海角大神

When Shannon Timpane separated from her ex-husband, she had two daughters, ages 1 and 3, a rickety truck, and no access to the couple鈥檚 bank accounts.

鈥淚 almost had a nervous breakdown,鈥� she recalls. 鈥淚 didn鈥檛, because I had two little kids, and they were very cute and very sweet, and I didn鈥檛 want to ruin their lives.鈥�

And she was grateful for at least one thing: She lived in California.聽

For single working moms like Ms. Timpane, experts say location is almost as crucial as in real estate. Timpane credits surviving those first few months to a variety of social programs available to support working mothers: She signed the family onto the state health insurance plan, relied on food stamps for four months, and spent a month with another family who paid her bills while she looked for work through the .

鈥淐alifornia is a great state to be in for that kind of thing,鈥� she says. 鈥淸It] has a lot more at its fingertips than most states do.鈥�

Women with children under 18 now make up 70 percent of women in the workforce 鈥� up from 47 percent in 1975, according to the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics. The participation rate is even higher for single moms, about three-quarters of whom work.

But policies to help families vary greatly from state to state, studies show. New York, California, and Washington, D.C., ranked the highest in of the best and worst states for work and family, according to the Institute for Women鈥檚 Policy Research. Indiana, Utah, and Montana brought up the rear.

鈥淲e have a very uneven social safety net,鈥� says Eve Weinbaum, director of the Labor Center at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst.

For example, only four states and the District of Columbia have laws that provide paid family leave 鈥� with California the first state to implement such a program in 2004.

Worldwide, only four countries don鈥檛 require some form of paid maternity leave, : Lesotho, Papua New Guinea, Swaziland, and the United States.

鈥⒙� 鈥⒙� 鈥�

Tami Holland is allowed 10 days of paid sick leave a year and three paid 鈥減ersonal days.鈥� The single mother from Sterling, Va., who teaches special-needs children in an elementary school, prides herself on never having missed a school event or medical appointment for her daughter.

But that has sometimes meant forgoing a day鈥檚 pay.

鈥淪he鈥檚 my first priority, and I don鈥檛 want to miss those things,鈥� says Ms. Holland, who had been a stay-at-home mom for 10 years until her divorce in 2011.

Like most working single parents, she is struggling against a view of the 鈥渢raditional family鈥� that is increasingly out-of-date. Married heterosexual couples with children under 18 now constitute just 20 percent of American households, down from 40 percent in 1970,聽according to .

Though the trend has been evident for decades, the social infrastructure to support families has remained largely the same, says Andrea Paluso, executive director of Family Forward Oregon, a group advocating for more support for working families.

鈥ㄢ�淢ost public policy is still designed around the idea that most families are structured with a married, two-parent household,鈥� she adds. 鈥淏efore, we didn鈥檛 have laws about access to sick time because the idea was somebody would be home with the kids and they didn鈥檛 need to be in the workforce, and now that鈥檚 not true.鈥�

Timpane works two part-time jobs, one at a hospital and one at a local community college. She also is going to nursing school. When her children were younger, she worked night shifts so she could look after them in the afternoons.

Now she works during the day and often relies on friends, family, and other parents to give them rides. For one summer, 12 members of her book club even had to cover the costs of preschool. The bill for three hours of pre-school: $740 a month.

In 23 states, child care costs more than a four-year college education, according to from the Economic Policy Institute.

鈥淭he price of childcare is critical,鈥� says Paula England, a sociology professor at New York University. 鈥淚f the cost of child care is too high, you can鈥檛 pay for anything after childcare.鈥�

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Like many single moms, Timpane says every dollar she earns is spent.

鈥淵ou鈥檙e not saving for retirement, because you don鈥檛 have a future,鈥� she says. 鈥淚鈥檒l graduate nursing school and will be able to save money and put away for retirement, but it won鈥檛 be the same as someone who鈥檚 been saving since they鈥檙e 25.鈥�

The consequences of dropping in and out of the workforce, working lower-paying jobs, and postponing saving for retirement can be significant. More than 1 in 7 women were living in poverty in 2014, , and more than two-thirds of the elderly poor were women.

鈥淎ll of this stuff just adds up over the course of your lifetime, to the point where a vast majority of people living in poverty are women,鈥� says Ms. Paluso.聽

At one point, the US did have a national child care system. For four years during World War II, the federal government implemented a that distributed funds to states to build and maintain child care centers while women worked in war factories.

The program stopped in 1946. In 1971, President Richard Nixon vetoed the Comprehensive Child Development Act, a measure passed with bipartisan support in the Senate that would have formed a national network of child care centers.

鈥淲e had, and I think probably continue to have, a real ambivalence about the idea of mothers and work and what that would mean,鈥� says Ms. Paulso.

The lack of paid maternity leave is a prime example, adds Professor Weinbaum of the University of Massachusetts.

鈥淚t makes it hard for women to stay in the workforce, it makes it hard for women to move ahead in their careers, and it makes it hard for women to stay home and enjoy their families while their children are young.鈥�

Having some national standard for helping working mothers would help, she says.

鈥淛ust like we have a minimum wage at the federal level, we should have minimum family policies that do create that safety net that do allow parents to know they can keep working and can take care of their families.鈥�