Family Story

WHAT WE DID

Polled and interviewed single mothers
Conceptualized social media campaign
Researched struggles that single mothers face

OVERVIEW

Family Story is an organization with the goal of empowering and giving more legitimacy to non-traditional family structures and breaking down what they refer to as family privilege. They conduct research on the lives and experiences of different family structures and the stigmas that they face.

CHALLENGE

Family story wanted more insight into the struggles single moms of different races and backgrounds in order to identify their challenges in their own words. They were also looking for a way to acknowledge and appreciate single moms, one of the most stigmatized non-traditional family structures, rather than just gain insight into their lives.

SOLUTION

We conducted research in the form of six listening sessions with single moms – two with Black women, one with LatinX women, and three with Whtie women – to better understand the challenges and stigmas they face, and how race plays a role in those. We also differentiated between different levels of education as that is a large determining factor in income and ultimately quality of life. The focus was on open-ended prompts that allowed them to speak freely and volunteer information, allowing us to find answers to questions we may not have thought to ask.

RESULTS

#CelebrateSingleMoms

We conceptualized #CelebrateSingleMoms to share their stories and the love they have for their families.

From the listening sessions, we were able to identify and categorize concerns, values, support structures. For example, we gound that Black women and working-class White women feared their children would be treated differently at school. We conceptualized #CelebrateSingleMoms, a social media campaign where single moms are encouraged to share their stories and the love they have for their families. Through posts from influencers to get the ball rolling, we were able to We then compiled community-made posts from Instagram and TikTok into videos and displayed them prominently on Family Story’s website in order to destigmatize single mom households.

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