You’re wrong here.
Shannon is a single mother who grew up in evangelical culture who is now living in an area where evangelical Christianity is dominant even if she is no longer an active member.
Believe me, it’s a whole different experience comparatively speaking. My own life has paralleled hers in many regards except I was never a member of an evangelical congregation but grew up adjacent to it.
It’s not her lens that’s the issue, it’s the landscape. In a different landscape she would have a different view. She’s not wrong in what she says about being a single mom in this culture. Being a single mom makes you a magnet for every scrub in the world who’s looking for a woman to take care of him. Because you’re desperate for a man; you’re an easy score, or so the rationale goes.
God help you if you’re actually thriving as a single mom; then you run afoul of the religious culture. I had a young pastor at a neighborhood church next to my apt complex start a rumor that I was a witch after I politely declined his mixer because I preferred staying single. One of the church kids ended up screaming WITCH at my 5 year old daughter and shoving her off a 6 ft slide backwards. Yeah.
They’re the ones who invited her to bible camp. As I said, we weren’t members.
There was more to the story than that, that’s the highlights, but it was definitely him and it was definitely because I wasn’t contrite enough over my “situational sin" and being ungrateful that my “bastard" wasn’t ostracized from their bible camp and that I wouldn’t accept his God mandated leadership to secure my last chance at salvation.
Yep. It’s a whole different world down here. These aren’t isolated incidents. It’s a cultural push and they’re always recruiting. The also tend to seek out single moms because they want to get to the children as young as possible as a means of growing the church.
Like Shannon, it’s not just me. I hear every other mom I’ve known, mostly single, say the same things. Every single one of them talk about how things change and how you’re looked down on the minute you’re a single mom after a divorce. At church, at schools, at work, at the doctor’s office… everywhere. Hell, even credit algorithms penalize you the minute you’re a single mom.
They don’t penalize single dad’s though.
Its not like that in other parts of the country, not that other parts of the country or world don’t have their quirks. They do, but she’s not wrong in her description of the particular misogyny in the evangelical south.
One can only see within one’s field of vision so for practical purposes it does no good to know that men are different elsewhere. As far as dating goes, they’re unavailable so they may as well not exist. Since her child’s father has visitation, she can’t move elsewhere easily, so that’s her market. You can’t fault her for having a correct view of her landscape just because her landscape doesn’t match yours.
