Single mothers | <– Date –> <– Thread –> |
From: Deborah Greenspan (dgreenspan![]() |
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Date: Tue, 27 Aug 1996 20:11:02 -0500 |
Hi. Thanks for taking a moment to help me with some questions I have about cohousing. I am the founder and a member of an organization called 'Single Mothers of America' which was created to help single working mothers survive in a world designed for two parent families. In general, though we come from middle and upper middle class backrounds, because of divorce or death, we have ended up with most of the responsibility for providing for our children. Some of us receive minimal child support; most of us do not receive any. We work in order to survive, and, at the same time, we try to provide the emotional support our children need, and be there for them when they need it. As you can imagine, it's not an easy task being both father and mother to your children. About 11 years ago, when my first daughter was very young, I started thinking about the difficulties of raising children in our society, and wondering how I could do a better job, considering the circumstances. It seems that regardless of their marital state, women do most of the work of childrearing. Even when a man is in the house, he, very often, has other concerns. Thus, the first thing we women learn, when we have children, is to rely on each other for support. That's when I began to toy with the idea of community. Architecture, I realized, is the drawback. It's difficult to be as supportive as we'd like to be when we live in different houses. When I became a single mother, and life got even harder, I began to see, in earnest, that the best way for single mothers to live is together. What I conceived was a co-housing community. Single mothers generally have few financial resources. Though we all work, it's often at low paying jobs, either because we don't have the education and training to go after those high paying jobs, or because, being single mothers, we don't have the time. I, for example, went back to college when I got divorced, earned a BA and will achieve an MA next spring, but I still don't have the kind of time available that those high powered corporate jobs require. I need to be home a lot. At this time, I teach. I want to create co-housing for single working mothers so we can help each other with child care, cooking and all the rest and provide the support for each other that we can't get anywhere else. I believe this community has to be established as a 'rent, with option to buy' kind of place, so that mothers can try it out, and find people with whom they want to live. I am looking for two things--a developer who can work with our organization to design and build this place, and funding or grant money. I live in south Florida. SMA is a 501(c) corporation. Any answers out there? Thanks, Deborah
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Single mothers Deborah Greenspan, August 27 1996
- RE: Single mothers Rob Sandelin (Exchange), August 28 1996
- Re: Single mothers Russell Mawby, August 28 1996
- single mothers Deborah Greenspan, August 28 1996
- Re: Single mothers Russell Mawby, August 29 1996
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