The new widows and orphans

I have a new niece. She’s soft and sweet, and her name is Racecar. Well, that’s her name according to my two year old nephew, Jordan. Friends and family will call her Julia Renee. But to a toddler, there’s no better name than Racecar! Jordan loves all manner of speedy red vehicles, so the name signifies a deep well of affection for his baby sister.

Nomenclature – the art of naming things or people – has an impressive history. In Jewish culture, it’s considered bad luck to name a child after a living relative. Muslims have strict rules about avoiding certain names related to God. And many Christians believe it’s important to give biblical names to their offspring. What’s in a name? Quite a bit, apparently.

So it was that we came to naming this issue of the Herald on the theme of single-parent families. We wondered if the brief term connoted everything we wanted to say about the subject. As we researched this social phenomenon, we realized how complex and controversial it is.

Traditional nuclear families are on the decline in Canada, with 26 percent of all families with children now headed by single parents, mostly mothers. That means more than 2.1 million children are living in one-parent households. For most of these folks, the situation is far from ideal. Many are victims of divorce. With only one income, many live under the poverty line. Stress and frustration contribute to high rates of depression and fatigue.

But there’s a surprising undercurrent to this trend. More and more singles are now choosing to parent alone. Young, unwed mothers opt to keep their babies, and older singles with secure financial futures eagerly adopt children. Before I married last year, I faced diminishing prospects of ever becoming a mother and seriously considered international adoption. A cultural shift has occurred and the stigma against single parents and non-conjugal births is lifting.

Many single folks believe it’s possible – and certainly not a sign of societal downfall – to raise children alone. The key to making it work, they say, is a network of caring, non-judgmental family and friends.

As James 1:27 declares, “religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress.” Indeed, single-parent families in our congregations – today’s orphans and widows – should lack nothing, whether they find themselves in that situation due to divorce or choice.

As people of grace, it’s time to act like the family we are! Jesus calls his church to be supportive and mindful of the spiritual, social, material, and economic needs of single-parent families. It’s an instructive we can’t ignore.

Growing Your Single Adult Ministry, edited by Jerry Jones, says, “Single-parent families require fellowship with ‘whole’ families in the church. . . . The assumption that single families will be cared for by the singles community is an uninformed one. More critical to single families is an integration into the church-at-large, giving them a wider sense of belonging, a wider system of support and stability, and a wider circle for their own unique gifts of ministry.”

Given our task as a church family to love these parents and children, perhaps “single-parent families” isn’t the best name for this month’s topic. Perhaps a better name is one that reminds us all of our responsibility to each other: one-parent-and-whole-church-supported families.