Single moms in Maryland strive to overcome challenges

FREDERICK, Md. (AP) — Janice Smith got her first job when she was 14, sweeping up hair and washing the windows at a salon in Walkersville. She feels she had no other choice.

Smith, now a 44-year-old single mother of three, used to stand in line at the food bank with her mother and pray the electricity wouldn’t be shut off at home.

Her parents separated when she was 4. By the time she was a teenager, she had become the primary caretaker of the house. Her mother, who has since died, suffered with mental health issues and had trouble keeping a job, according to Smith.

It often fell to Smith to deposit the disability checks or child-support payments and write the checks to pay the bills, which she said often required her to forge her mother’s signature.

“It was more of an effort that I’ve got to get these bills paid so my mother could maintain her sanity, and it can be a happy household,” Smith said.

As Smith’s life and career advanced — she now works full-time for Wells Fargo Home Mortgage — her standard of living did not.

A teenage pregnancy derailed her plans of going to college, and, now, with three of her own kids to care for at home, she was getting passed over for promotions at work by people with similar skill sets and maybe even less experience. Why? Because they had college degrees.

“I often asked myself ‘why is this so difficult?’” Smith said. “I have had a job for most of my life. I have done everything right that’s in my capabilities to do right. I work hard. I do the stuff that I am supposed to do. Why is this so hard?”

They are questions that many single mothers, like Smith, ask here in Frederick County and abroad. Almost 80 percent of single moms in the county have a difficult time affording a basic standard of living,...