Louisville Magazine

MAR 2013

Louisville Magazine is Louisville's city magazine, covering Louisville people, lifestyles, politics, sports, restaurants, entertainment and homes. Includes a monthly calendar of events.

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He hasn���t. He says he wants his hair washed in the bathroom sink. Eventually Brock gives in. She helps him lie on the counter in the bathroom and he tips his head back under the running water, like a very large baby. He���s giggling. Michael dresses in his freshly pressed trousers, a white button-down shirt, and an argyle sweater vest. He���s still young enough that he���s fun to pick clothes for, unlike Kie���Vonna, who is now style conscious and ���picky,��� Brock says. As 7:50 approaches, Michael is everywhere, doing everything but getting ready for school. Brock helps him pack up and scoots him out the door. It is colder than it was when she took the dog out and the snow stings when it hits bare skin. But the silver Impala is already toasty warm. It came with a remote starter installed. Usually, it doesn���t work. But it did this morning. Brock has a schedule to keep. She needs to clock in at King School by 8:30. Despite the lingering stereotype of lowincome single mothers, the truth is, most single mothers work. In fact, never-married mothers have been more likely to work than married foor. Te entrance is downstairs. Te bedrooms are on the third foor. She���s always climbing stairs. Ask her how many children she has and she���ll say two. Tere is 18-month-old Daishelle striding across the tile foor in a diaper and no fewer than 15 yellow-green daisy hairclips, and there is Da���Vion Flewellen, who died at birth in 2009, the victim of a serious chromosomal defect. Elliott has debt: Tere are several thousand dollars in loans for beauty school and a car so she can get out to Dixie Highway for school Monday through Tursday evenings. Her mother and stepfather watch her daughter while she���s there. Sometimes her friends will help out. ���I���m looking for a job now,��� she says. ���I have a friend I go to school with, her day care is hiring. I���d be able to take her (she gestures to Daishelle) with me.��� Such an arrangement would be ideal, especially since it���s probable Elliott will soon be ineligible for fnancial help with childcare. Beginning April 1, the state will stop accepting appli- Ebony Elliott worries that people see her daughter as ���a statistic child ��� single mother, deadbeat dad, African-American.��� mothers since the late 1990s and the advent of welfare reform. Although all women lost jobs in the recession, what hasn���t changed is the fact that never-married mothers were just as likely to work as single women without children, according to data from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. But the increasing employment levels have done nothing to fll the income gap. Far more households headed by women are considered poor or low income than households of married families. In 2010, 15 percent of Americans lived in poverty, according to the research center Child Trends. Among female-headed households, the poverty rate was 40.7 percent. All this falls particularly hard on the youngest mothers. Twenty-eight percent of married couples 18 to 24 were considered poor in 2010, a grim enough statistic. But the picture is worse for single mothers in that age bracket, 67 percent of whom are in poverty, according to Child Trends. E bony Elliott is 22 and overwhelmed. She lives in a subsidized apartment unit on Muhammad Ali Boulevard near 11th Street. She clears a place on the couch for a visitor and moves a stereo to the other side of the room. Part of it crashes to the foor after the relocation. Te foor plan here is inconvenient. Te living room and kitchen are on the second 48 LOUISVILLE MAGAZINE 3.13 cations for the Kentucky Child Care Assistance Program. Te funding won���t be restored before June 2014. Te cuts are to stave of a projected $86 million defcit in state Department of Community Based Services. In addition to the moratorium on child-care funding, income requirements for parents in the program are changing. Under the new guidelines, parents must be at the poverty level instead of the 150 percent of poverty level allowed previously. Daishelle climbs onto her mother���s leg and looks into her face. She brings her mother toys. She wanders the room and looks seriously at the reporter in the room, keeping a cautious distance. Elliott worries about Daishelle growing up without a dad. She still talks to her son���s father, who calls occasionally. She thinks her daughter���s father may be in jail. ���But even before he got locked up, he wasn���t around. He didn���t visit her.��� She worries that people see her daughter as ���a statistic child ��� single mother, deadbeat dad, African-American.��� T he statistics are not often kind. Te Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, a joint project of Princeton and Columbia universities, found that only 30 percent of fathers who are not romantically involved with the mother buy things for the child or ofer money. If dad and mom are involved, but living separately, 84 percent contribute fnancially in some way. If the mother and father live together, 97 percent of the fathers contribute. While cohabitation at birth has short-term benefts, most relationships often do not last, the study showed. Only 35 percent of unmarried couples who lived together at the time of the child���s birth are together fve years later. Te unmarried father���s involvement falls of if he isn���t in the household. By the time a child is fve, only half of nonresident fathers have seen their child in the last month. If a mother fles for child support ��� as Elliott has ��� 57 percent of the fathers will pay support by a child���s ffth birthday. If the mother fails to fle for support ��� as in Brock���s case ��� 37 percent of the fathers are still ofering help. Brock says Kie���Vonna���s dad, who is married, does what he can and sees his daughter regularly. Michael���s dad is awaiting trial for murder. Brock and many of the mothers interviewed for this story did not want the fathers named. Brock is upset when she arrives at her son���s school to take him home. Work didn���t go well. She���s frustrated. When she arrives in Michael���s classroom, a woman explains the Band-Aid on Michael���s brow. Michael and a boy in short dreads begin a rambling, disconnected story about what happened. Te mark underneath the Band-Aid is almost invisible. School is important to Brock. She was an honor-roll student herself when she graduated from Central High School in 1996. She planned to join the U.S. Air Force or the Navy after graduation. Ten her dad got sick ��� she���s very close to her father. It was heart trouble. She put her plans on hold, and the temporary delay became permanent. She attended Jefferson Community and Technical College. Partway through, she realized the classes she was taking didn���t go toward her degree. ���You fnd that out, and then your aid runs out because you took all these classes you don���t need,��� she says. ���Ten it has to come out of pocket.��� She remains a few classes away from a degree in early childhood education. ���It���s kinda hard going to school, working two jobs, and taking care of two kids,��� she says. But if she completes the degree, ���I was planning on opening a day care,��� she says, rationalizing that there is always a need for more day cares. ���Oh yeah, day care is needed. We���ll always have customers with day care. Tere are too many kids. Kids having kids. Day care is needed ��� bad. You ride around the West End, all you see is day cares and liquor stores. Seriously. I know it. It���s the truth.��� A college degree is fast becoming a new dividing line in society. Statistics show that while marriage rates are falling overall, they���re rising among those with college educations. Single motherhood is on the rise, growing the fastest among white women. College graduates are the exception across the board.

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