History Main / SingleMomStripper

Your nasty husband has cheated on you and left. Or maybe you're [[TeenPregnancy an unwed teenager]], and you [[GoodGirlsAvoidAbortion chose to carry to term]], but [[TragicDropout you had to drop out of school due to your pregnancy]], your very traditional parents [[HonorBeforeReason threw you out onto the streets]] once your pregnancy started showing, and [[GlorifiedSpermDonor the baby's father is completely out of the picture]]. [[DeterminedWidow Or maybe your husband died]], he was the primary breadwinner, and you've been [[QuittingToGetMarried out of the workforce since you got married.]] Or you're a single mom, and your PointyHairedBoss fired you for a crappy reason (or no reason at all). Regardless, you're out of work, you've got a baby to feed and you're one missed rent payment away from being out on the streets.

* ''Manga/BootyRoyaleNeverGoDownWithoutAFight'': Recurring character Goujima Sara is an extreme porn star who is revealed in chapter 22 to have an infant son.

* In ''Manga/RurouniKenshin'', Yahiko's mother, the wife of a {{Samurai}}, turned to prostitution to support herself and Yahiko after her husband was killed in the UsefulNotes/MeijiRestoration. Unfortunately, this move cost her her life: she contracted syphilis from one of her clients, which eventually killed her.

%% * At least one of the strippers in the pilot episode of ''Series/{{Millennium}}''.

* Reiko from ''Manga/PianoNoMori'' is a prostitute mother raising her son Kai on her own in the town's RedLightDistrict.

* In ''Literature/ChroniclesOfNick'', Cherise Gautier (Nick's mother) had him at fifteen and works as a Bourbon St stripper, but is supposed to be just about the sweetest human being you could ever meet... [[StuffedIntoTheFridge until she's murdered and left for Nick to find]]. This doubles as a BerserkButton for Nick; in the spin-off, he gets into fights to protect her honor and part of the reason he is bullied is that he doesn't complain about the dorky shirts she makes him wear.

* T-Shirt Hell, purveyor of offensive cotton outerwear, features a shirt that says "[[http://www.tshirthell.com/funny-shirts/i-support-single-moms/ I Support Single Moms]]" alongside a silhouette rather reminiscent of mudflap girls but dancing around a pole.

[[folder:Comicbooks]]

* ''ComicBook/{{Watchmen}}'': In the {{flashback}}s, Rorschach's mother is a single mom prostitute. Perhaps an InvertedTrope, in that she ''hates'' him because he inadvertently drives away business. The woman living in the next apartment from him in the present is also a prostitute but successfully keeps this secret from her children. Though she lies to the news about him trying to rape her, Rorschach doesn't kill or seriously hurt her because her children are present -- and also because her efforts to hide what she does from them indicate that, unlike his own mother, she cares enough about her children to protect them from the ugliness of her life.

* In ''[[https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12599635/1/4-horsewomen-Family-is-forever Four Horsewomen - Family Is Forever]]'', this is Wrestling/{{Bayley}}'s backstory. Her mother was only a teenager when she had her, then her boyfriend (Bayley's father), a musician, was killed. She took it hard and wound up doing this for a living, as well as getting into drugs & alcohol and having a boyfriend who abused Bayley, which led to her being taken in and adopted by Wrestling/StephanieMcMahon and Wrestling/TripleH. By the time the mother comes back into Bayley's life nine years later, she's cleaned up her act, married a nice guy, found religion and had another daughter.

* Creator/DemiMoore's character in ''Film/{{Striptease}}'', though she starts out not to support her daughter but to get money to appeal the custody decision against her. Bet that really helped her case... [[spoiler:Oh, but it did, because Fate moves in mysterious ways here. After [[CorruptPolitician a congressman who not only frequents the club but has arranged for the murder of his political opponents]] starts to fall for her, he hires her for personal dances. He says too much, she starts to get wise to his shady dealings, then he tries to blackmail her by helping her ex-husband. Consequently, she helps the police expose him by tricking him to confessing on tape, and she not only wins full custody as a result, but her deadbeat ex-husband winds up back in jail]].

* In ''Film/{{Stag}}'', Serena is a stripper and prostitute (she sleeps with some clients to earn extra cash) who has a 10 year old son Jamie at home. When the men learn of this, they try to use her son as a bargaining chip against her.

* ''Literature/DancingAztecs'': Jerry's one night stand Myra is a stripper and mentions having a kid whose staying with her mother.

%% * A few victim-of-the-weeks in ''Series/CriminalMinds'' are these. One uses it to [[IHaveAFamily attempt to garner pity]] (as expected, it doesn't work). And in Rossi's ItsPersonal case, the eldest of the orphans work as a stripper to help her siblings.
%% * In the French version of ''Series/BigBrother'', it was revealed in the first season that one of the candidates, Loana, had such a background. She ended up winner of that season.

* In ''Series/WelcomeBackKotter'' "The Return of Hotsy Totsy";(Season 3), Rosalie Totsie has dropped out of Buchanan and works at a night club to support her baby. Kotter and the Sweathogs help her to finish her education at Buchanan so she can improve her job prospects.

--> '''Cartman:''' Knock it off you guys, she said [[IWasYoungAndNeededTheMoney she was young, and needed the money]].\\

* Mako Nakarai's mother Miho in ''Manga/{{Bokurano}}'' is this. Unusually, she ''was'' a prostitute before she had her daughter and switched to "merely" being a bar hostess, but genuinely loves Mako. And said daughter, despite the bullying she gets from her classmates, loves her mother back as well. [[spoiler: In both manga and anime, Mako's FamousLastWords before Zearth saps her of her life energy are about how much she loves and thanks her mother.]]

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* In ''Sands of Iwo Jima'', Sgt. Stryker (John Wayne) is disgusted by the prostitute he meets -- until he finds out that she has a baby. (It's implied she's in the business to support her son.) Stryker dandles the boy for a while, gives the woman money, and leaves.

* {{Deconstructed|Trope}} in ''Working Girls'', where one of the prostitutes immediately loses a client after he overhears a phone call she has with her son. On top of the discomfort she shows with her job earlier that day, she ultimately leaves after the other girls scold her for her performance.

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