Help for single moms

• By EMILY KERN HEBERT
• Advocate staff writer
• Published: Jul 16, 2008 - Page: 1E - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

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Mary Landry, of Baton Rouge, is reluctant to discuss the difficulties of being a single mom of three.

The 37-year-old has had support from her children’s fathers, she said. Her parents help with transportation when they can, and her neighbors pitch in if she’s not home from work when her children get off the school bus.

Yet, every once in a while, she said, she has a good cry. Supervising homework and bath time, fixing meals and keeping her apartment clean while having to tell her children they can’t have certain things because she has only one income can get overwhelming, Landry said.

“Sometimes, I will get depressed and cry because I feel like I don’t have the help,” Landry said. “I feel like I don’t have anybody to talk to at the time. I don’t tell my mom my business. I hold it in.”

The third annual Single Mothers’ Conference, hosted by O’Brien House and set for Saturday, is meant to help such single mothers as Landry with issues including career development, financial management and parenting.

The event is sponsored by the Mayor’s Office and Quota International of Baton Rouge. It includes sessions on staying safe while dating, decorating on a budget, owning and maintaining homes and cars, and talking to children about sex and drugs. Mayor-President Kip Holden, himself once a single parent of two, will give the keynote address.

The number of households headed by single mothers continues to grow on a local and national level, said Ronni Glasper, development director of O’Brien House. The nonprofit typically helps families dealing with alcohol and substance abuse, but also is involved in community outreach targeting at-risk youth ages 6 to 14.

According to the latest U.S. Census Bureau estimation, 13.6 million single parents in the United States were raising 21.2 million children under the age of 21. Five out of every six single parents were mothers.

In Baton Rouge, of 88,725 families surveyed in that same Census report in 2006, 9,755 were headed by single mothers.

“It takes a special strength to be a successful single mom,” Glasper said. “Sometimes, they can get overwhelmed and think, ‘I’m a horrible parent,’ because they have too much going on.

“We want this day to empower them,” Glasper said of the conference. This year’s theme is “Building the Next Generation … Together. Empowering the Single Mother on Her Journey to Independence.”

Landry had her first child, a boy, when she was 24 years old. She was living with her parents at the time, but found an apartment a couple of months after her son was born.

The only furniture she had was a twin-sized bed.