single parents

Honestly, I don’t feel like people are stressed out enough about families and children going hungry next month. I really don’t. Thinking about them cutting SNAP benefits has me sick to my stomach. Do I have SNAP? No. As an adult, I only qualified for food stamps for less than a year when I was a newly single mom.

I only received around $300 a month to help feed myself and my three kids. I worked full-time at an AT&T call center as a customer service representative for $14/hr. My ex-husband paid his child support faithfully and always provided extra if the kids needed something. It still wasn’t enough.

I needed a safety net for the safety net, and thankfully, my ex-husband and my parents filled the gap when all that was left was a couple of packs of ramen noodles and milk for the toddler. In those moments of extreme scarcity, I had privilege. I had parents who loved me enough to shuffle their own bills around or do odd jobs to send me money for food. I had an ex who would rather he struggle than have his kids miss a meal. I had friends who would let us stay with them for a week so they could feed us, and the kids were none the wiser.

Family outing on a sunny day.Courtesy of Kind, Not Nice

Then, I got another job. After 90 days, I got my first raise. I went from $14/hr to $17/hr, which cut my SNAP benefits to around $100. A few months later, I got another raise. I was making a whopping $21/hr, and my SNAP was cut again to $36 a month. It was more of a hassle to renew it than it was helpful, so I never renewed.

Instead, I struggled. My number of children did not decrease, and I worked 40+ hours a week. I lived in a single-wide trailer on a dirt road in the middle of nowhere because that’s all I could afford. My youngest went to live with his dad for a year because I couldn’t afford daycare on top of everything else, and he could enroll him on base. Even that was a privilege.

Children enjoying a sunny day at the beach.Courtesy of Kind, Not Nice

Over 70% of people on SNAP benefits work a job, but not everyone has a village to lean on. Without my village, I would not be where I am. They show up to hold me when my knees want to give out, but other people are trying to get through the weeks with bloodied, throbbing, scabbed knees because there’s no one to catch them when their knees buckle. The majority of single parents don’t plan on becoming single parents. I know I didn’t.

Popping out babies so I could get that fat, nearly nonexistent food stamp money was not on my bingo card of life. I did things the “right way.” I met a boy who was kind. We got married before having kids. I earned a bachelor's degree. He was military. We raised our kids together, the best we could, for nearly 15 years. I still wound up being a single mom on food stamps, robbing Peter to pay Paul, trying to shield my kids from how poor we actually were.

Children by the lakeside, enjoying a peaceful moment together.Courtesy of Kind, Not Nice

I still got dirty looks from people as I checked out with my SNAP card because I was holding an iPhone and a Coach purse, both of which were older than Jesus’ first pair of sandals, and the purse was a hand-me-down from my sister. People judge because they can’t imagine that it would be them. They’ve convinced themselves that they made the “right” choices in life, so they’re shielded from ever having to experience the consequences of being poor.

They believe poverty is a punishment for poor moral choices instead of a result of capitalistic greed. They believe the billionaires in silk ties that cost more than their mortgage payment telling them that paying more in taxes on their gajillion dollars would cause them hardship over the elderly man in the food bank line. They believe the rich fat cats because, in their mind, only good people reach that level of wealth, when in reality God is in the pauper, not the prince.

Joyful moments: A playful child, fun costumes, and curious exploration.Courtesy of Kind, Not Nice

One thing they emphasized in my social work program was that at any moment, we could be on the other side of the desk needing help. Even with our fancy degrees, we are much closer to being the ones going without meals than the ones looking down from their ivory towers telling us to eat a $300 million ballroom and two private jets.