To Beat Odds, Poor Single Moms Need Wide Safety Net

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http://www.npr.org/2012/07/11/155103593/to-beat-odds-poor-single-moms-need-wide-safety-net

(or, the flipside to "having it all"...)

Single mothers have an especially hard time getting out of poverty. Households headed by single mothers are four times as likely to be poor as are families headed by married couples.

Still, many of these women are trying to get ahead. Some know instinctively what the studies show: Children who grow up in poor families are far more likely to become poor adults.

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Take the case of 29-year-old Jennifer Stepp, who lives in Reading, Pa. Like 14 million other people in the U.S. who live in families headed by single mothers, she's poor. And she faces incredible odds.

Stepp has three children by three different fathers. The father of her eldest child, 10-year-old Isaiah, is serving 30 years in federal prison for armed robbery.

"He's met my son one time, when he was a baby. And he decided that he didn't want him," she says.

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