History Main / StrugglingSingleMother

* ''WesternAnimation/{{Kaeloo}}'': Stumpy's mother is one of these, due to having eight children that she must take care of all on her own. She works three different jobs just to earn enough money for the family to live off of and even then they're depicted as having serious money problems.

* ''VideoGame/DragonAge'': It's very common for female [[FantasticCasteSystem Casteless]] dwarves to be single mothers due to the peculiarities of the caste system; children inherit their caste from the same-sex parent, so if a casteless woman has a son with a nobleman, the child is noble and [[GoldDigger the mom will be adopted into the noble house]]. If the baby is a girl, then the woman is left with a kid, no status, and no partner to help her raise her child. The slums are full of failed "noble hunters" left to raise their daughters.
* A GenderInverted example appears in ''Videogame/TheLastOfUs''. From what little we see of Joel's life before the Cordyceps outbreak, he was a struggling single father (Joel tells Ellie that he was married to Sarah's mom for a while, but he [[AmbiguouslyAbsentParent never confirms whether she died or divorced him]].) He was a blue-collar carpenter who worked long hours, so much that Sarah rarely got to see him. She had to wait until nearly midnight for Joel to come home so that she could give him his birthday present (a new watch). He's also in financial trouble as evidenced by him joking that Sarah can start helping with the mortgage when Sarah joked that she got the money for the watch by selling hardcore drugs. Then the outbreak happened and let's just say he [[DeathOfAChild no longer had to worry about being a father]].

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* Referenced but thoroughly averted in ''WebVideo/DragonBallZAbridged''. Tien mentions to Bulma that Vegeta left her as a single mother, but she points out that neither she nor Trunks will be struggling because [[Fiction500 she's a billionaire]].
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* Vera's mother in ''ComicBook/BePrepared'' is a single parent raising three children after her husband divorced her. Given the age of the youngest child Masha who is still a toddler, it doesn't appear to have been very long ago. The family is poor and lives in a two-bedroom apartment above someone else's place, and Vera can't afford the many nice things her American classmates can. Vera's mom graduates from her accounting class and gets a good job by the end of the book. [[spoiler:It's in London, so they're moving.]]

* ''Webcomic/{{Crabgrass}}'': Kevin's mother Janine has four kids from a deadbeat father who left the family early in the comic, and has to work two jobs to make ends meet and keep her kids clothed and fed. This results in her notably off-hands approach when it comes to parenting.

* Adrian in ''Webcomic/AAndHClub'', in the first chapter she and her son Ali are living in her car after being evicted from their apartment, she also mentions she had to keep Ali in a closet because she couldn't afford a crib.

** At the start of Season 2, [[Characters/TheOwlHouseEdaClawthorne Eda Clawthorne]] qualifies as well. She's fully taken responsibility as Luz's caretaker, but with the portal to the Human Realm destroyed she has no human junk to sell and thus no means of income. The season's first episode shows her admitting to Lilith that she gave up her apple blood money to get Luz griffin eggs (as it's one of the few things on the Boiling Isles she can eat). Averted the same episode when Luz and Eda get their hands on a rare, valuable substance, ending their money troubles for a while.

* [[Characters/TheOwlHouseCamilaNoceda Camila Noceda]] from ''WesternAnimation/TheOwlHouse'' ended up raising her daughter Luz alone after her father passed away of a terminal illness. While money doesn't seem to have been an issue, Camila clearly struggles to cope with her husband's death while raising a child, and the fact that Luz constantly acts out due to her undiagnosed neurodivergence earns Camila quite a bit of scorn from school staff and other parents, and ends with her decision to send Luz to Reality Check Summer Camp. [[spoiler:Her situation doesn't become much better after Luz's friends are stranded in the human realm, as while she doesn't mention money problems, judging from the amount of coupons scattered around her bedroom it can be reasonably inferred that suddenly having to care for ''six'' children instead of just one is seriously straining Camila's budget.]]

* ''Fanfic/BentOrBrokenItsTheFamilyTree'': Esmeralda struggles to raise her son as a poor single woman in the 1400s. It's even more trouble than usual because she's a part of persecuted minority.
* Touched upon in ''Fanfic/CeladonsNewBlossom''. Ash's mother Delia had dreams of being a model, but that was pushed aside because her husband abandoned his family when Ash was still a baby. Delia raised Ash on her own, though income wasn't an issue because she owns the only restaurant in their town