A Study on Social Status of Institutionalized Single Mothers – Social Work Perspective

Single mother’s family is the most familiar type of single parent family in India. Single mother is a woman who is taking care and raising her children without support of her husband. Single mothers are heading 4.5% of all Indian households, 13 million drawing attention to the significant number of single parent family in India. Data exhibit that compared to the other states of India, Karnataka had the maximum number of Widowed, Divorced and separated females that is 16.4% of which 17.6 % were found in rural areas and 14.2% in urban areas. Descriptive research design has been adopted for the study. Institutionalized single mothers in the age group of 15 to 39 were studied. The findings of the study reveals that social status of institutional single mothers in the family, neighborhood, community and economic condition had a significant positive correlation with quality of life and single mothers are lagging behind in almost all the spheres, be it education, income, employment. Karl Pearson correlation observed for level of social status and quality of life indicated significance at the level of 0.01 (p < 0.01) for all the domains in totality.