• Mrs Josephine Alai

There is a misconception out there that women who are single mothers have questionable moral virtues.

As a result of this, there are many families who would not encourage their sons to marry such women or even permit their daughters to associate with them.

Sadly, some religious institutions even discriminate against them especially those who had children out of wedlock tagging them as unworthy, irresponsible or bad mothers.

This is a matter of concern to Mrs Josephine Alai, the Founder of Single Parenting With Purpose (SPWP), local non-governmental organisation, who has said that it was time society discarded such mentality, describing it as “very unfortunate “.

The SPWP is an organisation which is a supports single mothers.

“Our society has not made life easy for lots of single mothers” she lamented. She explained that several reasons accounted for a woman to be a single mother.

“Some lost their spouses, others had to run from abusive relationships, some from failed relationships and several others” she explained.

Mrs. Alai wondered how any of the above reasons could be the woman’s fault necessitating any name calling.

“It is worth noting that some women want to have decent life and good relationship hoping for stable marriage. However, if a child is borne out of that and the relationship doesn’t end well, that doesn’t mean the person has lived a bad life” she said.

She said that though there were single parents who were males, the judgemental lens of sociery seemed to be focused entirely on females which according to her was discriminatory, unfair and should not be entertained.

She said single mothers constantly dealt with many challenges largely associated with raising the children single handedly which made some go into depression.

“It takes a lot of resilience to survive as a single mother and society must help encourage and support them in every way possible to lessen their burden” she pleaded.

The Founder of SPWP encouraged single mothers to continue to be strong even in the face of provocation and concentrate on how to make life better for themselves and their children. 

From Dzifa Tetteh Tay, Tema.