Single Mom Stimulus Grant Celebrates $30,000 Given

RICHMOND, Va., April 25, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- The Single Mom Stimulus Grant from Wealthysinglemommy.com, a monthly $500 no-strings-attached grant for single mothers, celebrates awarding 60 grants totaling $30,000 over 2 years.

Emma Johnson, founder of wealthysinglemommy.com, launched the program early in the COVID pandemic to help the many single moms she saw struggling in the face of lockdowns, job loss, illness — on top of caring for children. "I received hundreds of emails and social media messages from mothers who do not live with a partner, and had to figure out the insurmountable task of home-schooling their kids and paying rent during lockdown," Johnson says. "Cash was what they needed most."

In the United States, 23% of children live with one parent and no other adult, according to the Census, and 82% of those parents are mothers — the majority of whom have their children in their care full- or majority-time.

More than 50,000 people have applied for the grant. "Applicant numbers continue to grow," Johnson says. "We expect more and more parents will need financial assistance as inflation takes its toll and we face the recession predicted by economists."

The pandemic, she says, calls to light the struggles most U.S. parents face: low-paying service jobs with unpredictable schedules, lack of affordable child care, and a culture that presumes mothers—especially single mothers—are to be primary caregivers of children.

Mothers overall suffer a pay gap of 29%, earning an average of 71 cents for every $1 earned by a dad — or an average of $16,000 less per year, according to the National Women's Law Center.

This motherhood penalty is dramatically worse for single mothers at 35%. According to Pew Research, single moms with a household of three earn just $26,000 per year on average, compared with $40,000 per year for single dads.

Johnson's own independent study of 2,227 women found that single mothers who share parenting time with their kids' dads are 3X more likely to earn $100,000 than other single moms.

Johnson plans to continue the grant indefinitely.

Single Mom Stimulus Grant applicants apply via a Google Form and are selected based on need and expressed attempt to work. It is open only to U.S. applicants at this time. Apply here.

Johnson founded wealthysinglemommy.com in 2012 to share her own experience as a single mom and offer information that helps women build success in finance, career, parenting, dating, wellbeing and co-parenting.

Emma Johnson is a business journalist, gender equality activist, and bestselling author of The Kickass Single Mom (Penguin). She is founder of Moms for Shared Parenting, an activist organization aimed at making equally shared parenting the norm in both culture and policy, and frequently speaks on gender issues, including at the United Nations Summit for Gender Equality. She lives in Richmond, Va., and has two children.

SOURCE wealthysinglemommy.com