Stigma and resistance: The social experience of choosing sole motherhood in Canada 1965–2010

Women's Studies International Forum 51 (2015) 42–55

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Stigma and resistance: The social experience of choosing sole motherhood in Canada 1965–2010 Wanda A. Wiegers a,⁎, Dorothy E. Chunn b a b

College of Law, University of Saskatchewan, 15 Campus Drive, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan S7N 5A6, Canada Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Simon Fraser University, 8888 University Drive, Burnaby, British Columbia V5A 1S6, Canada

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Available online 26 May 2015

s y n o p s i s This article draws on interviews with 29 Canadian women who decided between 1965 and 2010 to parent as sole mothers through adoption or childbirth. The authors examine participants' experience of stigma and social sanctions and explore how perceptions of stigma changed over time. Although the analysis largely reflects the experience of relatively well-educated women, most of whom were white and heterosexual, differences in experience did align with participants' age, race, sexual orientation, poverty or reliance on social assistance and also varied according to religion and local, professional or occupational culture. Different sources or kinds of perceived stigma included stigma based on sexual deviance, irresponsible choices and welfare dependency, a lack of parenting capacity and social exclusion due to father absence. Different forms of resistance to stigmatization are also examined including isolation, secrecy, passing, attempts to minimize assumed disadvantages and more direct and explicit contestation of assumptions about familial norms. © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Women who experienced pregnancies and births outside of marriage were, for much of the twentieth century, the subjects of overt social disgrace and opprobrium. In Canada, this “dominant rhetoric of shame” has been well documented in historical accounts of mothers who placed their children for adoption (Morton, 2004, 334; Strong-Boag, 2006; Chambers, 2007). Through the twentieth century up to the late 1980s, thousands of unwed, pregnant women were shamed, pressured or coerced into surrendering their children for adoption by married couples (Cahill, 2006; Petrie, 1998). However, attitudes towards sole motherhood have never been uniform and significant cultural shifts have taken place in Canada since at least the mid-70s. Moreover, although we now know a great deal about forced adoptions, far less is known about the experiences and the relational, cultural and ⁎ Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: [email protected] (W.A. Wiegers), [email protected] (D.E. Chunn).

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.wsif.2015.05.001 0277-5395/© 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

material context of unmarried mothers who chose to adopt or to bear and rear their children from conception or birth. In this paper, we examine the stories of 29 Canadian women who adopted or gave birth to children between 1965 and 2010 and reared them for at least one year while they were neither married nor cohabiting with a partner. While we recognize that the language of choice is contested and inflected in neo-liberal regimes with class and race privilege (Solinger, 2001), we describe these women as having ‘chosen’ sole motherhood because most saw themselves as having made a choice, often in the face of significant stigma and adverse economic conditions. Elsewhere we examine the process and the context within which our participants decided to become sole mothers, explore their options and the pressures and constraints that influenced outcomes, and assess the use and impact of choice rhetoric. Here, our focus is on the social consequences of their decision to become a sole mother. Specifically, we discuss whether and how participants experienced and responded to stigma and social sanctions, the forms these sanctions assumed

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and how assumptions about the women, or scripts applied to them to explain or evaluate their circumstances, changed over time. Our analytical framework draws primarily on two bodies of scholarship. The first is the sociological literature on stigma, deviance, and identity that has proliferated since Erving Goffman (1963) published his path-breaking exploration of stigma more than 50 years ago. The second is the voluminous and still expanding feminist, socio-legal literature on motherhood and family, published since the late 1970s (see e.g., Barrett & McIntosh, 1982; Boyd, Chunn, Kelly, & Wiegers, 2015; Chambers, 2007; Collins, 1990; Gavigan, 1988; Kelly, 2011; Luxton, 1997; Roberts, 1992; Silva & Smart, 1999; Smart, 1984, 1996). Viewed retrospectively, this work demonstrates the importance of context, structure and location in the analysis of social phenomena, particularly the social construction of the traditional family. Goffman (1963, 3–5) conceptualized stigma as the negative labeling of what is perceived to be “a deeply discrediting attribute” that distinguishes an individual or group from “normal.” He identified three main types of attributes attracting stigma — a physical deformity, an individual character flaw, and a “tribal stigma of race, nation and religion” (1963, 3–5). He went on to argue that since perception is inextricably linked to stigma, no attribute is inherently normal or deviant. As such, pre-marital sex that leads to unwed motherhood might be viewed as deviant behavior in one locale and not another at the same moment in time or at one point in time and not another in the same locale. Goffman's successors have tried both to refine and to broaden his conception of stigma and thereby address critiques that he (and other interactionists) focused too much on stigmatized individuals and too little on the relationship between stigma and power. Throughout this paper, we use the definition developed by Link and Phelan (2001, 367). It subsumes Goffman's but more explicitly sets out the relationships among elements of labeling, stereotyping, status loss, discrimination, and social exclusion that “cooccur in a power situation that allows the components of stigma to unfold” (Link & Phelan, 2001, 367). Stigma depends on the power of the non-stigmatized individual or group to create and impose norms on the stigmatized. Social, cultural, economic and political power is also needed to invest or link stereotypes with significant consequences in any realm (Link & Phelan, 2001, 367). Thus, the impact of stigma on those stigmatized is never homogeneous. For some, the impact can be severe and include psychological distress, lower self-esteem, self-doubt, status loss, and reduced opportunities for participation in social and economic life (Courtwright, 2009; Major & O'Brien, 2005). Others may attempt or are able to resist the attribution of or the expected impact of stigma in various ways (McCormack, 2004, 2005). Overall, research indicates that where stressors are viewed as harmful to one's social identity and beyond one's coping resources, achievements and health can be critically undermined (Courtwright, 2009; Major & O'Brien, 2005). Not all of the women in our sample identified stigma as a problem. Most, however, alluded to one or more of the various sources or forms of stigma as a part of their experience although the totality of each individual's experience differed.

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Since our experiences of sexuality, parentage and familial relations are shaped by multiple intersecting ideologies and structures, the personal histories of the mothers we interviewed were differentiated not only by gender, marital status and family form but also by age, race, indigeneity, class, sexual orientation, mental disability, poverty and reliance on social assistance. These other dimensions of inequality did interact with or affect perceptions of stigma and exclusion as sole mothers, although the breadth and depth of these differences are not fully revealed by our data given the relatively privileged demographic of our sample (with most participants identifying as highly educated, white and heterosexual). Additionally, the experience of participants varied to some degree according to religion, culture, locale, professional or occupational culture, and across different sites of social activity. Nonetheless, despite these differences, most were aware that their status or social identity as single mothers was devalued in some ways and that undesirable characteristics were often attributed to them and their families on that basis (Major & O'Brien, 2005, 399). Most participants also sought to resist stigma through various adaptive or accommodating strategies or through more direct challenges to a negative construct of unwed or sole motherhood and the assumptions or ideology upon which this is based. While resistance has been defined in various ways (e.g., Collins, 1990; Hollander & Einwohner, 2004; Luna, 2009; McCormack, 2004; Riessman, 2000; Scott, 1990), we use the term broadly in this context with reference both to the process or impact of stigmatization and to the hegemonic norms that define sole mother families as deviant. We identify a range of strategies that participants relied upon to cope with, avoid or minimize the impact of stigmatization itself and to protect their identities and that of their children. These coping strategies or mechanisms were not necessarily intended to displace or challenge negative assumptions based on restricted definitions of family and most were not recognized as such by targets (Luna, 2009, 450–53). However, we also find evidence of a critical consciousness of and a refusal to internalize a stigmatized identity, along with more overt efforts on the part of some participants to challenge or disrupt norms or assumptions underlying this identity (Showden, 2011). Participants appeared differentially able to resist stigmatization both across time and social location. Moreover, efforts to challenge directly the social construction of sole motherhood were complex given different norms within that negative construct, rendering some of the approaches participants adopted more resistant than others. This study is unique in that its focus is not on single mothers generally, or teen mothers or on single mothers who are financially reliant on social assistance, but rather on a select group of women who were single mothers from the outset, from conception or from the birth or adoption of their children. Further, it is unique in drawing on mothers' experiences across five decades, a period in which dramatic changes in sexual mores and familial practices occurred in Canada and in Western countries generally. These changes have included the decriminalization and increasing use of contraceptives, the proliferation of new reproductive technologies (NRTs), rising rates of common law cohabitation and divorce, and the abolition by 1990 of legal disabilities associated with the status of illegitimacy for children of unmarried mothers in Canada (although Nova Scotia still

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retains the concept of legitimacy and provides for the legitimation of children) (Boyd et al., 2015). In conjunction with the emergence of “new sexual scripts” (McLaren, 1999, 167), which appeared to elevate individual choice and freedom in sexual partnering, we have also witnessed the rise of neo-liberal governance which has placed greater emphasis on individual self-reliance and reduced social or community-based support systems (Harvey, 2007; Siltanen, 2002). While participants could exercise more control over reproduction in terms of its timing and relational context, some also experienced highly precarious economic circumstances and most still identified subtle negative stereotyping of their single parent families into the 2000s. In what follows we outline the design and parameters of our study. We then examine how participants characterized their social experience as sole mothers and subsequently identify the forms of resistance they developed to deal with stigma both for themselves and their children. Research methodology All of the 29 participants in our study had been sole mothers for at least one year after the birth or adoption of a child. Each was interviewed by one of the authors either in person or by phone over 2010–11 for 1 ½ to 3 hours. Recruitment of participants occurred through a variety of means including posted notices at physical locations, emails/letters to women's, seniors and family organizations, and notices sent out on list serves. Among the participants, three mothers gave birth in the 1960s, three in the 1970s, ten adopted or gave birth in the 1980s, six in the 90s and seven in the 2000s. None of the participants was affiliated with Single Mothers by Choice (SMC) or other groups for single mothers. Despite efforts to be inclusive with respect to age, race, sexual orientation and other dimensions of experience, most of our participants were white (non-racialized) and heterosexual. Three identified as lesbian and two as bi-sexual; two as Aboriginal and one as African Canadian, and two of the biological fathers were identified as Aboriginal and four others as racialized. While there were substantial differences in income across the sample, most participants were highly educated. Almost half had or were in the process of obtaining a Bachelor's degree, nine a Masters and five a PhD when they became pregnant or gave birth or adopted. At the time of the interview, most women were or had been employed in the social service sector. Some had secure employment and owned their own homes; however, a number relied on rental or coop housing and were dependent on contract work, part-time jobs or self-employment, with limited or no benefits. Given the relative educational privilege and homogeneous nature of our sample, further studies are clearly required to capture adequately the unique context and diverse circumstances affecting lesbian, racialized mothers and Aboriginal mothers in particular. Only two of our participants were minors who had not yet graduated from high school when they became pregnant. The age of first-time mothers (along with the number of planned pregnancies) increased over time with more mothers over 30 years of age from the late 1980s onward. Only three of the mothers had adopted children and all but eight parented only one child as a sole mother. Most had also remained lone

parents while raising their children with only ten cohabiting with a partner at some later point. Overall, the ratio of unplanned to planned motherhood in our sample was 2:1, with the majority of unplanned pregnancies resulting from contraceptive failure. Participants were asked in the course of semi-structured interviews to describe the circumstances in which they adopted or became pregnant, the nature of their experiences both before and after the adoption or birth of their child and their assessment, in retrospect, of their decision to raise a child as a sole mother. The interviews were audio-recorded and transcribed; identifying information was removed and names replaced with pseudonyms. Both authors reviewed each transcript to identify overarching themes and factors that were perceived to influence each participant's experience. Given the small sample size and non-random nature of recruitment, the results here cannot be generalized to the population of unmarried mothers as a whole. Although mothers identified whether in their opinion their children had also experienced stigma, children themselves were not interviewed due to their age in some cases and the need to follow separate research protocols. Future research should be undertaken to identify how children experienced the construction of their families over time. Stigmatization and dominant scripts Shame and sexual deviance or immorality Historically, sexual intercourse outside of marriage was harshly condemned by dominant Western institutions. Nonmarital sex was and remains sinful according to traditional Christian doctrine and in both common and civil law traditions, a child born out of wedlock was an illegitimate child, having no legal parents and no claim to an inheritance (Frost, 2003; Teichman, 1982). Although fathers were also subject to public shaming and labeling at different points in time, in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries illegitimacy was constructed largely as a “problem of female sexuality” (Carrabine, 2001, 298) and women were treated far more harshly than men. Thus, husbands in the nineteenth century could obtain a divorce on the grounds of adultery alone whereas wives had to establish adultery as well as incest, bigamy, rape, sodomy, bestiality, cruelty or desertion for a lengthy period (Backhouse, 1985–86). This double standard of sexual morality also generated a number of myths that blamed female victims for sexually assaultive behavior, rendering reports of and convictions for rape and criminal seduction highly unlikely (Clark & Lewis, 1977). Likewise, in cases of unwed pregnancy, “the girl or woman who “got herself pregnant” was the locus of blame, the target of treatment programs and punishments” (Solinger, 1992, 36) even when the pregnancy was the result of rape or incest. The shame experienced by unwed mothers in Canada has been well documented in historical studies of infanticide (Backhouse, 1984) and forced adoption, particularly between the 1940s and 1970s (Cahill, 2006; Petrie, 1998; Strong-Boag, 2006). Joan Sangster's (2001) study of laws regulating prostitution and promiscuity in Ontario between 1920 and 1960 shows not only that women's sexuality was “policed more stringently and punitively” (129) than that of

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heterosexual men but also that the women most subject to coercive state control were poor, working class, racialized and Aboriginal. Having given birth between 1965 and 2010, the participants in our study experienced sole motherhood at a time when the traditional sexual mores which generated stigma were increasingly challenged by the legalization and more widespread use of contraceptives, the women's movement and a more permissive sexual culture. However, although social tolerance of sexuality outside of marriage was noted in the United States in the early 1970s (e.g., Solinger, 2001), it was not evident in our interview sample until the 1980s. According to Karen, who gave birth in 1977: … the thing I remember the most about being pregnant … you know one of the things that sticks in your mind, it was you know when you're pregnant and you're going into shops and there would be women that looked at you and they were a little bit older than me. I can't even remember how much older they would have been but they'd look at my belly and then they'd immediately look at my hand. And I just always remember sort of that stigma … While stigma was readily identified by participants who gave birth in the 1960s and 1970s, it varied in intensity according to cultural and religious context and locale. For example, Mary Lynn lived for a short time in a Salvation Army maternity home in the late 1960s and recalled the punitive, shame-inducing attitude of staff towards the residents: “I hated it. [W]e were treated terribly … It was polishing the door knobs, it's all the stuff you read about when you read about homes for unwed mothers … Basically, we spent our day in this room in the basement and then we all had jobs that were useless.” As a young woman in Quebec in the late 1960s, when the province was dominated by Catholicism, Lisette's experience of unwed motherhood was also deeply wounding. In agreeing to an interview in order to “pour a little balm over that period of my life,” Lisette indicated that although her pregnancy arose from her first sexual experience, she “always felt I had to justify that I was not sleeping around, you know … I was so ashamed. It was a little bit like, “You dug your bed, sleep in it now”. I think that's what was going on. I had to bite my bullet. I could not reach out, I just felt shameful. …” Similarly, according to Karen's parents, “it all went back to you know you made your nest you're gonna live in it.” Primary, if not exclusive, responsibility for the sexual act and its consequences was seen to lie with mothers. Indeed, in only two cases of unintended pregnancies within our sample did the fathers even take precautions to prevent pregnancy. Just one father was held responsible or shamed by his family (who were fundamentalist Christians) or community for involvement in pre-marital sex. In some cases, the shame of the pregnancy appeared to be felt more intensely by the extended families of mothers. Again, according to Karen: … you know my mom's crying and my father is you know what's wrong with you and you know … I mean, they were extremely … one because I was so young and then they really felt a stigma of that I wasn't married you know and to have a child out of wedlock and disgracing the family and you know there was this … Now I would describe it as this staunch Irish belief that you know families … bad girls get

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caught at this kinda thing. But at the time I didn't understand it and I also didn't understand how concerned they were over how young I was. Karen's father subsequently refused to lend her money when she badly needed it, again because he felt she should fully experience the error of her ways, something he later deeply regretted. Patricia, a First Nations mother who gave birth in the mid-80s was also afraid of bringing “dishonor onto [her] family” given the high social standing of her family on her reserve. Her mother, an assimilated Christian, was “livid” because her grandchild would be illegitimate and lack a two-parent heterosexual family. As a University student at the time, the “hopes for [Patricia] were big and so for me to have done this was a crush.” Her father, coming from a more traditional Aboriginal perspective, however, had a more accurate perception of his community's response, which was generally supportive when she returned to the reserve with her child. Joan identified similar responses to her decision to become pregnant and bear a child while unmarried in the late 1980s but she believed familial responses also reflected a fear of economic dependency: “I think there was a fear also that they would be asked to help … like to provide some kind of financial support or that we would become a burden somehow.” Karen also noted that reconciliation with her parents occurred later when they realized that she was “gonna take care of this. This isn't going to become our problem.” In examining the records of unmarried mothers in maternity homes between 1890 and 1945 in the United States, Regina Kunzel (1993) identifies two prominent scripts that evangelical workers commonly attributed to unmarried mothers to explain their situations. First, there were the virtuous women who had been seduced, abandoned and betrayed by their lovers but who could be redeemed and regain respectability in society. Alternatively, there were the deviants or “sex delinquents” who gave themselves away and for whom, redemption was far less certain. Between these two dichotomies, however, she also identified “alternative discourses of single pregnancy” (112) in which mothers themselves questioned and disrupted dominant narratives by acknowledging their own sexual desire and agency. The terms “sex delinquents” and “fallen angels” reflect a particular historical period; however, traces of these scripts were still visible in the accounts of our participants. None of the women we interviewed identified themselves as sexually promiscuous but a few feared that they would be identified by others in that way. Of the 20 mothers in our sample who became pregnant through sexual intercourse, most had been in stable dating relationships and they saw their participation in these sexual relationships as voluntary. Only two resulted from isolated sexual encounters and none became pregnant as a result of sexual assault or incest. The status of being a young unmarried mother, however, at least in the 1970s, could give rise to assumptions that they were available to men. When, for example, a boy from another town implied that Mary Ellen, who gave birth in 1978, was easy, a classmate defended her by saying “she's not like that.” In the late 1970s, Karen had applied to the Department of Social Services for money to buy furniture for a house she had just rented in a

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small town. The social worker said he had to inspect the house and then tried to kiss her when she showed it to him. The women in our sample who gave birth up to the mid1980s were more readily identified as abandoned than promiscuous women. Joan, who had actively chosen to become pregnant in the 1980s, attested to a tragic script of abandonment that was, despite her best efforts, impossible to disrupt or challenge: But … you know … nurses kept coming in all the time and saying, “oh, your husband will come soon … I know he will!” and I said, No! … you know … it just … I … somehow there was this culture of wanting to reassure me and so this goes back to this … you know … that I was abandoned and that nobody could comprehend that this was a … an active choice and a positive choice. That everyone approached it from the shame or embarrassment or the abandonment frame and that's really hard to stand up to all the time. It's the only time in my life, really, where I have felt active discrimination against me because the discrimination as a female is relatively subtle … And as a white middle-class person in Canada there isn't any … really … you know. Crawford (1997), in a study of attitudes towards illegitimacy, suggests that by the mid-1980s there were two distinct groups of unwed mothers represented in the Canadian popular press, “the teenage, welfare-dependent girl who made a mistake, and the economically independent, older woman who made a choice” (111). However, according to Joan's experience, sole motherhood as an active, deliberate choice was simply not an imaginable script in the late 1980s in her region of Canada. While she was actively trying to conceive through sexual intercourse, none of the men she openly discussed her plans with could imagine that her desire for sole motherhood was authentic. Even when her child was very young, in the early 1990s, it was commonly assumed that “something terrible must've happened” such as the loss of the father through his death or incarceration. “But no one could imagine … that's what's interesting to me. Those things were all easier to imagine than that a woman would actually have a child on her own. I think that's a profound statement of where we were at.” Later, Joan found that because there was no man in her family, men readily assumed that she was a lesbian: “the only reason I would have a child on my own … be pregnant without a guy would be if I was in a relationship with a woman.” Once her child was about school age, people generally assumed she was divorced: “People stopped seeing … like … that the tragedy framework ended and then I was part of the regular [covey] of divorced mothers, then I was part of a different club, right … and … and there may be discrimination in that club, but I'm telling you, it is nothing like the other one.” Like Joan, Elizabeth, who gave birth in 1976, noted that she was not just separated or divorced but “the real McCoy … I really was single.” In her Maritime community, women's perceptions of her “range[d] from threatening to deficient;” as somehow not good enough to keep a man or alternatively, as a sexual threat to those women who were in committed relationships. In either case, she was assumed to need or to be longing for a relationship with a man. This image of the single mother as desperate and sexually threatening was echoed in

the 1990s by another participant who had helped to develop a program of free evening events in a rural community and was met with “letters to the newspaper about these ‘hussies’ who steal other people's husbands.” As indicated, social responses did vary to some degree between individuals and communities and across time. Some regions of the country such as New Brunswick were described as more reactionary with greater levels of class stratification and a strong cultural stigma around single parenting. The fact that a large urban center like Toronto was singled out by two mothers as a more progressive social space may have reflected both the effects of population size and the abolition of illegitimacy as a legal status in Ontario as early as 1977. However, small rural communities could also be very tolerant of single pregnancies. Mary Ellen indicated that 2 or 3 out of 24 girls in her grade were pregnant in her high school in the 1970s and that she was proud of and excited about having a baby. Still, neither her parents nor teachers accommodated her pregnancy in terms of chores at home or school work. As for individual responses, even in the 1970s, there could often be someone in the family network who had also had a child “out of wedlock” and would provide encouragement and support. Karen recalled, amidst the overall stigma, many “acts of kindness” by individuals, such as the nurse who had told her that “whatever I decided, it was going to be okay”. Karen was also able to have her child cared for at a minimal fee when she worked the night shift and later took her baby with her to her day job. These findings are consistent with those of Morton (2004) who found a “disjuncture between practice and the rigidity of both the law and the dominant rhetoric of shame” (334). In certain racial–ethnic cultures, unmarried mothers have also been found to experience higher levels of family and community support (Morton, 2004, 338, 347; Whitley & Kirmayer, 2008, 344). Patricia's experience raising her children on her reserve likewise suggests a greater degree of acceptance of single mothers and their children by her First Nation community. Patricia attributed this tolerance not only to the substantial numbers of unmarried mothers on her reserve but also to the cultural belief that all children are a gift from the Creator (see also Lavell-Harvard & Anderson, 2014). It was important to Patricia that her children were raised with their grandparents and educated in her Nation's language, culture, traditions and her people's vision. By the end of the 1980s, attributions of sexual deviance and social censure on the basis of sexual conduct were less pervasive or at least less overt. According to Lisette, her father had cried when told that she was pregnant, but later, after the birth of her daughter, “there were a few [other children born outside marriage] and the family, nobody batted an eye.” Ingrid also indicated that by the mid-1980s, “My family seemed to be okay with it … they accepted him without a problem, accepted me, so there was never a problem of sinfulness or immorality …” A 1973 Alberta study on attitudes towards illegitimacy revealed surprisingly tolerant views of unmarried mothers with only a third of respondents believing that mothers were blameworthy and another third believing that even if blameworthy, they should not suffer harsh consequences (Hobart, 1975). By the late 1980s, illegitimacy had been abolished in most provinces in Canada, divorce rates were rising as a result of an expansion of the permissible grounds for divorce and

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more couples were cohabiting outside of marriage. Crawford (1997) in her examination of the Canadian popular press (primarily Maclean's and Chatelaine magazines) found that illegitimacy was almost a taboo subject in the 1950s but that the characterization of the unwed mother had morphed by 1997 from that of a moral outcast to a social or economic problem or liability. Similarly, Suzanne Morton (2004) found that in Nova Scotia after 1987, a change in labeling from unwed mother to single mother had collapsed distinctions of relative deservingness between different sources of single motherhood and signaled the end of moral aspersions towards mothers on the basis of sexual activity. This is consistent with Carol Smart's observation (1996) that “the hierarchy of lone mothers (from widows, to the divorced, to the unmarried)” (53) had begun to be discursively challenged in England in the 1970s. While some of our participants still identified differentiated social responses based on sexual activity and a “hierarchy of lone mothers” in and beyond the 1980s, significant changes were also acknowledged. One mother, who identified as queer, compared her grandmother's experience as a widow and her mother's experience as a divorcee with her own: Like my grandmother there was nothing wrong with her but my Mom divorced so. A lot of prejudice. And then, um … I feel there are so many things I am doing, I just count my blessings to be here at this time and place because if it was 20 years ago I wouldn't be able to do what I'm doing. They wouldn't let me get away with it, you know. I mean, I wouldn't be able to have my own house, I wouldn't be able to raise my kids myself. People would come and intervene, right. So, I just feel so blessed because of that. Her experience reflects both diminished stigma on the basis of sexual history and a shift in social perceptions of lesbian mothers. Reekie (1998) argues that there is a close rhetorical relationship between illegitimacy and homosexuality as both have involved “similar experiences of shame, secrecy, disclosure, pride and ‘coming out’” (181). The shame and sense of being unworthy as a person because one is lesbian has also been discursively challenged in recent decades in Canada, as evident in the guarantee of freedom from discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation in human rights legislation and the acceptance of same sex marriage under federal law. However, Reekie argues that both constructs, in challenging traditional gender roles, are still widely perceived as threats to social welfare. Irresponsible choices and welfare dependency Most participants did not identify stigma on the basis of sexual conduct as a major issue from the late 1980s onward, but some did experience stigma based on assumptions that irresponsible choices had led to their pregnancy. Elizabeth attributed the assumption that she had made an irresponsible choice to a widespread stereotype of single mothers as poor and uneducated. In the main, however, mothers were seen as irresponsible because they were presumed unable to provide financially for their children and to require social assistance. Although some of the mothers in our sample were affluent women with established careers when they gave birth, many

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had experienced poverty or serious financial pressures and almost half (14) had been at some point reliant on social assistance. The stigma attributed to single mothers who depend on social assistance has been well documented, especially in the United States (e.g., Luna, 2009; McCormack, 2004, 2005). Macfarlane (1980) notes that the English Poor Laws did not punish mothers who could manage to maintain a child privately but rather made conceiving a child “who may be chargeable to the parish” (73–74) a punishable offence. In the 1920s and 1930s in most regions of Canada, unwed mothers were not seen as deserving of or eligible for Mothers' Allowance and they remained ineligible in Nova Scotia until 1966 (Gavigan & Chunn, 2007; Little, 1998; Morton, 2004). All single mothers can now apply for social assistance; however, the ascendance of neo-liberalism and the dismantling of the welfare state has intensified the stigma of welfare dependency and constructed single women with pre-school children as members of the ‘never deserving poor’ who are expected to be self-supporting (Gavigan & Chunn, 2007; Siltanen, 2002). Suzanne Morton (2004, 342) argues that in Nova Scotia “the moral issue was transformed from a woman's sexual history to her dependency on the taxpayer.” Crawford (1997) similarly found that in the Canadian popular press single motherhood was perceived from the 1980s onward primarily as a social and economic problem as more young mothers were choosing to keep their children and rear them. However, some studies indicate that a sexual double standard persists for young women who have sex outside of steady relationships (Risman & Schwartz, 2002, 20; Kreager & Staff, 2009) or suggest that assumptions of sexual immorality, rather than having disappeared, have been subsumed within the construction and regulation of the single welfare mother (Carrabine, 2001, 305– 07; Mosher, 2010, 177, 186). Participants who keenly felt stigmatized as irresponsible mothers were often economically vulnerable teenagers when they first gave birth (see Luker, 1996; Wilson & Huntington, 2006). Mary Ellen, who gave birth at 16, largely to escape an abusive home situation, noted that while having a child during high school out of wedlock was not stigmatized in her rural community, applying for welfare was “very frowned upon.” Wendy attested to “a lot of stigma” that was linked to her being a teen Mom in 1995: I just remember … like this feeling of disapproval of everyone around me, kind of thing. And I think as I got older that got a lot better. … when it's the worst have been the times I've been on welfare. So the worst have been when I was a teen and the times when I was on welfare … as time went on, I just kind of collected more validation for who I am in the sort of mainstream approval ways. Like you know, it was, “I have a degree. Now I have a Bachelor's degree. I have a Master's degree.” Ten years later, this mother again experienced an unplanned pregnancy as a result of contraceptive failure: I think maybe a part of me kind of thought like, “Okay, the first time you get pregnant, well you're just young and you made a mistake. The second time, you know, you should know better now, right.” So I think that's what I kind of felt – this sense of shame – like, “You should have known better.

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You're not married. You're still not done in school. You don't have a career.” When Wendy revealed her second pregnancy at a family gathering, her parents were not overtly censorious. However, her grandmother was “livid:” “she got up and she walked out and she left without saying ‘goodbye’ or anything.” For all mothers, whatever their age, reliance on social assistance was a humiliating experience. Rebecca, who was 19 when she gave birth in 1998, reported: I got a tattoo done and people would be like, “Oh, you know, you're spending your welfare on that”, but I was dating a body piercer at the time and then I managed to get a free tattoo. But, you know, I shouldn't have to justify how I got this tattoo. And if my kids are fed, my kids are happy, my kids are healthy, who cares if I go and spend money to get a tattoo? Without exception, the process of obtaining and maintaining social assistance left participants feeling demeaned and disempowered. Janet felt that the intense pressure to find employment and place her child in daycare reflected a lack of understanding that staying home and raising her child were “actually doing the state a service” and were less costly than daycare. Marilyn, an African-Canadian mother who was on social assistance for four months, recalled the first day at the office: “I felt like I was part of a cattle call.” As for the one-onone interviews: “I was pretty much told that … I was a person of no worth rather than a person who deserved respect and who had had a little setback in their life but needed to, you know, sort of have a few weeks to get yourself together and move forward.” As well documented in the United States, race has also greatly affected attributions of irresponsibility. In the United States during the 1950s and beyond, illegitimacy was perceived as a “cultural pathology” for African-American mothers and virtually all social ills have been at one time or another attributed to “welfare queens” and black mother-led families (McCormack, 2004, 2005; Roberts, 1992; Solinger, 1992). Marilyn subsequently moved back to her home province, obtained employment as a social worker and lived in a predominantly white residential community. While black lone motherhood has not been targeted in the same direct way in Canada as in the United States, Marilyn felt her neighbors had an image of a typical single mother of color that she did not fit. Vulnerabilty to judgment of parenting One of the most common sources of stigma identified by mothers in our study reflected an assumption that they were incapable or incompetent as parents because of their single status. Mary Lynn had been committed to psychiatric care prior to her pregnancy in the 1960s but her pregnancy appeared to exacerbate concerns with her mental stability after her child's birth: “They [the welfare authorities] were trying to catch you at something … It was because I wasn't married, I was a nut case … Anything that went wrong it was because you're a single parent.” Unwed white mothers in the 1950s through the 1970s were commonly characterized by social workers and

portrayed in the popular press not as moral degenerates but as neurotic or psychologically wounded individuals in search of a “replacement for a ‘lost love object’” (Crawford, 1997, 115– 116; see also Solinger, 1992). A general susceptibility to adverse judgments of their parenting was experienced by virtually all of our participants. According to Jean, “when you're a single parent … I think you're vulnerable and people kind of go for the jugular so they have no qualms about telling you everything you're doing wrong or everything they think you're doing wrong.” This tendency reflects a longstanding assumption that children born without “mature, male protectors” are “problem children” (Laslett, 1980, 5). Research consistently documents negative social attitudes towards single mothers, particularly teen mothers and never married mothers, who are generally assumed to be troubled and less competent (Whitley & Kirmayer, 2008, 342; Dowd, 1995; Schmitz, 1995; Dejean, McGeorge, & Carlson, 2012). The advent of intensive norms for white, middle class motherhood that are increasingly child-centered, timeconsuming, labor-intensive and emotionally demanding may have heightened the scrutiny of sole motherhood since the mid-1970s (Ennis, 2014; Hays, 1996). Concerns with father absence have also been reinforced by the visibility of Fathers' Rights groups since the 1980s that represent fathers as essential to a child's emotional and psychological well-being, not only as disciplinarians and breadwinners, but as actively engaged parents (Smart, 1996, 54). Participants in our study, even those who gave birth in the 2000s, felt that they were more easily blamed if things went wrong. Melody, who gave birth in 2008, noted that because there was no father to blame, she herself felt more responsible and vulnerable to judgment, especially when her two-year old daughter had tantrums in public. Shannon, who had two children in the 2000s, indicated that she experienced less judgment from people when she was accompanied by a male than when she was alone in public with her child. When Jean's younger son started to act out in school in the 1990s, the principal implied that his conduct was linked to her status as a single parent, “and that was interesting because of course my older kid was in the same school and had no trouble … that's the kind of judgment, when you have the school system doing that, that's very hard to take. And I have enough experience and skills to deal with that, but you still feel the judgment.” Another participant with two children born in the 2000s stated: … it's hard to find the right language to describe yourself in a way that's positive. Single mother is always thought of as so negative, right. I mean single mothers are blamed for gun violence in City K routinely, you know. The absence of men. Men have abandoned the family. As if there would be less gun violence if those men were in the families. Maybe those women left the families because those men were violent and they didn't want them as role models for their children, you know. But there's this idea that as soon as you have a man in the family, then it's an upstanding, law-abiding family all of a sudden. But when a single Mom is in charge she's not going to be able to control the kids, especially boys. So, I've had that kind of prejudice at day cares when people are quick to assume that you need some help with setting limits and discipline. You know, I've had people say several

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times, “Children thrive on discipline” as if I never think about discipline and need education about that, right. They never at the time asked me, “How do you approach problemsolving with your kid? How do you do it?” According to Sylvia, our culture assumes: … that kids have a dad that can go on outings, attend sports activities and assumes that boys are somehow healthier if they are around adult males more. And it doesn't matter if that adult male is maybe really aggressive or indifferent or kind of brutal with them. Like all of that's dropped out of the equation so there's just so many indications … If your son isn't performing well at soccer etc. there's the guilt factor, it whispers “well. It's because …. you know … he doesn't have enough discipline … it's like he doesn't have a dad in the house …” Overall, while one mother believed that the assumption of inadequate supervision or discipline was linked to her need to be employed and unable to function as a full-time mother, several others attributed this negative stereotype to an assumption that fathers can best mete out discipline and control. In contrast to Zartler's study of Austrian single mothers (2014), however, only a few of the mothers in our sample suggested that it was in fact difficult or impossible for them to guide or discipline their children. While many complained of feeling tired and needing a second pair of hands, most either did not know or believed that their children had not suffered from a lack of exposure to their biological fathers in this sense. To the extent that some mothers suggested a male role model would be beneficial, this was often adequately provided through the child's exposure to close relatives, such as brothers or grandfathers. Social exclusion and father absence Several mothers complained of isolation and social exclusion by other two-parent families. Pre-natal classes, which began in the 1970s, were cited as particularly difficult experiences for most participants because they were forced to confront their ‘otherness’ in a fairly intimate context. Most often they attended classes with a friend but they still felt “misplaced” and “really alone” because the programming was developed exclusively for heterosexual couples. Attendees were almost entirely coupled and the messages implicitly communicated were that the coming child was, as Jean described it, “the product of our love kind of stuff.” Denise, for example, needed reassurance by her friend that even if they all looked happy, you could never know what was going on behind closed doors. Hospitals, by contrast, were generally seen as more welcoming and non-judgmental, including Catholic ones. Most mothers who had hospital births said that the care was excellent and that, although specific hours varied, friends or relatives were usually allowed to be in the operating room with mothers during delivery. However, Elizabeth said that while she was under an anesthetic having a caesarian section against her will, she “could hear them joking around and I know I could overhear a racial comment … a racially pejorative comment when they actually reached in and took my [bi-racial] daughter.” She attributed this comment not only to racism but also to the fact that she lacked

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male protection of any kind: “It was an all-female sort of deal and I was clearly very much alone.” Patricia, an Aboriginal mother, complained that residents did not ask permission to examine her, though she was otherwise treated well. Joan complained that the nurse kept bringing the birth registration form back to her though she repeatedly refused to put the father's name on it. Beyond the pregnancy and birthing experience, several participants complained of a sense of isolation that was not, in their opinion, fully explained by the demands of sole parenting. As Jean recalled, “People who are couples don't invite singles over.” Elizabeth felt that her social standing as a single parent in the 1970s made it harder to find friends and develop a social network. However, Jean also suspected that “a lot of what we blame on single parenthood is actually just a condition of parenting” under current social conditions. While the practical demands of being a single mother held many of our participants back in terms of completing their education and pursuing job opportunities, Elizabeth also attributed her lack of employment stability to her social standing as a single mother. Lisette recalled that in 1969 her employer told her not to talk about her single status or she would “contaminate” the other women in the organization. Karen was denied a job in the late 1970s when she informed the male interviewer that she was a single parent and was told she would not be “a good role model”. She was also discouraged from entering a study program due to her single parent status: “At the meeting they told me that given the intensity of the program, I was unlikely to be successful. The demands of being a single parent would not allow me enough time to study. They strongly suggested that either I send my son to a parent or family member to live with or they recommended that I drop out of the program. I did neither.” On the other hand, some mothers were also protected to some degree from social stigma by sub-cultures of an occupational or professional nature, particularly in the social service or artistic cultural fields. Sandra indicated that “being a single mother or being gay or being whatever … I mean, that was all sort of quite accepted in my [artistic] community.” Likewise, Ingrid worked in an international field in the mid-80s and she noted that a number of her coworkers were having children later in life and were influenced by the fact that for women in other countries “just having babies is normal and when you have a baby you just get on with it. You carry the baby with you.” Crawford (1997, 125) suggests that the Canadian press in the 1990s was “far less judgmental” of mothers who actively chose to be sole mothers than of teenage mothers or those having unplanned pregnancies. However, in our sample, negative judgments were present in the late 1980s and 90s even where older mothers had carefully planned their pregnancies to maximize matching between themselves and their child (in terms of ethnicity and appearance) and to ensure financial support. Even though these women were generally seen as capable parents who could financially support their children, they had violated conventional family norms by excluding men in the parenting process. Sheila described her mother as “quasi-hysterical” when she found out that Sheila had deliberately planned her pregnancy in the late 1980s. A friend of Lillian's father actually suggested that her donor insemination had “amounted to adultery” and she discovered

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years later that a number of people had “really, really thought this was not a good thing to do”. Similarly, Joan's brothers were “quite aggressive in their questions about … well, what does this mean for our role as men? And I said, it means nothing about your role. This is … you know … my choice. It's something that I'm doing”. In consciously choosing sole motherhood in the late 1980s, Joan lost friends over her decision, even among feminists: “I was too much of a maybe a flash-point in terms of their own values and what they were saying and what they were feeling. So I think that was a big issue and I think the other, too, is the … the talk about always as a group, we need to support each other but then when there is the need for support …… am I willing to ante-up?” Single parenting aroused anxieties not just about the loss of a responsible role for men as fathers but also, by implication, a potential need for alternative sources of financial and emotional support given the absence of adequate state provision. Reekie (1998, 150) suggests that the self-reliant single woman who chooses single parenthood now constitutes a distinct post-1980s type of single mother who is seen as “patently putting her own desires and personal gratifications ahead of the welfare of her child and of society” (see also Crawford, 1997, 130; Smart, 1996, 47). Pressure to place a child for adoption in the post-war period was often presented in terms of not being selfish and doing the best for one's child (Morton, 2004; Strong-Boag, 2006). In our sample, however, Carol was the only participant to question explicitly whether she was being selfish in depriving her child of a two-parent family. She was reassured by her mother that adopting and parenting him would be one of the least selfish things she could do. None of the other participants alluded directly to external perceptions of themselves as selfish or self-centered in choosing sole motherhood, perhaps also because they saw the work of mothering as inherently caring and manifestly other-centered. While mothers themselves experienced social exclusion, most were either uncertain as to the long-term impact on their children or did not feel that their children had suffered much in this respect. Children growing up in urban communities usually had friends whose parents were divorced or separated and their single parent families were not seen by their peers as aberrant or unusual. Fathers' Day could sometimes present challenges but most children ended up making cards at school for a grandfather, uncle, or a male family friend. Sylvia in fact believed that her son benefited from their unorthodox family in ways that made him more compassionate and competent in dealing with diverse groups of people and gave him tools to develop “good insights into social orders.” While one white middle-class mother believed her young child was conscious of not having a father, this was not a significant worry or concern because everything was otherwise “normal”. What children experienced as normal was thus defined not only by their family status but also by their class, race and sexual orientation and that of their mothers. For example, Elizabeth and Joan, both of whom were white but had raised bi-racial children, believed that their children had suffered a loss of self-esteem attributable to both their single parent status and “polite racism.” Marilyn left a large urban center and returned to her home province largely because she worried about the social profile of black youths and inner city crime. Ruth believed that her child

had suffered more in the 1970s and 1980s because her mother was in a lesbian relationship than because she was, at an earlier point, a single parent. Thus, women and their children faced more or different forms of stigma depending both on their personal and structural or social location. Participant responses to stigmatization According to Major and O'Brien (2005), resilience or vulnerability to stigma is generally determined by an imbalance of perceived demands and resources. A threat to self-identity is experienced when perceived demands are seen to exceed perceived resources, triggering anxiety and fear that they will be judged according to the negative stereotype. By contrast, when perceived resources are seen to exceed perceived demands, the situation may be seen as a challenge rather than a threat. None of our participants described their experience precisely in these terms but their responses were influenced by a number of personal, situational or structural factors. Although all of our participants were highly resilient and self-reliant women, some were generally more optimistic or resilient than others, reflecting either an individual disposition or more fortunate situational or structural circumstances. Although most of the women who gave birth between the 1960s and mid-1980s identified overt sources of stigma and social shaming related to perceptions of sexual misconduct, relatively few appeared to have internalized a sense of shame or unworthiness. Internalized shame was even less likely for those women who were pregnant from the mid-1980s onward. Some participants, however, suffered psychological distress, depression or other mental health challenges at various points that was triggered or exacerbated by their status as single mothers. Nonetheless, virtually all resisted stigmatization and developed a number of ways of either coping with and minimizing the impact of stigma or alternatively, confronting more directly the negative stereotypes and dominant constructions of their identity and that of their children (Collins, 1990; Crocker & Major, 1989; Luna, 2009; Major & O'Brien, 2005; McCormack, 2004; Scott, 1990; Zartler, 2014). Coping or survival strategies Historically, unmarried biological mothers would attempt to conceal their pregnancies through infanticide, abandonment, abortion, or through childbirth and adoption in secrecy outside of their communities or through other intra-familial arrangements. Our participants obviously could not conceal their children but they did adopt various coping mechanisms in order to avoid stigma or to accommodate dominant familial norms. Isolation or withdrawal was identified as one way of attempting to deal with a premarital birth. Lisette, for example, had tried to keep her pregnancy in 1968 a secret but when it came out, “I didn't want to be rejected so I didn't take any chances in asking for help.” The shame was because of my own upbringing. I was supposed to go to university and this happened and it wasn't supposed to happen. So it was more of my own making, if I

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may say. I made those decisions. Maybe people would have helped me if I would have allowed … Lisette wanted to avoid the risk of rejection; however, no one appeared to reach out to her, not even her best friend, and Lisette's sense of being isolated in her shame and self-blame was one of the most painful, deeply felt experiences of the women we interviewed. Marilyn, an African-Canadian mother who was pregnant in the mid-1980s, also believed she was the “biggest stigma going” and felt that everyone knew she didn't have a husband at home. While some research (e.g., McCormack, 2004) indicates that black mothers in communities where large numbers rely on social assistance do not feel shame or stigma, Marilyn worked in a white dominated profession and lived in a predominantly white neighborhood. When a white friend reached out and offered to hold a shower for her, Marilyn refused: “I'm a statistic … I'm a single black woman having a baby but you're not gonna feel pity for me.” Although Marilyn resisted labeling and did not internalize shame, like Lisette, she isolated herself in order to avoid a negative social response. Some women attempted to pass or comply with dominant norms or at least minimize the visible differences (Zartler, 2014, 611). Lisette, for example, admitted to wearing a ring on her left hand: “that was sort of a safety barrier, I don't know if I wore it all the time but I know I made use of it at times when I felt it was crucial.” She also felt that she could be redeemed after the birth of her child: “It was clear to me at that point that I would repent myself. I said, if I can find myself a husband, okay, then this will sort of re-establish everything.” Redemption for Lisette in the late 1960s meant finding a father for her child, marrying him and supporting him through secretarial work while he finished university. Relying on a “hierarchy of lone mothers”, some participants would lie and say that they were divorced or separated in order to diminish the stigma. Still others would monitor disclosure of the information by not volunteering it or disclosing only to trusted people: I don't tell people, I don't volunteer any information about how we came together as a family. People ask a lot but I think it's the [children's] information to share. And I don't know how they're going to feel about that yet so I don't really like to talk about it too, too much. When Karen subsequently married, her husband pretended to be her son's biological father until she discovered that her adult son had known of his paternity all along. Most of our participants, however, remained single parents and could not or would not pretend. It was also difficult for many to disengage from the domain in which the negative stereotypes prevailed given the nature of familial activities. An alternative strategy was to compensate in other ways or try harder to meet some of the demands in order to distance one's family from damaging stereotypes and minimize the assumed disadvantages associated with single parent status (Major & O'Brien, 2005; Zartler, 2014, 612). According to Karen: I know that there was gossip and innuendoes and people looking at my left hand. I know there were those things but I

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really didn't care. It was, I had become solely focused on I was going to do better so that he [her son] would always do better. Many mothers pushed hard to ensure that their kids did not have less than children in two-parent families in terms of clothes and extra-curricular opportunities. You know, I worked my ass off to make sure that they were never without. And I see it with all the single Moms I work with. Like I remember making these meals and just divvying it in half, giving them each half of the meal and whatever didn't get eaten was mine. You know, I would buy them all these brand new clothes because I could dress them like twins. Everything that I figured happened in a normative, euro-western household they got, in as much as I could create it. Rebecca felt a great need to distinguish herself from the pervasive and debilitating stereotype of the young single welfare-dependent mother: And that was the thing. I had to go back to school and do all this stuff in order to prove that I'm worthy as a single Mom. That, like, I was not one of those single Moms. And through that, I realized that, “No, I am one of those single Moms. There's a lot of us.” But it was like I felt the need to achieve something in order to be able to pull out that label, and then I realized that that label, it identifies a lot of women. And it isn't — as a society we pigeon-hole that concept into a very small construct …. Rather than contest the stereotype outright, Rebecca tried to prove it wrong in her individual case by aspiring to be both a good mother and an educated wage-earner. Underlying her efforts to be “the first successful single mother” was an acceptance of the dominant construction of single mothers who were reliant on welfare as undeserving ‘others’. While Rebecca ultimately realized that the stereotype itself was wrong in its negative characterization of single mothers generally, her individual efforts to escape its reach had costly implications for her mental health. Confronting the construction of sole motherhood Most mothers were aware or, like Rebecca became aware over time, of the negative social constructions of their families and refused to internalize a deviant label or identity. Rather, they attributed negative events or outcomes to social prejudice against single mother families instead of themselves as individuals (Crocker & Major, 1989; Major & O'Brien, 2005, 404; Luna, 2009). However, consistent with studies of Single Mothers by Choice (Bock, 2000; Boyd et al., 2015; Hertz, 2006), most of these women did believe that raising a child in a loving two- or multi-parent relationship would ideally be best for a child. “I think that the more resources and the more love that any human has, the better everything is for them and the more resilient they are as a result. And so, if it's a happy functioning two-parent home, then, yes, there's obvious reasons why that's better. However, it appears that happy,

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functioning two-parent homes are not exactly common any more, you know.” (Diane) Sheila would have loved to have a “much more normal life” with more than one child and a partner “who was a decent provider, didn't blow all his money on expensive cars, somebody who's healthy and helpful.” These women, among others, however, also believed that wanting a “miraculous prince to arrive” and “two people who care … you know … who are invested equally in the child” was somewhat of a fantasy or illusion [Janet]. The conventional nuclear family was, for them, somewhat mythical or at the least, a family form that was not realistically possible in their own lives. This perspective does disrupt traditional assumptions of nuclear families as natural and generally harmonious settings for child-rearing. However, it still maintains a family hierarchy by privileging a ‘functional’ two parent family. The dream of an ‘ideal mate’ also obscures the possibility of public provision and other social supports that could ease the labor, loneliness and economic precarity of sole parenting. Sylvia more directly challenged the assumed differences between one and two parent families and the idealization of the latter. In her view, a lot of people's situations looked ideal because they were closer to the norm “but the people living in those realities know that they're far from ideal and so we each have something that then we have to come to terms with. [My child] has particular ones but I don't see that his are greater or lesser than anybody else's.” Many women placed great value on the lack of actual or potential conflict and the personal autonomy they experienced in their situation while devaluing or at least contesting the supposed significance of the absence of a father in their lives and those of their children. Several were also open to more unconventional ways of meeting their need or desire for intimacy. For example, Janet had a long-term partner who lived in another city and did not assume a parental role. Sylvia spoke of the benefits of having a lover with whom you did not cohabit. This perspective directly challenged a social hierarchy of family forms in favor of a pluralist conception of family identities, all of which could equally benefit children notwithstanding their differences. In addition to developing a critical consciousness of the social construction of their families, some women publicly acknowledged or embraced an identification with sole motherhood in their communities. For example, although Elizabeth drank heavily in the early years of her motherhood, “cutting the edge of my fear,” she always made it “a point of pride not to pretend”. While Georgia had difficulty finding a public identity as a queer single mother, she found some solace and support in a sense of community with other single Moms who were “more creative” and “opportunistic about relying on each other” as a result of having to “[think] outside the nuclear family.” Sylvia found that in her interactions with other parents “you have to be really tough-skinned and confident within yourself to … you know … like cut through them or call them” on the various “subtle and not so subtle” assumptions about parenting: “You know … the number of times that I've showed up at something with my son and somebody says “Did your husband come?” and I say “I don't have one of those” … or … is X's dad here?” and I'll say, “Not tonight! Cause he lives in Country C.” None of our participants acted in concert with others or were affiliated with an organization such as Single Mothers by

Choice as a way of counteracting stigma and providing mutual support (Bock, 2000; Hertz, 2006). Members of SMC, when interviewed, have expressed a strong sense of confidence in their entitlement and right to parent alone and in their capacity to manage well and be good mothers (Boyd et al., 2015). By contrast, acting in isolation from other similarly situated women, most of our participants, while resilient, appeared to feel less entitled and more vulnerable to social stigma. By volunteering to speak on panels in the daycare and early education community in her city, however, Joan sought to provide a more complete picture of different types of family structures, to caution against normative judgments and to promote choice and openness around family forms. As indicated, she discovered that autonomous choice was strongly resisted as a script for sole motherhood: “And the questions always were still “did you love him”, “did he leave … ” Like people just couldn't get it and I was on a mission … an absolute mission so I don't think I really censured myself cause I was determined that other women could see that this is an option.” Several other mothers emphasized that being very open and explicit about their status was extremely important in resisting stigma, particularly for their children. These efforts were not necessarily intended as a challenge in principle to hegemonic familial norms but rather appeared to be motivated primarily by a concern that secrecy could generate shame or a sense of unworthiness in their children. Sheila, for example, tried to get her daughter to see that “you're much better being open about everything because otherwise you seem ashamed of it and I'm not in the least ashamed … Whoever you are, whatever you are, be proud. [That way] other people don't get the chance to go “Oh, this is awful.”” Lillian likewise explained: “I felt that [openness] was very, very important because if I was secretive about it, I felt that my child would feel that I was ashamed of what I had done.” She would advise the parents of her son's friends at the earliest opportunity of her single status and donor insemination. In one of these exchanges, when a woman said that was “too much information”, Lillian replied, “Do people know who the father of your children are [sic]?” And she said, “Well, of course they do.” And I said, “Well, it's important to me that people know how my child came to be as well.” However, she also had advised her son to respond simply to questions about his father by saying that he did not know where his father lived. As Sylvia described her experience of giving birth in a foreign hospital: I think a lot of [key people] took their lead from me so they … they saw that I was a mature person who had thought about this. This wasn't a situation where, you know … I came over and unfortunately I became pregnant and I'm horrified and how am I ever gonna to go back to my family or something. They could see that this was a joyous occasion and this person really wanted to become pregnant and so I think that a lot of people just responded to the way that I represented myself. Sylvia's experience suggests that, given adequate material and discursive resources, one can alter, or at least manage, social responses through modes of self-representation. However, it is questionable how far such measures can dissipate the attribution of stigma. For instance, Christine was employed as a

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professional in her small rural community and had given considerable thought to her presentation of self. Yet she admitted that: I still do feel a bit of a stigma, that “Oh, you're a single parent.” And I feel compelled although I often stop myself, I feel compelled to explain to people that I made this decision, this was not an accident, that I'm actually a heterosexual woman, I'm not gay. And perhaps that pressure is coming from within, I don't know. I think realistically though there is societal pressure that way. And I live in a small town too … and so people know you and although it's none of their business I do find myself offering, just slipping into conversation whenever it's appropriate that I chose to be a single Mom. And I feel that that's important too, to safeguard my son's safety and reputation in our community so that he doesn't grow up feeling that stigma. Christine thought it important that others in her community know she had made a choice and that her son was “a very much wanted child.” In this context, choice may have helped both to dispel a tragic abandonment script and to distinguish her family from negative characterizations of single motherhood more generally. Emphasizing one's choice to be a sole mother as a way of counteracting stigma implicitly challenges the negativity around single motherhood and the normative privileging of the traditional heteronuclear family. However, rather than seeking equal recognition of sole motherhood as a family form, it seeks to reestablish a ‘hierarchy of lone mothers’ by including within the ambit of respectable motherhood (Bock, 2000) those who achieved motherhood through the careful exercise of rational choice (“it was not an accident”). None of the mothers from more socially marginalized groups, such as queer, racialized, economically vulnerable or welfare dependent mothers relied on choice rhetoric in this way. Indeed, the same choice, when relied upon by more marginalized women, would likely magnify rather than disrupt the attribution of stigma. Ellis-Sloan (2013) found, for example, that “admitting to planning a pregnancy as a teenager, with all its concomitant challenges (assumed or otherwise), leaves young mothers open to further stigma” (9). Choice rhetoric can help to normalize single parenthood but it can also collude with dominant ideologies, such as heterosexism (“I'm actually a heterosexual woman”). It can obscure and discourage a broader challenge to the material structures that make such choices for less economically or socially privileged women much more fraught (Boyd et al., 2015). In constructing a plurality of family forms or in elevating some family forms above others, these perspectives largely left untouched the dominant assumption of individual or privatized responsibility for children (Bock, 2000; Solinger, 2001). Few of our participants directly protested the paucity of social supports for parenthood; rather many appeared to accept their individual responsibility for the welfare of their child/ren as inevitable. Conclusion Across the time frame of our study, stigma was experienced in some form both by women who had planned sole

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motherhood and by those whose pregnancies were unexpected. Mothers experienced stigma primarily by way of perceptions of sexual immorality (more common in the 1960s and 70s), attributions of irresponsibility (often linked to economic dependency on welfare but also to father absence), a related vulnerability to judgment about their parenting, and social exclusion. Each of these sources of stigmatization can be linked to a normative script that has been violated; for example, that women are responsible for sexual intercourse and its consequences, that single mothers need or pine for male partners, that the single mother family is a deficient setting for the rearing of children as a result of father absence or that childrearing is or should be a private individual responsibility. Not surprisingly, the experience of stigma among our participants changed over time in accordance with shifts in dominant sexual mores and social norms. Women who gave birth in the 1960s and 1970s experienced the most overt stigma that was linked to perceptions of sexual misconduct and were often assumed to have been abandoned by the fathers of their children. In our study, this tragedy script was difficult to displace at least in parts of Canada until the 1990s, when the phenomenon of an economically self-sufficient woman who could consciously choose single motherhood became more visible. Mothers who gave birth in subsequent decades did not generally experience shame on the basis of sexual history; however, they were still stigmatized as single mothers who received welfare or made irresponsible choices, whose parenting was suspect and whose children were perceived as being at risk due to the absence of a father or a second parent. The stigmatization of poor mothers dependent on welfare was unrelenting, if not greater, over time while the growing emphasis on fatherhood and intensive mothering from the mid-1980s onward may have generated increased stigma around parenting and perceptions of at risk children. The experience of stigma appeared to vary both in kind and intensity according to each individual's social positioning including their age, religion, culture, locale, occupational and economic status, race, subsequent marital status and sexual orientation. However, our sample was not broad enough to identify fully the intersecting experiences of racialized, Aboriginal, lesbian or working class mothers, in terms of both forms of stigma and coping strategies employed. Given the unique history of Aboriginal mothers under colonial rule in Canada, the experience of Aboriginal mothers in particular should be the subject of a larger independent study. The dominant construction of single mother families as deviant is linked to material and structural features of our social and work lives that presuppose a division of paid and unpaid (or low paid) labor and that, in an era of neo-liberalism, appear relatively resistant to change. Like research participants in other studies, however, the women in our study did not react passively to the experience of stigma. A number of different strategies were used by most mothers to avoid or manage the attribution of stigma including attempts to withdraw from social contacts, to pass or minimize visible differences between their families and the dominant nuclear family norm or to compensate for or strive harder to meet certain norms in order to minimize the perceived disadvantages. Many women were reflective about the social construction of their families and attributed negative reactions to societal discrimination rather

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than to themselves as individuals. Deliberate openness and an active contestation of dominant assumptions about family structures, more common from the mid-1980s onward, helped to dispel shame and to disrupt negative beliefs about sole motherhood. For white, economically secure and heterosexual participants, the assertion of individual choice could itself be relied upon in an effort to challenge the dominant construct of single motherhood as a negative and undesirable family form. The fact that mothers from more socially marginalized groups did not use choice rhetoric in this way suggests both that “dependency and choice vibrantly interact, depend on each other for meaning” (Solinger, 2001, 222) and that “legitimate choice-making” has come to be associated with “financial “independence”” (224) as well as other dimensions of privilege. Resistance in this respect was partial and class and race specific, reflecting the ideological dominance of a privatized family model and the relative social privileging and encouragement of white middle-class motherhood. In her study of the discourse of illegitimacy, Reekie (1998) complains that “feminist thought [has] inadvertently constructed single parenthood primarily in terms of disadvantage, deprivation or as the consequence of male irresponsibility, thereby helping to entrench the normalcy and desirability of the nuclear family” (186). Ajandi (2011) argues that there is a need to disrupt the “dominant narrative of victimhood associated with the single mother family status” (410) and to identify the many rewards and possibilities that come with this alternative family status. In Edin and Kefalas (2005) study of poor white, Latino and African-American mothers in economically marginal urban centers in the US, sole motherhood often marked a turning point in their lives by providing “validation, purpose, connection and order” (185), and allowing them to “transcend, at least psychologically and symbolically, the limitations of economic and social disadvantage” (185). We have tried not to problematize single motherhood itself but rather, to show how and in what ways, it has been marginalized and discredited in the experience of our participants. Despite the stigma and constraints, all of our participants referenced positive aspects of single parenting and only one expressed regret about the decision she had made. Where fathers were not substantially involved in parenting, mothers generally treasured their autonomy and the ability to be the ultimate arbiter of how their children should be raised. They appreciated the lack of conflict, the emotional stability afforded their children, and the emotional closeness they enjoyed, which was seen in part as the outcome of not being burdened with care for a partner. Most talked about how their children had greatly enriched their lives and how they experienced strength, joy and pride through their relationships with their children. In most cases, the mothers' relationships with their children appeared to protect them from or diminish the impact of stigma. Reekie (1998) also asks that we “think about what needs to be done to make single parenthood not a problem” (188). Neoconservatives perceive stigmatization of single mothers as an appropriate cultural response because sole motherhood is seen to deprive children of exposure to naturally differentiated gender roles and to increase welfare dependency (e.g., Murray, 1994). In the narratives of our participants, however, stigma appeared to exacerbate the challenges they confronted. While women with secure employment and home ownership could

overcome some of these challenges, some still experienced negative assumptions about their families or their parenting capacity into the 2000s. Individual efforts to resist stigmatization cannot likely dispel or overcome the sources of stigma unless attitudes and power relations are fundamentally altered (Major & O'Brien, 2005; Riessman, 2000). As Showden (2011) suggests, effective identity politics requires not only a demand for recognition or “cultural affirmation” but also a change in legal and economic power relations: “because the subjectifying conditions for women are cultural, economic and juridical, there can be no meaningful recognition of identities without redistribution of material goods” (30; see also Fraser, 1997). Increased social supports such as subsidized day care, social or coop housing, adequate levels of social assistance, and living wages and improved working conditions would help to relieve the financial stress and isolation of single mothers and fundamentally challenge the assumption that children are at risk or inevitably prejudiced by virtue of their family form. As indicated, resistance on this material front through a call or demand for social provision was not often articulated by our participants. Until this changes, economically privileged women who choose sole motherhood may escape the poverty and physical exhaustion of sole parenting but they will not likely escape the attribution of stigma. Acknowledgment The funding assistance of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (#410-2008-1339) is gratefully acknowledged. References Ajandi, J. (2011). Disrupting dominant discourses of the family through social justice alternatives. International Journal of Child, Youth and Family Studies, 3, 410–431. Backhouse, C.B. (1984). Desperate women and compassionate courts: Infanticide in nineteenth-century Canada. University of Toronto Law Journal, 34, 447–478. Backhouse, C.B. (1985–86). ‘Pure patriarchy’: Nineteenth century Canadian marriage. McGill Law Journal, 31, 264–312. Barrett, M., & McIntosh, M. (1982). The anti-social family. London: Verso. Bock, J.D. (2000). Doing the right thing?: Single mothers by choice and the struggle for legitimacy. Gender & Society, 14, 62–86. Boyd, S.B., Chunn, D.E., Kelly, F., & Wiegers, W. (2015). Autonomous motherhood? A socio-legal investigation of choice and constraint. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Cahill, B.L. (2006). Butterbox babies: Baby sales, baby deaths: New revelations 15 years later. Halifax: Fernwood (revised Ed.). Carrabine, J. (2001). Constituting sexuality through social policy: The case of lone motherhood 1834 and today. Social and Legal Studies, 10, 291–314. Chambers, L. (2007). Misconceptions: Unmarried motherhood and the Ontario Children of Unmarried Parents Act, 1921–1969. Toronto: The Osgoode Society for Canadian Legal History/University of Toronto Press. Clark, L., & Lewis, D.G. (1977). Rape: The price of coercive sexuality. Toronto: The Women's Press. Collins, P. (1990). Black feminist thought: Knowledge, consciousness, and the politics of empowerment. London: HarperCollins Academic. Courtwright, A.M. (2009). Justice, stigma, and the new epidemiology of health disparities. Bioethics, 23, 90–96. Crawford, S. (1997). Public attitudes in Canada toward unmarried mothers, 1950–1996. Past Imperfect, 6, 111–132. Crocker, J., & Major, B. (1989). Social stigma and self-esteem: The self-protective properties of stigma. Psychological Review, 96, 608–630. Dejean, S.L., McGeorge, C.R., & Carlson, T.S. (2012). Attitudes towards nevermarried single mothers and fathers: Does gender matter? Journal of Feminist Family Therapy, 24, 121–138. Dowd, N.E. (1995). Stigmatizing single parents. Harvard Women's Law Journal, 18, 19–82.

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