Single parents fight a label: 'productivity risk'

When Carolyn Gable's then 4-year-old son woke up one morning feeling too unwell for day care, she had no doubt he would recover.

She was less sure about how her reputation at work would fare.

After 10 years of waiting tables at Hyatt Hotels, the single mother of two had finally landed a stable customer-service position at a transportation company just days earlier.

Ms. Gable scoured newspaper classifieds for in-home care until she found an agreeable nanny late in the evening.

"The moment you use your child as an excuse in the workplace you are stigmatized," says Gable, who was afraid she would lose her job if she called in sick during her first week.

That was two decades ago.

But Gable, still a working single mother, represents a deep-seated workplace trend: Single mothers, say experts, are treated differently at work from other employees.

They typically have a harder time finding stable employment, are paid less, and have less opportunity for advancement than other workers.

Single fathers face the same issues. Experts say the stigma is related more to responsibility than to gender. But only 1 in 6 single working parents is a father with sole custody, according to census data.

"There's a lot of prejudice in the workplace" directed toward single mothers, says Gina Delmastro of the Gottman Institute, a Seattle-based marriage and family therapy clinic. "They still face the stigma of being divorced."

With that stigma comes greater difficulty in finding jobs, say experts, because employers tend to view them as less flexible.

Their abilities may also be called into question.

A new American University Law School study shows businesswomen are rated as similar in competence to businessmen – until they have children, at which point they are rated similar to the elderly. Those polled represented a broad public cross section, not just prospective employers.

This perception, say experts, has triggered a small wave of discrimination lawsuits.

The university's study cites recent court decisions where mothers and fathers have successfully sued for workplace discrimination due to their status as parents.

"Courts are beginning to understand that an employee, despite an impeccable performance record, may experience workplace discrimination once he or she becomes a parent, or begins a flexible work arrangement to accommodate child rearing," says AU executive director Joan Williams.

"There is plenty of hiring discrimination against single mothers," agrees Mark Rednick, president of MRI Sales Consultants in Dallas. "The hiring person may never voice it or think it, but subconsciously they feel they will have more trouble with a single mother than with other employees."

Single mothers make up about 18 percent of the workforce, according to the US Department of Labor. As a group, they earn about 20 percent less on average than single women or married moms.

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