The term “single mother” is not easily defined. Women of any age and background fall into this category. A single mother could still be in high school or planning to attend her 30th high school reunion, separated, widowed, divorced, or never married. Single mothers are both desperately poor and financially secure. Some single mothers might even be married, with a husband in the military or with a job that takes him away from home for extended periods.

Despite the diversity of the identity of single mothers, the media focuses on just a few select groups: teen mothers, welfare or homeless mothers, or women who became single mothers by choice, such as through IVF.

Even today, being a single mother has a lot of stigma attached to it, especially if you are unmarried when your child is born. When I found out that I was pregnant with my son, I had a great job, excellent insurance, lived in a great area, but had a crummy boyfriend. Sometimes I wonder if my situation would have been more acceptable if I had married the crummy boyfriend and quit the great job.

I had a very stressful pregnancy. I had preeclampsia and had an emergency C-section. After my son was born, I developed pneumonia. I was alone at the hospital because I thought my son’s father was coming so I didn’t call my parents because I was trying to avoid a confrontation. However, he did not show up. Since no one was there for me at the hospital, my doctor sent social services in to see me. I remember being half asleep in my hospital bed, trying to ignore the pain from the staples in my stomach and the breathing tube in my mouth, and looking up to see a strange woman attempting to talk to me. She told me that she wanted to discuss my options and had some adoption pamphlets for me. I asked her why she was there, because my doctor was well aware of my intentions of keeping my son. She took my hand and told me that it’s very difficult to raise a child alone, and there is no shame in choosing a better life for your child. I won’t go into all the details that occurred after that, but she was definitely convinced of my lack of need for her services. I am sure she had good intentions and was only doing her job, but I wish she had not made so many assumptions.

One of the questions that will get you a No. 1 spot at the top of my “you know what” list is to ask me if I ever look back and wish I would have had an abortion, knowing I would have to raise a child alone. As shocking as that question is to me, it has been asked of me in various forms by 17 different people (yes, I have kept count because it is so appalling and outrageous to ask a mother such a question).

Why do single mothers still face some of these prejudices? Have we evolved yet as a society to truly accept women as being capable of raising a child alone without feeling like she did something wrong?