Do I worry that as a single mum I’m more likely to raise a toxic boy? It’s complicated.
I am of course terrified of my son – who does not yet own a phone – getting online and being fed the sort of misogynistic poison shown on Louis Theroux’s important, but flawed, Inside The Manosphere. But does being a single mother actually increase that risk?
Theroux’s blink-and-you’ll-miss-it musing on one-parent households (“It was striking how many were raised without dads”) made national headlines – ‘The desperate upsetting problem that brews between single mothers and their sons’ and ‘the sad truth about manosphere mums’ caught my eye. Surprise, surprise: an opportunity to blame women, some of society’s hardest working at that, for the behaviour of men.
Read more: Inside the Manosphere director ‘ this is the mainstream now’
The toxic figures platformed in Theroux’s documentary, and the boys and young men being radicalised online, have not turned out this way because they were raised by single mothers. Reaching, yet again, for tired statistics – often drawn from outdated studies – about boys in single-parent homes (while ignoring the underlying economic factors) completely misses the point. The real issue is the damaging impact of toxic masculinity, and the lack of meaningful action – particularly from men – to challenge and course-correct.
I’m sensitive to the misrepresentation of single parents; I even dedicated a chapter of my book, How To Be A Happy Single Parent, to unpacking the roots of that stigma. I know firsthand how much shame some women carry about their single-parent status, particularly when it follows trauma, loss or betrayal. Conversations like this only compound society’s suspicion of single mothers, reinforcing a narrative that positions them as part of the problem rather than recognising toxic masculinity as the real issue.
But my fears are complicated for a reason. While I’m proud to be a single mother – and my son does have an involved father he sees regularly – there are very real challenges facing single-parent families in the UK today.
Forty-three per cent of children in lone-parent households live in poverty, compared to 26 per cent in two-parent families. It is economically difficult, and often impossible, for single-income households to meet the basic costs of family life.
Children from the lowest-income households face stark inequalities: lower GCSE attainment, higher rates of emotional difficulties, and a significantly increased likelihood of experiencing poverty in adulthood. Yes, there is a correlation between these outcomes and single parenthood, but for obvious economic reasons. Reducing complex social challenges to the absence of a father is far easier than calling for systemic change to better support the UK’s two million single parents.
Framing single-parent households as the root of society’s problems feels like lazy, regressive rhetoric – a 90s throwback to Boris Johnson’s infamous claim that children of single mothers are “ill-raised, ignorant, aggressive and illegitimate”. In reality, 25 per cent of UK families are headed by single parents, and the 3.3 million children growing up in these households will achieve all kinds of outcomes. The small minority who spread misogynistic hate online should not be held up as the example.
I simply don’t buy that not having a man in the house is a guarantee that they will emerge into adulthood as women-hating “red-pillers”. Equally, having a man in the house is not a safeguard against boys being radicalised by online content. Not all men in homes are positive role models; not all make homes safer. Many single mothers leave precisely because their partner was doing the opposite.
If the manosphere is the poison, it needs an antidote. And since outrage and hate spread more easily online than hope, that antidote may have to be rooted in the real world. Children need positive role models of all genders. It may sound idealistic, but the more people a child can love – and who show them love – the less likely they are to be persuaded to hate.
In her 2021 article, psychologist Bella DePaulo does an incredible job providing a counterclaim to the idea that single parenting is a disaster for boys. She quotes a Rena L. Repetti article in Psychological Bulletin which reviewed decades of studies on family environments, they found that the real risk factors were not family structure, but households “characterised by conflict and aggression and by relationships that are cold, unsupportive, and neglectful.” That’s what matters, not whether a child is raised by one parent or two.
Theroux’s documentary shone a much-needed light on an insidious problem facing our young men, but failed to highlight any possible solutions. Perhaps, then, it's convenient to frame online misogyny as a problem exacerbated by single mums because if the blame can be shifted onto us, then we are the ones who will have to fix it.
We might just do it, too. I look at some of my single parenting peers who are juggling multiple jobs, childcare, school communications, medical appointments, online safety, co-parenting schedules, dating and mounting bills – often while raising both boys and girls alone. The single mums I know are the most dedicated and tenacious people on the planet.
Dismantling the manosphere? Compared to everything else, it might not be the hardest thing we do.
