than any other demographic. In the city of Milwaukee, for example, ⅓ of Black single moms had cases in the city’s eviction courts (Black women are only 9.6% of the city’s population). As many of us know (perhaps by experience?), evictions incite cascading financial tumults which create nearly-inescapable cycles of poverty. These cycles feed into capillaries of violence such as proximity to criminality, negative health outcomes and inability to qualify for better housing in closer proximity to better lifestyle options for their children, further exacerbated by housing discrimination.
Like The Sun on My Skin by Kesha Bruce
The ripple effects of poverty are further amplified by the absence of a supportive community. Black single mothers often face limited access to childcare and healthy food, financial instability that curtails opportunities for their children (like extracurricular activities or youth-friendly employment), and less time to pursue education that could lead to better opportunities. Toxic workplaces add yet another layer of hardship, with 36% of Black women reporting they’ve left jobs due to workplace toxicity. Beyond these quantifiable struggles are qualitative factors like persistent mental and physical fatigue from shouldering responsibilities meant to be shared by at least two parents.
With skin that denies her privilege, a Black single mother’s whole self and whole world is placed at risk when, by fleeing violence, her subsequent reality is then rebuilding her life from scratch while impoverished.
