Mother’s Day is a day set aside to honour the mother of the family, as well as motherhood, maternal bonds, and the influence of mothers in society. Mothers play a pivotal role in society and they stand as the fulcrum of many homes.
According to a study published by The Oxford University research team, losing a mother is more detrimental to children than losing a father. The Oxford University research team found that if a child loses their mother before they are 15 years old, that child is likely to be shorter in height, poorer and have less schooling as than those who live with their mothers until that age.
In the African context, “The role a mother in African families is even more essential to the well-being of a child than the role played by the breadwinner father.” Children are much more attached to their mother than their father. “Children raised by single mothers are much better off than children raised by single fathers or fathers and stepmothers, and are just as likely to succeed as children raised by both birth parents.” (Biblarz and Raftery, 1999)
In Finland, Mother’s Day celebration dates back to 1918 when Vilho Reima, a schoolteacher, first introduced it after the Finnish civil war (27th January – 15th May 1918). It was initially adopted to give a special day to windowed mothers and held on the 3rd Sunday instead. However, the date changed in 1927 to the current system and has been a formal holiday in Finland as of 1947 when it became an official flag day.
As the celebration of Mother’s Day is observed in Finland, single mothers also bask in the euphoria of the global celebration. Single parenthood in Finland has witnessed a tremendous transformation. In the early 1900s , the major cause of single parenthood was attributed to death. As the time progresses, the percentage of single parenthood increased due to the involvement of men in the war. The war claimed the lives of many men thereby making the wives they left behind cater for their children.
Recent study in Finland shows that the major cause of single parenthood is divorce. With more women getting into politics, becoming key players in the economy, changing the norm and eager to break male chauvinism that has lingered for decades, the rate of divorce continues to soar. According to Statistics Finland, In 2019, a total of 13,365 marriages ended in divorce. Except for 54 of them, all were divorces where the spouses were of opposite sexes.
In Finland, about 13 percent of families are single parent families which is one percent more than the previous year (Statistics Finland 2019).
More than 80% of single-parent families in Finland are headed by mothers (Monimuotoiset per-heet 2019).
Single mothers comes under the women and girls classification of the vulnerable groups in society that needs special protection and support from the government. Defending the rights of single mothers begins from the municipality, that’s why there are some candidates running for the municipal elections whose themes are geared towards becoming the voice of single mothers in their respective municipalities.
In Vantaa, the main election theme of 48-year-old Petriina Punna, a single mom of one daughter is improving the position of the single parent families in Finland. In Vantaa, there are 7 900 single parent families and in the whole country is about 128 000. Most of the single parents are women (82%). Many of the single parents don’t have any safety net around them to help them. Their children are often poorer and and have less possibilities in life than the children in nuclear families, where two adults take the responsibility over the children, she affirms.
I’d very much like to see the municipalities supporting single parents’ families more in different ways: by supporting child care service, supporting single moms’ working, supporting distant parents meetings with their children etc. Many single parents’ families also come from different cultures and may face multiple problems due to their origin, she stated.
The immigrant community also have a large number of single mothers whose single motherhood was orchestrated by the quest for quality life. Most of the single mothers in Finland who are from African backgrounds came from other countries in Europe because Finland is one of the best countries to raise a child and also the enviable social system attracted them. Unlike their Finnish counterparts who became single mothers as a result of divorce and probably having a child in a relationship. African single mothers, most especially those who immigrated from Italy, Spain , Greece, etc, came to Finland with pregnancy, applied for asylum and the chances of the asylum being granted is very high because of the child that was born here.
According to Official Statistics of Finland, the proportion of single mothers with underage children among the Somali population is higher than among any other ethnic group in the country.
In Finland, Kela (the social insurance institution of Finland) provides financial support to families with children in many ways, starting from expecting a baby.
With the aid of Kela, parents can be with their children in the first months of their maternity life. Later, Kela supports the care of the child and the cost of having a child. (Kela, n.d.)
