Mr. President: It’s time to create a ‘Single Mother’s Day’

Back on May 9, 1914, President Woodrow Wilson issued a proclamation calling for a day of celebration in honor of all the mothers in the country. 

More than 100 years later, it’s time to create a Single Mother’s Day. I say so because I grew up in abject poverty and was often homeless. By the time I was 17 years old, my family and I had been evicted from 34 homes. From those homes, we would end up living out of a car, at my grandparents for a few nights or at a cheap motel until finding our way to a project or the next very temporary apartment. 

During that very nomadic existence, I often found myself surrounded by single mothers. Many were African American. With no support, each day these single moms would work two or three jobs while sacrificing their own happiness to pay the bills, teach their children right from wrong, try to shield them from crime and then start the whole process again the next morning, certain that nothing was going to get better.

They became not only my heroes but my enduring role models.

Years later, I ended up as director of communications for former Sen. Bob Dole (R-Kansas). The same Bob Dole who had lost the use of his right arm – and almost his life – while fighting the Nazis in the hills of Italy during the closing weeks of World War II. 

Every year, as Mother’s Day approaches, I think back on a conversation I had with the senator in which we both bemoaned that the word “hero” was thrown around much too loosely and too frequently. (It was a title, by the way, that he would never claim for himself.)

As we talked, he asked me for an example of a hero. I offered up the single mothers who inspired me as a child. I explained their lifestyles, their sacrifice and how they were often stigmatized because of their single motherhood. The senator – who came from very trying and humbling times – nodded his head in approval and said, “Yup.”

Tomorrow, as millions of married moms are taken to brunch and showered with presents, uncounted thousands of single moms will be forgotten, ignored or judged for their lifestyle choice. These are women (like my mom at one point, my sister, my niece and others I have encountered) who, despite their decency, work ethic and sacrifice, often feel shunned, abandoned by society and hopeless.   

For those reasons and more, I propose that President Joe Biden and Congress create a Single Mother’s Day. At the very least, in the form of a proclamation.

Some might object, arguing that Mother’s Day by definition includes single mothers. Others may object based on a distorted understanding of family values. But single motherhood – now a deliberate choice for many women – simply is not the same in many circumstances — most especially for those millions of single moms struggling to create a life for themselves and their children. Any positive recognition of that struggle, devotion and sacrifice by our government would mean something to those who do feel stigmatized, abandoned or alone.

As for those who might object on the grounds of family values, I say: You have not seen character, dignity, courage and work ethic until you have seen a single mother fighting against all odds to raise her children to the best of her ability. They are the very personification of family values.

Tomorrow, as the president and members of Congress either have Mother’s Day brunch served to their wives and daughters or take them out to a local restaurant, maybe they can take a moment to wonder whether the woman who is about to serve them that wonderful meal is a single mom going unnoticed and unrecognized.

Douglas MacKinnon, a political and communications consultant, was a writer in the White House for Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. He was special assistant for policy and communications at the Pentagon during the last three years of the Bush administration.