Single Mothers

The house is quiet now, yet angry words are echoing and I can't sleep. Another fight. I can't remember how it started. The only thing that matters is that I don't talk back, don't egg him on and hope he'll stomp off to bed soon. In his wake, I fantasize about throwing my husband of 12 years out on his ear. But reality rears its head. If I left him now, I would have to leave school. I'm tough enough to stick it out.

Oh, Octomom. You've been through so much--one minute you're up and the next you're down. This must be a down moment for Nadya Suleman, since she recently supposedly admitted to In Touch Weekly that she hates her babies. "They disgust me," she reportedly told the magazine. If true that's sad news, but maybe not unexpected, considering some studies show that single mothers (even ones who don't have 14 children, among them a set of octuplets) and their children may be stressed and suffer greater health and other consequences compared with their married counterparts.

Single mothers countywide will be feted at La Escuelita del Pueblo on Saturday as part of an early Mother's Day celebration. The mothers, mostly low-income women and teenagers who have been receiving free English lessons at La Escuelita, will be treated to live entertainment, food and gifts. "With this celebration, we are showing our appreciation for the single mother's role as a hard-working woman," Escuelita founder Jimmy Ramos said.

Being an unwed mother can be tough — on women's emotions, on their finances and, research shows, on their health.   A new study published Thursday in the American Sociological Review shows that the negative health consequences for women who give birth out of wedlock can be long lasting — and are unlikely to go away when those women marry later in life. Lead author Kristi Williams, an associate professor of sociology at Ohio State University, looked at data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, which followed nearly 13,000 men and women born between 1957 and 1965.

Single mothers in the Truslow Avenue neighborhood will be honored today with an early Mother's Day party. The mothers, most of whom work to support their children but earn minimum or below-minimum wages, rarely are treated to special tributes that recognize their sacrifices as single parents, said event organizer Jimmy Ramos, founder of La Escuelita del Pueblo, a makeshift school where free, weekend English classes are offered.

As Israel grapples with the big issues of peace and war and occupation, the country's social fabric is in danger of unraveling. That is the message Vicki Knafo has brought to Jerusalem this summer. A single mother of three from Mitzpe Ramon, a small, economically depressed town on Israel's southern periphery, Knafo captured Israel's imagination by walking 120 miles to set up camp in front of the Finance Ministry's office, down the street from the Knesset.

Once a taboo subject, unwed mothers were very much the topic at a recent tea staged by the Adoption Guild of Southern Orange County. John Ortega, chairman of the board and co-founder of Clothestime Inc., opened his contemporary, bay-side estate on the Balboa Peninsula to about 200 women for the guild's "Patroness Tea."

Single mother Michele White is among the lucky ones. "I have something I can call my home and I don't have to deal with the stress of living with other people," said White, mother of 2-year-old Anthony. "I've never had my own house." White, 24, is among eight single mothers with young children who recently moved into an apartment house on 11th Street--a 70-year-old complex that has been transformed to a place these parents can call home.

The growing tragedy of single-parent black families is finally beginning to receive the national attention that it deserves. A majority of black infants today are born to unmarried women, dramatically more than was the case in the 1950s and '60s. Mother and child often are poor and heavily dependent on welfare. When we see the faces and hear the words of the mothers and fathers and children, as in Bill Moyers' powerful special report last month, we feel an urgent need for answers.

The county Board of Supervisors on Tuesday applauded the private sector for resuscitating a Los Angeles-area project whose goal of helping single mothers break a cycle of poverty and welfare dependency had been threatened by financial problems.

A single mother who alleged she was sexually assaulted by a Los Angeles County sheriff's deputy during a 2008 traffic stop was awarded a $245,000 settlement Tuesday. The Downey woman said she had been pulled over after midnight in Paramount, and told she'd be jailed for drunk driving. But when the deputy returned to her driver's side window, he told her "she looked like a nice girl," according to her lawsuit, and said: "What are you going to do for me in order for me not to bring you to jail tonight?"

Over the past week, a drama has been in progress outside two of the city's most expensive office buildings, 2000 Avenue of the Stars and the Century Plaza Tower in Century City. Two weeks ago, 16 of the janitors who clean the high-rises that are home to some of the world's richest talent agencies, financial service companies and law firms were laid off. Their colleagues walked off the job in sympathy, and other members of SEIU, the union that represents them, have been staging a variety of protests, including a hunger strike that ended Friday.

Marianne Hill feared the worst last week when she was summoned from her office to the lobby of MEND, a Pacoima charity crowded with families in line to sign up for the Christmas boxes the group gives out each year. Had someone's frustration boiled over? Hill wondered. "Occasionally, we've had a client who was unruly or drunk. This has been such a difficult year," she said. "I didn't know what I'd find when I got downstairs." What she found was lunch. Enchiladas, taquitos, beans, macaroni salad, flan.

The man who fatally stabbed a woman at her Mid-City apartment last week, hours after she filed a domestic violence report against him, was twice deported to Mexico and had two prior felony convictions for domestic violence, according to government records. On Monday, authorities formally identified the man, who was fatally shot by police as he attacked and killed Flor Medrano, 30, in her apartment in the 1300 block of Cochran Avenue on Wednesday. The attacker, Daniel Carlon, 23, was described as a Mexican national who was living here illegally and had a history of threatening and harassing women.

UCLA linebacker Reggie Carter sits in front of his locker on game day, his ears filling with lyrics and his eyes filling with tears. His teammates see the intensity build. I gotta thank the Lord that you made me There are no words that can express how I feel Ya never kept a secret, always stayed real And I appreciate how ya raised me And all the extra love that you gave me Carter tries to live every day as he was taught by his mother, but game days are when the Tupac Shakur song "Dear Mama" really lights a fuse.

We tend to think of the U.S. justice system as the best in the world -- as Americans we can be blindly self-righteous like that, going through life assuming that the people who should are paying attention to the "innocent until proven guilty" clause on which it was built.

Single mothers in Orange County are nearly four times more likely to be poor than married couples with children, according to figures released by the U.S. Census. With a mean income of $27,723, single mothers earn $10,266 less annually than the $37,989 income of single fathers, and considerably less than half the $67,366 mean income of a married-couple family.

Calling the ceremony "a celebration of good news," a team of social service workers, private contractors and city officials Tuesday kicked off what will be one of the county's few shelters that caters to single homeless women and their children.

Roberta Busby's daughter Gabriella turned 5 recently. But the 27-year-old single mother of two couldn't join the family celebration. Busby remained secluded in an intensive care ward at the Grossman Burn Center in Sherman Oaks, recovering from second- and third-degree burns over 40% of her body. Nearly three weeks ago, she was set ablaze in what police say was a vicious attack at a Tarzana club where Busby worked as an exotic dancer.

She has a baby in her arms and another growing inside. She says she knows about love, says she found it on the streets, where boys fight with razors and a one-armed glue-huffer whispers the pretty things a girl yearns to hear before she curls and sleeps in the abandoned buildings that clutter Cairo's heart. Amira Osman Dakhly left the streets a few days ago, rushing past the new houses on the hill to the homeless shelter, the one with yellow walls and toddlers in the courtyard.