The New Uprooted

The New Uprooted explores the relationship between the single mother and her social and physical environments. Mulroy examines how demographically diverse single mothers experience dual roles as sole family breadwinner and sole resident parent in the 1990s environment of scarce resources. Families headed by single mothers have become a unit of social concern not only because they represent a changing family form, but because their economic marginality threatens a downward spiral toward the instability of urban poverty. The mothers' key settlement issue is the high cost of housing their families in relation to low wages, irregular or nonpayment of child support, public welfare benefit levels, and the effects of domestic violence.