Single Parents Face Uphill Battle

Every week brings the same scenario for Rosalina and her two children. They cry for pizza, she says no. It has nothing to do with limiting the amount of junk food or cholesterol in their diets. Rosalina simply can’t afford it.

Melva Atayde’s part-time job brings in barely enough for the potatoes, bread, milk and raisins she recently conjured into a meal for her kids, 4 and 2 1/2.

At first glance, these two women have little in common. Rosalina fled Guatemala in search of a better life in the United States. Atayde is a graduate of Cal State Northridge.

But they share a common struggle: They are single parents living in poverty, part of the growing legion of mostly women who are constantly trying to make the numbers add up for their families.

In the San Fernando Valley, most poor children live in families headed by single mothers who are divorced, separated, were never married or whose husbands left home or died. In 1990, 15.8% of children under 18 in the Valley lived below the poverty level, most of them residing with single parents, according to 1990 census figures.

As the number of single-parent homes increases, some service providers believe the number of impoverished children is bound to rise as well.

“We’re not seeing a boom of jobs and we’re not seeing a decline in the cost of child care, and these are two things that need to happen to keep these parents’ heads above water,” said Sandy Zonas, director of subsidized programs for the Valley’s Child Care Resource Center.

With the dearth of resource centers available, existing centers are bombarded by an influx of single parents seeking help.

“We’re basically seeing about 2,000-plus women and children a year,” said Cynthia Caughey, executive director of the Women’s Care Cottage in North Hollywood. Over the past decade, the number of women seeking help has risen dramatically.

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In the country as a whole, single mothers and their children now make up more than half of the nation’s poor families and are one of America’s fastest-growing demographic groups. In the United States, 60% of all poor families with children are headed by women.

Family income for single mothers and their kids averages $13,000 a year, less than half the income for the average single woman without children. A woman with a minimum-wage job earns $8,800 a year, $3,000 below the poverty line for a family of three.

Almost half of the single mothers in the United States don’t have a job. Of those who are divorced and are owed child support, half don’t get the full amount.

“These parents aren’t living day to day, they’re living a day behind,” Zonas said.

Single parents endure multiple struggles--both material and emotional--that they must confront daily. They have to make tough budget choices that often pit the welfare of their children against paying the rent or keeping the heat on. And, if they can afford child care, they often wind up settling for substandard care.

Day to day, Rosalina struggles to survive on poverty-level wages that have forced her and her children at times to live in dilapidated, cramped, crime-ridden housing.

“Every day I talk to both of my children and I tell them maybe we don’t have everything in the world that we want, but we have a great love for each other and God in our hearts,” the 41-year-old Van Nuys resident said.

Rosalina would give only her first name, concerned that she could lose her job as a housekeeper or that her children might be teased at school if any of their friends knew how poor they are.

She rarely complains about her financial problems, stressing that she doesn’t receive welfare. But the numbers speak clearly. She earns $700 a month cleaning the home of a family that has employed her for the past 17 years. Her rent is $450 a month for a one-bedroom apartment she shares with her two young children, ages 5 and 9, and her 23-year-old daughter who just moved back from Washington, D.C.

The four of them sleep in a king-size bed a friend donated. She pays more than $100 for utilities and bus fare, leaving a little more than $100 for food.

She never buys meat. Instead she makes do with vegetables, fruit, cereal and juices often purchased from a warehouse produce market where some of the food is beginning to spoil.

Atayde was 18 when she had her first child and was kicked out of her parents’ home in San Jose. She moved to Northridge to be closer to her son’s father, who wanted little to do with the child.

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For the first year after her son was born, she worked seven days a week as a receptionist at a real estate agency and a mortgage company to cover rent, child care and expenses. At the same time, Atayde attended night school at CSUN and scraped by on money from financial aid and work study in addition to her jobs.

“I remember taking my son to school with me and having him be disruptive and getting kicked out of class,” Atayde, now 23, recalled. “I left school in tears on those days.”

It took Atayde six years to get through college, during which time she had a second child with the same man. But even with a college degree, child care problems prevented her from holding down a full-time job. She went on welfare for a year after her daughter’s birth.

Single parents--male or female--tend to be poorer than others because jobs where a single salary can support a family are harder to find. The effects of their poverty trickle down to their children.

Some women contribute to these situations, said Caughey of the Women’s Care Cottage. They choose unhealthy relationships, don’t finish high school, don’t budget money properly or have codependency issues, she said.

In Rosalina’s case, both of the fathers of her two children left the moment they discovered she was pregnant. She wound up sending her 9-year-old daughter to family in Guatemala for two years while she lived with other families and worked to save some money.

A large percentage of single mothers receive some form of assistance, most often Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC). Between 1990 and 1995 the percentage of people in the Valley receiving public assistance (including welfare, food stamps and Medi-Cal) more than doubled from 7% to 15%.

Caughey said child care is one main issue blocking women from becoming financially self-sufficient. According to reports from the Washington D.C.-based Children’s Defense Fund, single mothers earning minimum wage spend more than 50% of their income on child care. Peggy Nairn, who operates a 24-hour child care center in North Hills, said the majority of her clients are single parents. One woman earns $20,000 a year and turns half of her salary over to Nairn. “I see a lot of parents who say they’re barely making it because most of their money goes to child care.”

Rosalina was lucky. She was accepted to the Valley Resource and Recovery center’s subsidized child care program in 1991 after three years on the waiting list. Under the program, her two children go to child care each day for free and Rosalina has enough time to work.

Atayde was recently accepted into the same child care program after a six-month wait. Both of her children now attend the Nurtury in Sherman Oaks instead of staying with relatives or whatever friends Atayde can find to care for them.

“It’s the chance I’ve been waiting for. This is a good start,” Atayde said. After a day at the child care center the children may play in the pool at Atayde’s apartment complex on CSUN’s campus or at a nearby playground.

But for Rosalina’s children, day care is the only place they go besides school, home and church. There are no other diversions--no amusement parks, no weekend outings. Rosalina’s daughter, Angela, 9, is at the age where she’s beginning to notice that her clothes are different than the other kids’ at school. Not as flashy. Not as hip.

Once when a friend gave Angela a Nintendo game as a gift, Rosalina, a proud woman, sent it back. Her feeling is that her family doesn’t have much, but they’re not destitute. Compared to her life in Guatemala, she’s doing pretty well.

“I’ve been single all my life, and I’ve struggled all my life,” she said. “This is my life. I just hope it will not be my children’s life.”

Times staff writer Jocelyn Y. Stewart contributed to this story.