Transportation Needs of Single Salaried Mothers
PLAN580
Zoe Yu Wang
Transportation Needs of Single Salaried Mothers
Zoe Yu Wang
A group of great directors from all over the world described the beloved Paris by producing a five-minute short film individually, which formed the classical mosaic film, Paris je t’aime (Salles et al, 2006). Among the 18 short films which presented different facets of Paris, the story of a single mother with her baby moves the audience to tears. The directors Walter Salles and Daniela Thomas, in their five-minute share of the film collection, told us a bitter story of a poor single mother who lived with her baby in the far suburb of Paris. Every morning, the mother left her little baby to the public daycare center near the apartment, and then took an extremely long commute to the rich arrondisement of central Paris to work as a nanny. The images of the single mother using public transits took one minute and a half of the whole five-minute film. After taking the bus first to the metro station, the mother changed to metro till Chatel, a crowded and busy transit station where she changed the metro to reach the luxurious apartment of her employer at the 16th Arrondissement. During 30% of the time of the short film, the mother either leaned on the bus window, tired and dull, or rushed at the metro transit in a big hurry. The directors probably integrated these images of the single mother using public transits to show the difficulties of life of single mothers, whose situation and special needs, luckily, have been discussed and studied by more and more social workers, economists and planners.
Single mother, or lone mother, by definition, is the woman who cares for one or more children less than thirteen years old without assistance of another parent. There are many causes of single mother household such as divorce, widow, separation, pregnancy out of marriage and abandon. Since decades ago, the number of lone parent families is growing rapidly in the world. In UK for example, the percentage of lone-parent families has reached about 25%, 90% of which are woman-headed households (Donnellan, 2004). In Canada, there were only 12.7% single parent families of all households two decades ago. According to the 2006 Census, the percentage has already arrived at 15.9%, in which 80.1% are woman-headed households. In developing countries, especially in 1 / 10
Transportation Needs of Single Salaried Mothers
PLAN580
Zoe Yu Wang
Confucius-dominant countries such as China, the exact number of single mother families is still unknown, for the historical discrimination from the culture obliges single mothers to hide themselves from the public by not mentioning their marital status or children. However, because of the fact that women are gaining economic independence and that divorce rate is increasing, lone woman headed families are definitely growing both in metropolitans and in little villages. Their employment, housing, childcare attract the attention of the society. Single mothers’ mobility and accessibility to transportation systems are one of the hottest topics that can never be neglected.
Economic background, age, occupation and car ownership make different travel propensities for different social groups (Meyer & Miller, 2001). Notice that the travel patterns of women are very different from those of men. Travel patterns of single mothers are not only different from those of men, but also from those of married mothers (Johnston-Anumonwo, 1989). Before we come to the topic of how to modify transportation service for single mothers, we should at first find the characteristics of single mothers comparing to other demographic groups, their special needs, and how transportation systems influence their work and daily life.
1. Economic characteristics and transportation needs Firstly, single mothers have usually low income without financial assistance from the other parent, although there are more and more single mothers coming into the labor force. In 2005, the average income of single mother-headed households is, comparing to that of couple families and even single father-headed households, the lowest. The average prevalence of low income after tax of women is 12%, but 23%, almost twice the percentage, for single mothers (Canada Census, 2006). From the perspective of economics, single mothers’ work and life are strongly restricted by harsh economic conditions. It is true that the causal relationship between income and mobility of single mother is “not yet well understood” (Kostyniuk, 1989), it is still an obvious fact that good economic conditions result in single mothers’ car ownership, lack of access to which is a “recognized measure of lower living standards” (Goldblatt, 1990; Davey-Smith & Egger, 1992). Car ownership, together with income level, leads to “a reasonable estimate of that household’s travel patterns” (Pendyala, 1995). Thus we divide single mothers into three categories based on car ownership influenced by income 2 / 10
Transportation Needs of Single Salaried Mothers
PLAN580
Zoe Yu Wang
level: single mothers with car and relatively well-paid job; single mothers with relatively low-paid job and dependent on public transit to work; unemployed mothers with or without cars. The two first categories, single salaried mothers, are major target groups of this essay.
1.1. “Rich” single mothers who own cars In previous researches, Kostyniuk (1989) concluded that the main reason of immobility of single mothers is limited transportation resources. When those single mothers have enough income to afford a car and driving license, they make even more trips in total than married mothers in a measured time (Johnston-Anumonwo, 1989), because they have much greater economic and household responsibilities for their families than married mothers. Once they have the access to cars, they behave, or they have to behave more active in using cars than their married counterparts to fulfill their responsibilities.
Talking about the purposes of the trips, Rosenbloom (1989) found that single mothers seldom make trips solely for children or for household and that they are “less responsive [than couple families as a whole] to the needs of children or household because they face more [economic] constraints with fewer alternatives.” In other words, they use cars often to go to work rather than take children to school. The research of Rosenbloom (1989) shows that school bus is the most frequent travel mode among all other modes used by children of single mothers to go to school. With help of this alternative travel mode for their children, single mothers can drive to farther places for better employment opportunities and thus better salary. Unluckily, there is not always school bus provided. Single mothers thus cannot spend as much time as married parents do travelling to work in fact. “This pattern holds, irrespective of levels of access to a car (Titheridge, 2008).” Single mothers can’t concentrate 100% on their work lacking assistance of the other parent. Specifically, if the school is beyond the reasonable walking distance from the house and there is no school bus or safe public transit available, the travel distance and time of single mothers will be negatively influenced as small children lack parental or adult chauffeuring. Single mothers need the help of rich transportation resources if the help of the male partner is absent. Thus for these mothers, alternative travel modes provided for their children can strongly release single mothers’ pressure by sharing their 3 / 10
Transportation Needs of Single Salaried Mothers
PLAN580
Zoe Yu Wang
responsibilities of children chauffeuring while mothers have to drive long distance for work.
Considering the complexity of trips, in general, the single mothers who own cars have simple travel patterns with less frequent linking trips, since, as Rosenbloom (1989) analyzed, they can’t leave their children too long at school or at childcare for making other trips. Single mothers, in this case, need high sustaining level of service of transportation infrastructure connecting the house, workplace, school, grocery, and other service centers. High efficiency of the freeways or corridors improves single mother drivers’ mobility so that mothers could link various trips and reduce both the time wasted on the roads and pollutant air emission.
1.2. “Poor” single mothers dependent on transits Except those “lucky” rich mothers, more single mothers are not rich enough to buy cars that save time but cost too much. Single mothers without access to private automobile rely much more on affordable public transportation which cost less. In the research of Edin et al (1997), transportation cost is the third biggest expense next to housing and food for single mothers, especially those with low wage income. Since the cost of transportation is a big concern of low-income single mothers, the economical nature of public transportation attracts a great number of single mothers. In fact, car ownership of single parents is much lower than that of couple families, and that of single mother is even lower, probably because most lone parents are really poor. In UK for instance, over 50% of single-parent families live below the poverty line (Titheridge, 2008). Thus, economic contexts should be well considered when studying the travel needs of low-income single mothers.
Dependent totally on public transportation systems, low-income single mothers are influenced by the accessibility to and efficiency of public transits. As single mothers work more than married mothers in service occupations which experience a huge suburbanization, single mothers are facing a great number of challenges caused by low population density in rural areas where the service of public transits is relatively of low standard, which robs their freedom of choosing housing and employment at their own wills (Johnston-Anumonwo, 1989). “The dependence of lone parents in the UK on social housing, coupled with inadequate and expensive transport puts many jobs literally out of reach. 4 / 10
Transportation Needs of Single Salaried Mothers
PLAN580
Zoe Yu Wang
(Miller et al, 2001, p.252)” Single mothers can only live in downtown area with better public transit service in order to save time spent on public transits and to better combine work and family life. Or single mothers can otherwise live in a suburban community with concentration of house, workplace and childcare to reduce the distance of go-to-work journey.
The complexity of linking trips of low-income single mothers is also reduced by their dependence on public transits with fixed transit stations, timetable and routes which provide few possibilities of linking trips. Single mothers are not as free as those rich single mothers who have cars while linking the trips of multiple purposes.
Talking about the trip purpose of single mothers, Rosenbloom (1989) found that single mothers with their small children are limited inside of the community with reduced range of social activities and make less relevant trips. There are not enough extra budgets for single mothers to take children to various social events outside of the community, neither enough public transportation service which is effective and accessible. The social life of low-income lone woman-headed households is thus strongly restricted by public transit dependence. Children are easier to feel loneliness and isolation as their extra social needs cannot be satisfied.
Low-income single mothers, whose travel patterns are shaped by spatial distribution of housing, employment opportunity and public service, need an affordable public transportation service and a considerate design of locations and routes of public transits, a “tailor-made” service timetable, and possibilities of multiple transit modes.
2. Health characteristics and transportation needs From the view of physical health, it is recognized that lack of transport can damage health by “denying access to people, goods and services” (Acheson, 1998, p.55). When scientists and planners make strong publicity of healthy walking, some scholars noticed the negative impacts of walking to single mothers and their children (Bostock, 2001). It is true that walking as a sport helps people with physical exercise of their bodies and reduce obesity. But when walking itself becomes a compulsory 5 / 10
Transportation Needs of Single Salaried Mothers
PLAN580
Zoe Yu Wang
and the only existing mean of transport that fatigue physically single mothers who suffer easily from psycho-social stress, it is the planners’ responsibility to “fulfill the lack of motorized public transport that restricts mothers to areas often lacking in health, retail and other social resources. (Bostock, 2001, p.12)”
From the view of mental health, Bostock (2001) and Cairney (2003) indicated that single mothers, no matter rich or poor, were victims of extremely high pressure from work and childcare. Table 1 show that the rate of depressions among single mothers is more than double of that among married mothers. With comparatively lower income level than married mothers, single mothers, with less social support, are more likely to suffer from great stress than their married counterparts. Single mothers’ social involvement with lower rate than that of married mothers is one of the negative results of inconvenience of transportation systems. Table 1: Differences in depression, demographics, stress and social support between single and married mothers Variables
Single Mothers (Rates)
Married Mothers (Rates)
0.15
0.07
Low
0.49
0.12
Middle
0.28
0.29
High
0.23
0.59
Recent life events
1.12(1.26)
0.74(1.05)
Chronic Strains
5.24(3.15)
3.31(2.51)
Perceived social support
3.58(0.91)
3.81(0.58)
Social involvement
2.03(2.38)
2.83(2.56)
Frequency of contact
4.09(0.92)
4.29(0.92)
Depression Income Adequacy
Stress
Social Support
Resources:
Cairney, J.et al (2003)
One of the major curing methods to depression is believed to look for social support from friends, family and the community where people live in. Transportation connects not only people to work but also people to people. The community with excellent public infrastructure and service accessible to everyone encourages more participation of marginalized single mothers in social activities. In the contrary, living in a suburban area with low density and poor public transit service aggravates the 6 / 10
Transportation Needs of Single Salaried Mothers
PLAN580
Zoe Yu Wang
isolation and social exclusion of single mothers and their children, especially in China where frequent social connections are highly appreciated for employment and promotion possibilities. Imposed isolation can only reduce the chances of better employment and mental health of single mothers. For single mothers who drive cars, long commute time in the car can also cause feeling of loneliness and thus depression. In this case, single mothers with their young children do need a convenient, efficient and accessible transportation system to build beneficial social networks so that they could receive more social and psychological support from other people.
3. How can transportation planning improve their life? Single mothers always operate under handicaps, because they have to try their best to balance the needs of the children and their own resources and opportunities. Miller et al (2001) believed that “when countries place a higher priority on safe and inexpensive travel, everyone, no matter young or old, single or married, parents or children, can have access to an easier daily life.”
How could a policy planner do to improve the transportation service and infrastructure to satisfy the particular needs of lone salaried mothers in order to build a harmonious, convenient and pleasant living and working environment?
Firstly, we should improve the efficiency of transportation systems. One of the important objectives of transportation service is to achieve high efficiency of the roads. An efficient transportation system reduces the time on the road, increases the commuting speed, and encourages indirectly single mothers and children to participate in social life while going to work, chauffeuring children, purchasing and joining social activities. The ability to link activities in time and space by locating reasonably childcare，schools，shopping and residences may be critical to increase single mothers’ life quality. A better coordination of land use and transportation planning is even more crucial to guarantee the good quality of daily life by linking activities in time and space, specifically by designing transit routes to connect childcare, schools, shopping and residences relatively together.
Thus at the first step, we should find out the concentrated area of single mothers, analyze their travel 7 / 10
Transportation Needs of Single Salaried Mothers
PLAN580
Zoe Yu Wang
patterns and needs, invite them to participate in the decision-making process, and finally provide service to raise accessibility to a convenient transportation system according to their needs. In terms of raising efficiency, planner should renew the local transit stops and check those small stops around the main stations to make sure that small ones are distributed in a way that allows single mothers to have easy access from house to transits. It is also essential to look for multiple transit possibilities in a single transit station. Moreover, the density of bus during workdays should be well considered according to people’s peak travel time while during holidays the bus service must be well provided without huge reduction in numbers of bus per hour. For the single mother drivers, it is useful to improve the sustaining level of service by creating corridors and new connections of existing roads and by controlling the peak hours of commute.
Secondly, safety and health should be well considered as the “target client” is the vulnerable single mothers. A female student said: “I relied on [mass transit] for several years to get to and from class, until I was assaulted one night on my way to catch a bus (Bianco, M. et al, 1996, p.123)”. The safety is not just a topic restricted to women in general. Single mothers who are often alone care even more about their safety than other married women when commuting to and from work. Transportation planners should take the safety of transit stations as a very serious subject to study in order to provide necessary safety protection for single mothers. For those who drive, the safety of parking lot must also be well considered.
Transportation can also influence the health of single mothers. Like what we discussed above, walking is a good way of practicing your bodies. But for a single mother who takes the job and family responsibilities on her shoulders can no longer have more burdens. Too much walk can bring physical and psychological fatigue to both mothers and children. Thus the transit stops is better to be within the walking distance from the houses. In addition, the transit stops with multiple transit modes will be even more favorable by low-income single mothers. To help single mothers with their mental health, planner should enable them to socialize with friends and families at least twice a week through improvement of accessibility to transportation resources (Titherage, 2008).
Finally, the design of transit stations should be people-orientated. A good public transit stop should 8 / 10
Transportation Needs of Single Salaried Mothers
PLAN580
Zoe Yu Wang
provide passengers with shelters to prevent the wind and rains in lieu of erecting a simple wooden board with stop numbers. In addition, vehicle and rapid transit station design must also accommodate to the infant stroller.
Above all, transportation planning is never an independent and unique way of satisfying single mothers’ special needs. It is part of an integrated and more complex planning system including land use planning, infrastructure construction, social planning and so on. For instance, single mothers do need a good childcare provided by the community that takes the responsibility of the other parent within an acceptable distance. Or if there are public transits specifically for children to commute to school, single mothers can then be free to go to work. Planners, coordinator of the complicated planning process with participants from all backgrounds, should integrate multiple planning methods to increase mothers’ mobility and accessibility to transportation systems.
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Transportation Needs of Single Salaried Mothers
PLAN580
Zoe Yu Wang
Bibliography Acheson, D. Independent Inquiry into Inequalities in Health Report, The Stationery Office, London, 1998 Bianco, M. J. et al, Trip-Chaining, Childcare, and Personal Safety: Critical Issues in Women‘s Travel Behavior, presented at Second Annual Conference on Women‘s Travel Issues, Baltimore, October 1996, proceedings from the Second Annual Conference: pp.119-143 Bostock, L., Pathways of disadvantage? Walking as a mode of transport among low-income mothers, Health and Social Care in the Community 9(1), 2001, pp.11–18 Cairney, J., et al, Stress, social support and depression in single and married mothers, Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology, 2003, Vol. 38 pp.442–449 Donnellan, C., Lone-Parent Families. Independence Educational Publishers, London, 2004 Edin, K. et al, Work, Welfare, and Single Mothers' Economic Survival Strategies, American Sociology Review, Vol. 62, No. 2 (Apr., 1997), pp. 253-266 Johnston-Anumonwo, I., Journey to work: A Comparison of Characteristics of Single and Married Parents, Specialized Transportation Planning and Practice, 1989, Vol.3 pp.219-245 Kostyniuk, Lydia P. et al, Mobility of Single Parents: What Do the Trip Records Show? Specialized Transportation Planning and Practice, 1989, Vol.3 pp.203-217 Meyer, Michael D. et al, Urban Transportation Planning: A Decision-oriented Approach, McGraw-Hill, Boston, 2001 Miller, J, and Rowlingson, K. (eds), Lone Parents, Employment and Social Policy, The Policy Press, Bristol, 2001 Pendyala, Ram M. et al, A Repeated Cross-sectional Evaluation of Car Ownership, Transportation, 22: pp.165-184, 1995 Rosenbloom, S., The Transportation Needs of Single Salaried Mothers; A Critical Analysis, Specialized Transportation Planning and Practice, 1989 Vol.3 pp.247-275 Statistics Canada, http://www.statcan.gc.ca Titheridge, H., Social Exclusion, Accessibility and Lone Parents, paper presented at the UK-Ireland Planning Research Conference, Belfast, 18th-20th March 2008 10 / 10
