Doing It All: The Social Power of Single Motherhood

A feminist exploration of single motherhood and a passionate call to reclaim the power of mothering 

In the United States, one child in five is raised by a single mother. Yet the single mom is still cast as victim or welfare queen, sexually irresponsible or too independent for her own (or her children’s) good.    

In Doing It All,journalist and single mother Ruby Russell tells a different story, of single mothering independent of wifedom, not broken or defined by loss but powerful in its own right. She finds narratives of liberation in Victorian brothels and postwar British slums, in Black feminist theory and the grassroots activism of women fighting for welfare rights.   

Doing It All is a personal quest for empowerment, a fierce critique of the systems that leave single moms marginalized and exhausted, and a call to reclaim mothering as the life force of sustainable, connected, and radically responsible communities.