Quotes About Being a Single Mom: 12 Lines From Hawthorne, Hugo, Booker T. Washington and the Bible
Words My Family Quotes Editors
What do you say to someone who is doing two people's jobs and is tired of hearing that she is "a superhero"? Most quotes about being a single mom answer that question with a slogan. The better answers are older and more specific: a woman in a Puritan court refusing to hand over her daughter, a mother in Hugo's France selling her hair to keep her child warm, a boy born into slavery remembering his mother cooking for her children late at night.
This page gathers 12 of those lines, each checked word for word in the book, speech or verse it comes from: two from The Scarlet Letter, one from Les Misérables, one from Elizabeth Gaskell's Ruth, two from Booker T. Washington's memoir, two from a 2008 Father's Day speech by Barack Obama, one from J.K. Rowling's Harvard address, and three verses from the King James Bible about mothers raising a child alone. The sections follow the questions people actually type, from "what do you say to a struggling single mom" to "can I wish her a happy Father's Day", and the table below tells you where to start. For lines about mothers in general, see our page on what a mother is, in quotes.
Which single mom quote fits which moment?
| Line | Source | Good for |
|---|---|---|
| "Pearl keeps me here in life!" | Hester Prynne, The Scarlet Letter | A mother whose child is her reason to keep going |
| "when that mother has but her child" | Hester Prynne, The Scarlet Letter | Custody fights, standing up for a child |
| "I have clothed her with my hair." | Fantine, Les Misérables | The sacrifices nobody sees |
| "cooking a chicken late at night" | Booker T. Washington | A grown child thanking a mother who worked all day |
| "she had high ambitions for her children" | Booker T. Washington | Graduation, a son's speech or toast |
| "doing a heroic job, but they need support" | Barack Obama, Father's Day speech | A friend who needs help, not praise |
| "to play all the roles that both parents are supposed to play" | Barack Obama, Father's Day speech | A son's Mother's Day or Father's Day card |
| "rock bottom became the solid foundation" | J.K. Rowling, Harvard address | Starting over after divorce |
| "Oh! I will be so good!" | Ruth, in Gaskell's Ruth | A single mom to be |
| "Let me not see the death of the child." | Hagar, Genesis 21:16 | The worst nights; prayer |
| "lift up the lad, and hold him in thine hand" | The angel to Hagar, Genesis 21:18 | Single mom and son; encouragement |
| "an handful of meal in a barrel" | The widow of Zarephath, 1 Kings 17:12 | Money worries; making do |
What are some powerful quotes about being a single mother?
Probably the best-known single mother in American fiction is Hester Prynne. Nathaniel Hawthorne published The Scarlet Letter in 1850 and set it in Puritan Boston two centuries earlier. Hester has a daughter, Pearl, outside marriage, refuses to name the father, and supports the two of them with her needle. In chapter VIII, "The Elf-Child and the Minister," the governor and the town's ministers discuss taking Pearl away from her to be raised by others. Hester's answer is the strongest single-mother speech in the novel:
"God gave me the child!" cried she. "He gave her in requital of all things else, which ye had taken from me. She is my happiness!—she is my torture, none the less! Pearl keeps me here in life! Pearl punishes me too!"
— Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter, chapter VIII, "The Elf-Child and the Minister" (1850)
What makes the line honest is the second half. Hester does not pretend that raising a child alone is pure joy; Pearl is her "happiness" and her "torture" in the same breath. Many single mothers recognise that, and a quote that admits it lands better in a card than one that doesn't. If you only want the warm part, "Pearl keeps me here in life!" works on its own: replace the name with your child's, and say that you did so.
A few lines later, when the old minister says the child "shall be well cared for", Hester turns to the young clergyman and asks him to speak for her:
"Thou knowest,—for thou hast sympathies which these men lack!—thou knowest what is in my heart, and what are a mother's rights, and how much the stronger they are, when that mother has but her child and the scarlet letter!"
— Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter, chapter VIII (1850)
Her argument is simple: a mother who has nothing else has a stronger claim, not a weaker one. It is a good line for anyone going through a custody dispute or facing relatives who think they know better, because it puts the case without self-pity. Pearl stays with her mother.
Is there a quote about a single mom's sacrifice?
Fantine, in Victor Hugo's Les Misérables (1862), is a young mother left alone with a baby daughter, Cosette. To find work, she leaves the child with an innkeeping couple, the Thénardiers, and sends them money. When they write that Cosette is cold and needs a woollen skirt, Fantine, already in debt, goes to a barber and sells her long golden hair for ten francs. The Thénardiers wanted the money, not the skirt, but Fantine knows only that she has done what she could:
Fantine thought: "My child is no longer cold. I have clothed her with my hair."
— Victor Hugo, Les Misérables, Volume I, "Fantine," Book Fifth, chapter X, "Result of the Success" (1862; translated by Isabel F. Hapgood, 1887)
Two short sentences, and the whole economy of single motherhood is in them: the child's need comes first and is stated plainly, the cost is paid in something of her own. In the novel it gets worse (she later sells her two front teeth), so this is not a cheerful quote. Use it when you want to tell a mother that you saw what she gave up, not to tell her that sacrifice is beautiful.
The real-life version of the same scene opens Booker T. Washington's memoir Up From Slavery (1901). He was born into slavery in Virginia and writes that he knew nothing of his father beyond rumour. His mother was the plantation cook and had little time for her own children:
"One of my earliest recollections is that of my mother cooking a chicken late at night, and awakening her children for the purpose of feeding them."
— Booker T. Washington, Up From Slavery, chapter I, "A Slave Among Slaves" (1901)
He adds that the chicken was almost certainly taken from the owner's farm, and that no one could make him believe his mother was guilty of theft, given when and why she did it. A grown son or daughter looking for words for a mother who fed them through hard years could do worse than this: one precise memory, told without decoration.
What do you say to a struggling single mom?
On Father's Day 2008, Barack Obama, then a presidential candidate, spoke at the Apostolic Church of God in Chicago. Most of the speech was about absent fathers, but he also listed, in one long breath, what single mothers do in a day: drop the children at school, go to work, pick them up, work another shift, make dinner and lunches, pay the bills, fix the house. Then he said:
"So many of these women are doing a heroic job, but they need support."
— Barack Obama, remarks at the Apostolic Church of God, Chicago, June 15, 2008 (transcript: The American Presidency Project)
The second clause is the useful one. A single mom who is struggling usually does not need to be told she is strong; she has been told that for years. She needs a ride, a meal, an evening off, or a friend who notices. If you send her a quote, send it with an offer attached:
- Name one specific thing you will do, with a day ("I'll take the kids Saturday morning").
- Leave out "I don't know how you do it." She may not know either, and it can sound like distance.
- Don't ask what she needs if you can see it. Bring the soup.
- Say something about her children that is true and good. It is the compliment most single mothers remember.
For money worries, the oldest text on the subject is a short scene in 1 Kings. During a drought, the prophet Elijah meets a widow gathering sticks at the gate of Zarephath and asks her for bread. She tells him what she has left:
"As the LORD thy God liveth, I have not a cake, but an handful of meal in a barrel, and a little oil in a cruse: and, behold, I am gathering two sticks, that I may go in and dress it for me and my son, that we may eat it, and die."
— 1 Kings 17:12 (King James Version, 1611)
In the story the meal and oil last until the rain comes back (verse 16: "the barrel of meal wasted not, neither did the cruse of oil fail"). Many mothers who have stretched the last of something to the end of the month know her arithmetic exactly. For more lines meant to lift someone who is worn out, see our encouraging quotes for family.
Is there a good quote for a single mom starting over?
When J.K. Rowling addressed the Harvard Alumni Association on Commencement day, June 5, 2008, she described where she had been seven years after her own graduation: an "exceptionally short-lived marriage had imploded", and she was "jobless, a lone parent, and as poor as it is possible to be in modern Britain, without being homeless." The speech was called "The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination," and this is the turn in it:
"I was set free, because my greatest fear had been realised, and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life."
— J.K. Rowling, "The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination," Harvard University, June 5, 2008 (text: Harvard Gazette)
The list is the reason the line works: still alive, a daughter, a typewriter, an idea. Nothing grand. For a friend who has just left a marriage, the last sentence alone is short enough for a card. Be careful with the context, though: she is talking about failure, so it fits someone who has already said out loud that things fell apart, not someone still hoping they won't.
Single mom and son quotes: what the sons said later
Some of the best words about single mothers come from the children they raised. Booker T. Washington's mother could not read, but when he taught himself the alphabet from an old spelling book she found for him, she backed him all the way. In chapter II he writes:
"Though she was totally ignorant, she had high ambitions for her children, and a large fund of good, hard, common sense, which seemed to enable her to meet and master every situation. If I have done anything in life worth attention, I feel sure that I inherited the disposition from my mother."
— Booker T. Washington, Up From Slavery, chapter II, "Boyhood Days" (1901)
"Ignorant" here means unschooled, not foolish; the rest of the sentence makes that clear. After emancipation the family moved to West Virginia, where his mother's husband had found work in the salt furnaces, so she was not alone in the same way all her life. But the line says what many sons of single mothers want to say at a graduation or a wedding: whatever I did, it started with her.
In the same 2008 Father's Day speech, Obama, whose father left when he was two and who was raised by his mother with help from her parents, spoke about the cost from a son's side:
"Still, I know the toll that being a single parent took on my mother … to play all the roles that both parents are supposed to play. And I know the toll it took on me."
— Barack Obama, remarks at the Apostolic Church of God, Chicago, June 15, 2008
(The ellipsis skips a clause about paying bills and giving the children what other kids had.) The last sentence is the rare part: a son admitting it was hard for him too, without blaming her. That balance is what a grown son's card to his mother can aim for. For lines that go the other way, from a mother to her son, see quotes for a son from his mother.
Is there a quote for a single mom to be?
Elizabeth Gaskell's novel Ruth (1853) was controversial in its day because its heroine is an unmarried mother and the book takes her side. Ruth, an orphaned dressmaker's apprentice, is seduced and abandoned, and is taken in by a minister, Thurstan Benson, and his sister Faith. In chapter XI, after the doctor's visit, Ruth learns that she is going to have a baby. Faith, who disapproves, reports Ruth's answer to her brother:
She said, 'Oh, my God, I thank Thee! Oh! I will be so good!'
— Elizabeth Gaskell, Ruth, chapter XI (1853)
Faith is annoyed that Ruth "took it just as if she had a right to have a baby." Thurstan answers that the child may be the very thing that draws Ruth out of herself, and the rest of the novel bears him out. For a woman facing pregnancy on her own, the line holds both feelings at once: gratitude and a promise. It suits a baby-shower card from a close friend, if you know she will take it in the spirit it was written.
Is there a Bible verse for a single mother?
The Bible's clearest single-mother story is Hagar's. In Genesis 21 Abraham sends Hagar and her son Ishmael away with bread and a bottle of water, and they wander in the wilderness of Beersheba until the water runs out. She puts the boy under a shrub and sits down "a good way off, as it were a bow shot":
"for she said, Let me not see the death of the child. And she sat over against him, and lift up her voice, and wept."
— Genesis 21:16 (King James Version, 1611)
It is one of the most honest verses about a mother's despair anywhere in scripture, and it is worth knowing that the Bible does not skip it. The next two verses turn the scene: God hears the boy, and the angel speaks to Hagar.
"Arise, lift up the lad, and hold him in thine hand; for I will make him a great nation."
— Genesis 21:18 (King James Version, 1611)
In verse 19 God opens her eyes and she sees a well. The instruction comes before the solution: get up, pick up your son, hold his hand. As a verse for a single mom and son, or for a mother on a bad night, it asks for one thing at a time. Psalm 68:5, which calls God "a father of the fatherless," is also often shared with single mothers; we discuss it on our step dad quotes from a daughter page.
How do I write a Mother's Day or Father's Day card for a single mom?
Searches for single mom Father's Day quotes rise every June, and the card is easy to get wrong. Some single mothers are glad to be thanked on Father's Day; others find it a reminder of who is missing, or feel it erases the father who is absent or died. If you are not sure, write on Mother's Day, or write "thank you for being both" without naming the holiday. When you do write:
- Start with one specific memory (a late-night drive, a dinner she made from nothing, a school play she came to after a shift).
- Add one line from above that matches the memory, with the name of who said it.
- End with something about now: what you see in her, what you have from her, a plan.
Four examples, written by our editors to show the pattern; they are not quotes:
- From a grown son, Mother's Day: "Booker T. Washington said that if he had done anything worth attention, he got it from his mother. Same here. Thank you for every early morning I never saw."
- From a daughter, Father's Day: "You did both jobs and never once made me feel like something was missing. Happy Father's Day, if you'll let me say it."
- From a friend, after a divorce: "Rowling had a daughter, an old typewriter and an idea. You have more than that. I'm bringing dinner on Thursday."
- To a single mom to be: "Gaskell's Ruth said 'Oh! I will be so good!' when she heard. You already are. Call me for anything, at any hour."
If her family has grown again through a new partner, our short blended family quotes are written for that stage.
Single mom sayings we could not trace
The lines that fill image searches for single mom quotes, such as "Being a single parent is twice the work, twice the stress and twice the tears, but also twice the hugs, twice the love and twice the pride," come without an author, a book or a date, and we found no source for them. There is nothing wrong with sharing one. Just don't attach a famous name to it, and if you want a line with a real person behind it, the 12 above each have one.
Quick answers
What is a short quote for a single mom?
"I have clothed her with my hair" (Fantine, in Hugo's Les Misérables) for sacrifice; "Pearl keeps me here in life!" (Hester Prynne, in The Scarlet Letter) for a child who keeps her going; "rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life" (J.K. Rowling, Harvard, 2008) for starting over.
What can a son write to his single mom?
Booker T. Washington's line works well: "If I have done anything in life worth attention, I feel sure that I inherited the disposition from my mother." Add one memory of your own and something about her today.
Can I wish a single mom a happy Father's Day?
Only if you know she will welcome it. Some single mothers like being thanked for doing both jobs; others find the day painful. When in doubt, thank her on Mother's Day or write "thank you for being both" without naming the holiday.