Irish
Politician To Swap Lives With Single Mother For A Week
Like an episode of “Wife Swap” with feminist underpinnings
and adorable accents, an Irish
politician plans to swap lives for a week with a single mother of three.
Senator John Gilroy from County Cork in Ireland will live
trade lives with Andrea Gagley, an activist with Single Parents Acting For The
Rights Of Kids. Gagley works a part-time job and takes a college course while
raising her three sons on her own. She issued the challenge to politicians on
the Facebook page for Ireland’s Labour Party and Gilroy, a married father of
two, took her up on it. He will live on
her salary for a week while working at her part-time job and collecting her
Lone Parent Allowance and Child Benefit Allowance (which I assume are Irish
versions of welfare). ”He is in for a
very harsh landing. He may work long hours but he has back-up at home to
facilitate that, whereas I have to do everything myself,” Gagley said. The
Irish Herald reports that several production companies are seeking to make a
documentary about Gilroy and Gagley’s “life swap."
On one hand I cheer for social experiments like this because
single parents, but especially single mothers, get shat on in society.
(Particularly I am referring to American society; I don’t know how Irish
society treats its single moms.) People seem to think that stigmatizing single
moms will punish them or scare young women from becoming single moms … as if
single parenthood is a lifestyle choice every single person who goes into it
has planned in advance. And yes, it’s single moms who bear the brunt of the
single-parent stigma, not the absentee or abusive dads who are not in the
picture. I’m thinking, for example, RickSantorum’s helpful suggestion that single mothers needed, quote, a swift “kick in
the butt.” That’ll show ‘em!
Of course, it’s a certain subset of single moms in
particular that get shat on: low-income single moms and single moms of color
are seen as problems in society, but being a financially well-off woman who adopts or has her own kid(s) on her
own can be seen as strong and independent, even noble. Instead we should be
focusing on creating scenarios that help all women create families when it is
financially prudent for them to do so through comprehensive sex education,
access to contraception and abortion services.
Jessica Wakeman | The Frisky
