Parents are busy people, and many find it hard to make time to read with children.

Yet single mothers can find it even harder.

According to Jenny Davidson, CEO of the Council of Single Mothers and their Children, single mums are in a constant battle against time and – until there are big shifts in housing and social security – against poverty.

Jenny is also a keen reader, thanks to her own mother. She spoke to us about why reading together is so important for mums who are doing it all.

Let’s start by talking about you, Jenny. Are you big on reading?

I am, yes. I am a reader.

I really enjoy reading fiction. I personally prefer stories by women about women.

I learn a lot from fiction. I struggle to finish a non-fiction book, although I like to learn about history and things like that. But I really like reading women’s stories.

What books have you been enjoying recently? 

I just read The Good Wife of Bath, which was really interesting. Another good one was Sweetness and Light by Liam Pieper. That was an interesting one. Both were recommended by a friend.

Another one I just read was Anna Diamante, who also wrote The Red Tent. I just read another novel of hers called Day After Night. It is set in Palestine right after World War II. It was incredible.

Looking back, what are your memories of being read to as a child?

My mother loved reading to my sister and I. She read to us for a long time, you know, even after we could read and I have lots of really fond memories of that.

My mother is Canadian. My father was American. We grew up here in Australia, but she read all of the Laura Ingalls Wilder books – the Little House on the Prairie series.

We were fortunate enough to have a family holiday in Fiji, and there’s a story about us reading The Long Hard Winter all snuggled under the doona in this really warm climate. My mother used to get this catch of emotion in her voice when she was reading it. She was very caught up in it.

She seeded a strong love of reading in me. My mother was so wonderful about reading to us. I love to honour her and the gift that she gave me, which I have definitely carried into my life as an adult.

Coming back to your life as an adult, what does a typical day in your job look like?

The Council of Single Mothers and their Children (CSMC) has grown a lot as an organisation in the nine years that I’ve been the CEO. However, it’s still less ten employees. So, like a lot of CEOs of smaller not-for-profit organisations, there’s a lot of doing a bit of everything. I do a little bit of HR; I do operations; I implement the strategic plan.

The great perk of being the CEO of a small organisation is that I get to do that strategic thinking as well. I do strategic planning with my board and think about how we can genuinely support and represent single mothers in all their diversity.

I also have to work on bringing in the money. I work with our stakeholders and funders, which are government and philanthropy. We are one of only two single-mother organisations in Australia so it’s very important we are out there talking to people.

It’s a big challenge to make sure the right people know about our organisation. The organisation is 56 years old. And yet, every month, I have a conversation with somebody who says, ‘I’ve never heard of you,’ or ‘I wish I’d known about you earlier’.

What do you enjoy most about your job?

I’ve been in the non-profit sector over 20 years and the majority of that has been in gender-focused organisations. That’s my passion.

We have such an amazing team. They’re very dedicated. A lot of them are long-term. In fact, our longest-term staff member has been here for 27 years.

One of the perks of being in the non-profit sector is working with people who are passionate about what they do. They’re not in it for the money, you know? They’re in it to make a difference.

The other great part is that the organisation was founded in 1969 when ‘self-help’ was a major trend, so CSMC has always had lived experience of being or having been a single mother at the heart of everything they do.

All the staff are or have been single mothers; it’s the same with the Board. And also our volunteers and our students on placements. I work with very competent, very passionate people.

Can you give us some insight into the lives of single mothers right now?

We have one million single-parent families in Australia. And about 82% of those are headed by a woman.

When we talk specifically about single mothers with dependent children – which includes children under 15 and children 15 to 24 who are in full-time study – there’s 570,000 families. So, it’s a big population of families right now.

Single mothers are very, very diverse. It could be somebody who has a functional co-parenting relationship and has their children part-time; or it could be somebody that has a very difficult co-parenting relationship; or it could be they have sole care of their children.

It could be someone who is a single mother by choice or who’s been widowed; it could actually be a grandmother or carer or a kinship arrangement with children. There’s lots of pathways to becoming single mothers.

There’s lots of diversity in their economic situations, in cultural background, educational background, family size, all of those things. There’s also blended families and that’s a different level of challenge.

A key commonality is that single-mother families are the family structure that’s most often in poverty in Australia.  About 37% of single-mother families are living below the poverty line. So that is a very significant challenge.

Time poverty is the other very big challenge. If you have two parents in the household, you have 48 adult hours in a day to do the paid work, the caring of the children, the running of the household, everything. In a single parent household, you only have 24 adult hours.

That one parent constantly has to make choices, constantly juggle between the need to bring in money and fit it in with their family responsibilities. I think all parents understand how challenging the juggle is.

The long economic tail coming out of COVID is devastating for single-parent families. We have a cost of living and a housing crisis and that’s impacting single mother families a lot.

Groceries are more expensive. Rents keep going up. It’s the worst I’ve seen it in my time. It’s more and more difficult to find secure, safe housing.

The reality is that there are single mothers skipping meals to feed their children. We know that’s very, very common. There are children who are not telling their mothers that they’re hungry. It’s really awful.

What is CSMC working on right now to support single mothers?

There’s two ‘calls to action’ we are working on right now for government. First of all, the national social security payments are too low. If you’re relying on government payments as the primary income for your family, then you’re living in poverty.

Many single mothers are working, but they’re in casual work because that’s the only work they can get that fits with their family responsibilities. Their incomes are unreliable, they’re reliant on those government payments. It’s so low that it equates to being in poverty. So that’s the number one thing.

The second thing is investment in social housing. Real investment. Various governments are congratulating themselves on the investments they’ve made in housing but it doesn’t begin to undo over a decade of under-investment in social housing.

This is a problem that only government can really solve. We need much, much more social housing of all kinds and lots of social housing with more than two bedrooms that are fit for families.

There’s also things we can all do in the community.

As a single mother, it helps when people offer to pick up my kids from school or anywhere, even though I may not be able to pick theirs up as frequently in return.

If you can offer to have her kids overnight, to give her a break, that’s great. Maybe if you’re sending out a birthday invitation, say ‘please do not bring a gift’ or pop an extra one by the door so her kids don’t miss the birthday just because they can’t afford a gift that week.

All of those small things are a big help.

What are the strengths that single mothers bring to these challenges?

Single mothers are incredibly resilient and determined to make a good future for their children.

Across multiple experiences and family types and challenges, they’re really trying to do the best they can for their children. They’re trying to position their children to have the best future they can.

There’s a lot of love. They’re doing the best they can for themselves and for their children.

We just did a research project on children and young people raised by single mothers. It was very interesting to see the kids’ feedback and to see that many, many of them said there were positive things. They feel resilient. They are grateful. They feel like they are capable of stepping up in life.

We had children saying, ‘I admire my mother and I am resilient as a result’.

That bond between children and their mothers is so important. What do you think are the benefits for single mothers of reading and story-telling with children?

I think it’s the joy of taking that time together.

One of the benefits of being a single mother is that relationship you have with your children. Reading together is special time and can give you a special connection with your children. So if you can take a moment and sit down and have that time reading with them, it’s a really great pause.

It’s hard because you could be cooking for the freezer or doing laundry or cleaning up from dinner and all of those things. But it is very special time.

Also, considering that 60% of single mothers have an experience of family violence, it’s also very important to have that recovery time. It’s a time to feel safe and be together, just to feel that special connection.

What are your top tips to help parents – and especially single mothers – enjoy reading with their children?

I think a good tip is, when they’re little you can do a page each. So you read a page, they read a page, and so on. So if your child has reading homework to get through, it can be a way to do both at once and to try to get them reading.

I certainly have a reluctant reader. I mean, I read to my son when he was little, but he sadly he doesn’t read to himself.

Just hang in there if the books are dull, because then you hit a phase where you find books that you both like and that you’re excited to find out what happens next. When you get to that chapter books phase, it can be something you’re both looking forward to.

My favourite tip is to do the voices. Just be silly and do the voices. My favourite was Dog Man. I always really like doing Cat Kid and other characters. There was another book I read where at least one of the characters had a Russian accent. I had a lot of fun doing it in in those years when my son was little.

Just don’t be too hard on yourself. Kids connect with stories and story-telling at different times in different ways throughout their lives, as adults as well. Who knows what seeds you’ve sown there.

It’s a different challenge when you have children of different ages. I’m sure there are single mothers who are trying to sit down with the Preppy and get through something and then also trying to do something with older children. And that’s tough.

You could try asking the older kids to read to the younger kids. Or try to find books that everybody is into.

Another tip is to get onto your local library app. Once you are a member, the library has apps that give you audiobooks for free. Sometimes it’s a limited selection or you have to wait, but still, that’s gold.

With little kids, you could have them following along on the pages with an audio book, you know, while you’re cooking dinner or something. That can be a help.

Thanks so much for sharing your tips and your stories Jenny!

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