Single parents fight a label: 'productivity risk'

Ken Siegel, organizational psychologist and chief executive of The Impact Group, a corporate-management consultancy, says single working mothers tend to hit a glass ceiling because management perceives they have limits to how much they can take on.

"Whether that perception is true or untrue is immaterial," says Dr. Siegel. "People will come to a conclusion that they cannot take on the responsibilities and duties of a senior position because they are single moms."

Married or single, women hold only 12.4 percent of board seats at Fortune 500 companies, according to Catalyst, a nonprofit research organization that focuses on women in business.

While the number of single mothers in senior positions has not been formally tracked, experts doubt a high percentage of this subgroup is single. Sears, IBM, and Hewlett-Packard declined to disclose data on single mothers working at executive levels in their companies.

Another reason single mothers have more difficulty advancing their careers, say experts, is the inability to take part in social activities after work.

"It's the old adage that more business gets done on the golf course than in the office," says Siegel. "The extracurricular social world in business is much more difficult for a single mom to navigate."

A lack of high-quality, extended-hour day care is a stumbling block for many single mothers. Corporate and government-sponsored day-care assistance could help, say experts.

"It's typically only big companies that can do this," says Jeff Heath, president of the Landstone Group, an executive search and consulting company in New York. "And it's not practical that all single mothers could find employment with big companies that have on-site day care."

But perhaps the biggest step toward finding a solution, say experts, is admitting there is a problem.

"This is one of the undiscussables that people are aware of but don't have the courage to bring up," says Siegel. "Right now, no one wants to acknowledge the problem."

Gable, the former waitress, offers a ray of hope to frustrated single working mothers.

Bucking the trend toward poverty-stricken single moms – census data show that 42 percent of single-mother households are poor, compared with 8 percent of households with married parents – Gable now runs a multimillion-dollar trucking company, New Age Transportation, from her basement.

And while she'd rather have recognition for raising her children almost entirely on her own, Gable recently received the Ernst & Young "Entrepreneur of the Year" award.

She also runs the Expect a Miracle Foundation, helping low-income single mothers send their children on school field trips, pay fees for extracurricular activities, and buy holiday presents.

"Being a single parent is much harder than starting a business from scratch," says Gable. "But you can do both. I was a waitress. I didn't even have a college degree. And I did it."

Page: 1 | 2