Single mothers in Romania: social vulnerability and public policies

The New Uprooted: Single Mothers in Urban Life. Elizabeth Mulroy. Westport, CT: Auburn House. 1995. 206 pp. Softcover, ISBN 086569-039-1. $16.95. Half of all of children growing up today will spend part of their childhood in a single-parent family, most of them with a single mother, and nearly half of the children now living with single mothers are poor. Because the federal welfare entitlement for poor single mothers and their children are now ended, poverty among children living with a single parent is likely to increase over the next decade. Given these facts, the mandate for more books focused on the economic problems of single mothers is clear. In The New Uprooted: Single Mothers and Urban Life, Elizabeth Mulroy claims that the public understands little about who single mothers are, how they become single mothers, and the consequences this status has for them and their children. We agree. Because of the current political climate, we welcome Mulroy's matter-of-fact approach to this new family constellation and her advocacy stance. Emphasizing a holistic approach, Mulroy does not limit her focus to politically charged issues such as welfare dependence among single mothers (which she mentions only peripherally), but draws attention to the broad array of factors that limit and jeopardize the economic security of mother-only families. The book does not, however, satisfactorily answer the questions it raises. Solo mothering is so commonly associated with economic disadvantage. Why, then, is it a growing phenomenon? Mulroy argues that domestic violence (and women's increasing willingness and ability to end violent relationships) is part of the answer, and we agree. However, we suspect that this is only one of many factors. As qualitative researchers, we think that one of the best ways to identify those factors is to spend a lot of time talking with single mothers. Mulroy's study does include qualitative interviews with 73 single mothers in New England, as well as interviews with officials of local, state, and federal social services and housing services. She uses several women's stories to exemplify what she identifies as single mothers' three most basic needs (personal safety, affordable housing, and employment that pays a living wage). But anecdotes do not substitute for systematic analysis, and she offers little of the latter in presenting her qualitative data. Mulroy amply shows that single mothers are a diverse group, and she compellingly presents the factors associated with their economic and social vulnerability. …

We investigate the relationship between exposure to Hurricanes Katrina and/or Rita and mental health resilience by vulnerability status, with particular focus on the mental health outcomes of single mothers versus the general public. We advance a measurable notion of mental health resilience to disaster events. We also calculate the economic costs of poor mental health days added by natural disaster exposure. Negative binomial analyses show that hurricane exposure increases the expected count of poor mental health days for all persons by 18.7% (95% confidence interval [CI], 7.44-31.14%), and by 71.88% (95% CI, 39.48-211.82%) for single females with children. Monthly time-series show that single mothers have lower event resilience, experiencing higher added mental stress. Results also show that the count of poor mental health days is sensitive to hurricane intensity, increasing by a factor of 1.06 (95% CI, 1.02-1.10) for every billion (U.S.$) dollars of damage added for all exposed persons, and by a factor of 1.08 (95% CI, 1.03-1.14) for single mothers. We estimate that single mothers, as a group, suffered over $130 million in productivity loss from added postdisaster stress and disability. Results illustrate the measurability of mental health resilience as a two-dimensional concept of resistance capacity and recovery time. Overall, we show that natural disasters regressively tax disadvantaged population strata.

This article analyzes the contribution of Health Education promoted by nursing professionals in the Specialized Care Services (SAE) of Brazil’s Unified Health System (SUS), focusing on adherence to antiretroviral treatment (ART) by seropositive pregnant women and the prevention of vertical transmission of HIV. This qualitative and theoretical research was based on an integrative literature review of 225 scientific publications from 2018 to 2025. The findings show that nursing plays a strategic role in strengthening prenatal care, especially through educational practices such as individualized guidance, group discussions, thematic workshops, and the use of accessible educational materials. Qualified listening, empathy, and humanized care are central elements in building therapeutic bonds and overcoming barriers such as stigma, misinformation, and social vulnerability. The profile of pregnant women assisted in SAE is marked by low educational attainment, unemployment, single motherhood, and recent HIV diagnosis, which demands a sensitive and contextualized approach from the nursing team. On the other hand, professionals face challenges such as work overload, lack of resources, and insufficient specialized training. The study highlights the need for investment in continuing education, standardized educational protocols, and multiprofessional integration. It concludes that Health Education is a powerful tool to promote ART adherence, reduce vertical transmission, and strengthen the citizenship of women living with HIV.

Представлены результаты изучения социальных стереотипов по отношению к многодетным и одиноким матерям по результатам социологического исследования населения региона на примере Северо-Западного федерального округа.Выявлено, что многодетные и одинокие матери не чувствуют себя защищенными от бедности, притеснений из-за своего пола, произвола чиновников.Одинокие матери часто сталкиваются с проблемами в сфере трудовой деятельности, а именно с отказом в приеме на работу по причине социального статуса и потерей работы.Ситуация осложняется наличием ролевого конфликта у работающих матерей.Показана явно выраженная двойственность позиции: с одной стороны, ожидание помощи от государства, а с другой -понимание, что надеяться на государство нельзя и в поисках выхода из проблемной ситуации надо действовать самостоятельно.Обосновано, что в российском обществе

Eviction as a Social Determinant of Sexual Health Outcomes.

Better adherence to dietary guidelines during pregnancy is supposed to result in healthier perinatal outcomes. We aim to characterize the diets of pregnant women by hypothesis‐driven and exploratory approaches and describe potential social determinants. Analyses included 12 048 mothers from the French nationwide ELFE birth cohort. Dietary intake over the last three months of the pregnancy was assessed by a food frequency questionnaire. Two hypothesis‐driven scores (the Diet Quality score, based on benchmarks derived from the National Health and Nutrition Program Guidelines, and the PANDiet score, based on nutrient intake) were calculated. Exploratory dietary patterns were also identified by principal component analysis. Multiple linear regressions were used to assess associations of maternal social characteristics with dietary patterns, accounting for the possible effect modification by their migration status. Five dietary patterns were identified: the Western, Balanced, Bread and toppings, Processed products, and Milk and breakfast cereals. Younger maternal age, single motherhood, unemployment and the presence of older children in the household were related to a suboptimal diet during pregnancy. The less acculturated the women were, the healthier and less processed their diets were, independent of their socio‐economic position. Several social determinants of the quality of women's diets were however moderated by their migration status. These findings shed light on the relations between indicators of social vulnerability, such as single motherhood and unemployment, and poorer diet quality. Given the reduced diet quality that accompanies the acculturation process, it is of paramount importance to identify the specific factors or obstacles that affect migrant women in maintaining their diet quality advantage over the majority population.

PurposeSocial welfare scholarship has not paid adequate attention to the phenomenon of single-parent women in Asia, especially in terms of their economic and social vulnerabilities. This study aims to explore the strategies employed by women who are single parents to secure their families from socioeconomic issues. It also delves into the experiences and viewpoints of families regarding the social institutions they turn to for assistance during times of hardship – whether it be the state, market, or informal networks.Design/methodology/approachThe data were collected through 33 semi-structured interviews, with informants selected using the purposive sampling technique in South Sumatra Province, Indonesia, from February 2023 to July 2023. This number was obtained based on informants who were included in the criteria the researchers determined, which included “being a female single parent” and “being over the age of 17,” which is the minimum age for Indonesians to marry. Others included “having dependents to support, be they children and/or the respondent’s family” and occupying the main role as “household head” – all of which defined whether someone belongs to the “vulnerable group.”FindingsThe study highlights the significance of informal support for single mothers facing economic hardship. Still, overreliance on it can lead to concerns about the sustainability of the everyday social safety net they receive. Social exclusion is also problematic due to societal assumptions about divorce and widowhood. The last highlight is how 'deskilling' among single parents has complicated the challenges women face to re-enter the workforce.Originality/valueThis study’s outcomes provide crucial insights into analyzing the patterns of single-parent families in Indonesia and serve as a framework for further research on the resilience of single parents in developing countries.

Introdução: Entre os anos de 2015 e 2016, o Brasil apresentou um aumento de casos de microcefalia em neonatos, durante uma epidemia de Zika Vírus (ZIKV) - um Flavivírus descoberto em 1947 na floresta de Zika, Uganda. Durante esse período foi confirmada a relação entre a contaminação por ZIKV na gestação e alterações cerebrais congênitas graves em recém-nascidos. As consequências de tal correlação foram profundas, afetando famílias e comunidades e exigindo uma mobilização significativa de recursos e apoio para os cuidados e desenvolvimento das crianças afetadas. Objetivo: O objetivo geral deste estudo é associar a infecção pelo ZIKV com os distúrbios congênitos neurológicos. Metodologia: Consiste em revisão analítica de literatura, realizada a partir de artigos científicos e base de dados de parâmetros seguros, tais quais SciELO, PubMed, Google Acadêmico e Ministério da Saúde. Além de uma visita técnica para um embasamento científico com uma profissional da área, bem como uma intervenção social, desenvolvida para orientação de gestantes, por meio de um folder informativo. Desenvolvimento: Dentre os riscos neurológicos, deletérios ao feto durante o desenvolvimento, a microcefalia mostrou-se o sinal mais evidenciado entre as crianças afetadas, relacionando-se à capacidade de disseminação transplacentária e ao mecanismo apoptótico das células embrionárias. Entre a população atingida, observou-se maior incidência na região Nordeste, entre mães solteiras, com idade maior que 30 anos, baixa escolaridade, autodeclaradas negras, de baixa renda e residentes em áreas com menor cobertura em políticas públicas. Ademais, entre os desfechos, o óbito entre os neonatos atingidos teve média de 1,4 meses, além de prematuridade e baixo peso ao nascer, relacionando condições nutricionais e de saúde com fatores sociais. Por mais, notabilizou-se que a obtenção de alterações em neonatos, por vezes, foi evidenciada somente após o nascimento e o diagnóstico fora dificultado no início epidêmico. Entretanto, o impacto no enfrentamento mostrou-se integral não somente para as crianças, mas às famílias atingidas, evidenciando a necessidade do amparo e a imperiosidade de ações educativas voltadas à proteção contra o vírus. Considerações finais: Pelo exposto, concluiu-se que os riscos neurológicos em neonatos decorrentes do ZIKV estiveram associados a uma tríade de aspectos: as condições sociodemográficas e ambientais facilitaram a disseminação rápida do vírus notadamente entre a população com maiores vulnerabilidades sociais, desencadeando danos neurológicos aos fetos em desenvolvimento, maiores no primeiro trimestre da gestação. A prevenção destaca-se como uma das formas mais importantes de ação em saúde no combate à proliferação desse vírus.

Qualitative evaluation of an intervention to reduce energy poverty: Effects perceived by participants according to typologies of social vulnerability

Theorizing Agency: New Directions in Research on HIV/AIDS Activism Jallicia Jolly (bio) Evidence of Being: The Black Gay Cultural Renaissance and the Politics of Violence. By Darius Bost. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2018. 192 pages. $82.50 (cloth). $27.50 (paper). Let the Record Show: A Political History of ACT UP New York, 1987–1993. By Sarah Schulman. New York: Macmillan, 2021. 736 pages. $40.00 (cloth). Remaking a Life: How Women Living with HIV/AIDS Confront Inequality. By Celeste Watkins-Hayes. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2019. 336 pages. $85.00 (cloth). $29.95 (paper). To Make the Wounded Whole: The African American Struggle against HIV/AIDS. By Dan Royles. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2020. 332 pages. $95.00 (cloth). $29.95 (paper). The fourth decade of the HIV/AIDS pandemic on the heels of the COVID-19 outbreak has prompted an undoing of our sense of self and community in relation to illness and inequality. The responses to these two historic pandemics have not only laid bare preexisting racial, gender, sexual, and structural inequities but also illuminated the perennial silences and erasures that have long marked HIV/AIDS in the United States. The initial responses to the pandemic in the 1980s focused on the experiences and needs of white cis-gender gay men, whose influential mobilization was widely documented in mainstream political activism, media, public discourse, and public health interventions. Since then, mainstream HIV/AIDS research has focused heavily on microlevel behavioral risk factors that inform biological susceptibility to HIV transmission, neglecting the histories of marginalization and structural violence that have long facilitated the exposure to social vulnerabilities and slow [End Page 169] death. This emphasis on individualized risk in HIV research and traditional public health interventions coupled with public discourses and media narratives that stigmatize LGBTQ and Black communities as active transmitters of HIV reinforced the homophobia, structural racism, and institutional sexism that has undermined effective approaches to the pandemic. The advent of medication and technology has catalyzed the transition of HIV/AIDS from a “death sentence” to a “chronic illness,” which has produced new social, political, and cultural realities. Of course, for as long as HIV/AIDS has existed, the labor of feminist and queer communities of color to highlight the racial, gendered, and cultural dynamics of disease and state violence have upended linear narratives of HIV/AIDS progress. Alongside the direct action, consciousness raising, and coalitional work of the leading HIV activist group, ACT UP, Black organizers cultivated grassroots collectives to offer communal care for the sick and dying, marshal resources to advocate for their strategic interests, and amplify their overlapping concerns for basic resources, rights, and recognition. In particular, Black feminists and Black gay and lesbian communities—scholars, activists, community leaders, artists—have mounted radical challenges to racism, state violence, and the politics of respectability by foregrounding the humanity, lives, sociality, and political labor of Black people. When we consider the backdrop of this radical activism in Cathy Cohen’s incisive reflections on the HIV/AIDS crisis, neoliberal policies, and conservative ideologies implemented by the Reagan and Clinton administrations, we see a fuller picture of the racial, gendered, sexual, and structural contexts of the pandemic. Cohen’s often-quoted analytic category of “punks, bulldaggers, and welfare queens” describes the historical marginalization of subjects—lesbians, gays, transgender and bisexual persons, single mothers, and state aid recipients.1 As Jafari Allen notes, these subjects are marked not only as “unruly would-be subject citizens, but also as outside cultural boundaries of belonging and care.”2 Decades later, Black, feminist, and queer scholars and organizers continue to build on these intellectual and activist legacies while embracing the radical potentiality of HIV/AIDS activism to transform the HIV/AIDS pandemic and US culture as we know it. The review essay maps this emergent wave of scholarship on the racial, gender, and cultural stories of HIV/AIDS, as well as the political and social dimensions of the evolving landscape of HIV/AIDS activism represented by recent publications from Sarah Schulman, Dan Royles, Darius Bost, and Celeste Watkins-Hayes. These works signal an expansive generation of HIV/AIDS research that foregrounds alternative political and historical...

Objectives The purpose of this study is to examine the psychological development of children of single mothers through psychodynamic theory and to provide therapeutic suggestions. Methods For this purpose, first, the psychosocial experiences of single mothers were analyzed. Second, the psychological development of children of single mothers was analyzed based on Freud's psychoanalytic theory, Object Relations theory, and Attachment theory. Third, PCIT (Parent-Child Interaction Therapy) was proposed as an alternative intervention to promote the healthy psychological development of children of single mothers. Results Single mothers have physical, psychological, and social vulnerabilities for raising their children alone in the absence of a partner. From the perspective of psychodynamic theory, the psychosocial situation of single mothers acts as a limiting point for their children's psychological development. Therefore, it is necessary to understand the uniqueness of psychological development of children of single mothers, and psychosocial interventions supplementing for their vulnerabilities are required. Conclusions Finally, the implications were introduced, and follow-up studies were suggested based on these findings.

Controversy exists over whether to target public- and private-sector programs to female-headed households in developing countries in the attempt to combat poverty and social disadvantage. The issues related to the definition and measurement of female headship and the importance of the concept for development policy are discussed. A systematic review is then presented of the empirical evidence on the relation between female headship and poverty. If female-headed households tend to be poorer on average than other households headship should seriously be considered as a potentially useful criterion for targeting antipoverty interventions especially in developing countries where means testing is not feasible. The authors examine the potential costs and benefits of targeting female headship and review the experience of Chile one of the few countries which has targeted female headship through government intervention and the only one which has evaluation data available. The analysis of the project experience is used along with a review of the empirical evidence to answer the question of the desirability and efficiency of targeting female headship in order to reduce poverty in developing countries.

In the social-scientific literature on the welfare state, scholars have long argued that the quality and extent of support available to workers outside the market—thecitizen's wage—has a direct impact on their standard of living and an indirect effect on the bargaining position of labor within market relationships. In a parallel way, recent feminist scholarship on social policy has pointed out that how—if at all—the state steps in to assist women in their role as mothers when marital relationships break up or never form has a direct impact on the standard of living within motheronly families, and an indirect effect on women's bargaining position within two-parent families by (at least partially) setting the terms on which they will live should they want to exit relationships. Thus, just as analysts have argued that the level of the citizen's wage is revealing about the effect of policy on class inequality, a focus on what the state does for single mothers and their children is analytically strategic for assessing the relationship between policy and gender inequality. The situation of mother-only families reveals the inherent social and economic vulnerability of all women that exists due to their childrearing and domestic responsibilities and their low earnings, which is usually masked when women are in households with wage-earning men.