JK Rowling: People defined me as a single mother on benefits and assumed I wasn't fit to raise my child
Your support helps us to tell the story
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.
At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.
The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.
Your support makes all the difference.JK Rowling has revealed the “slowly evaporating sense of self-esteem” she felt after being stigmatised as a single mother on benefits while writing her first Harry Potter novel.
The best-selling author said today that she had been defined “in the eyes of many” by something she had “never chosen”. Rowling, the president of the Gingerbread advice and support group for single mothers, wrote that the break-up of her marriage nearly 20 years ago had left her – a graduate who had always been in full-time employment – on benefits and taking odd jobs at a local Edinburgh church.
“I remember the woman who visited the church one day when I was working there who kept referring to me, in my hearing, as The Unmarried Mother,” Rowling wrote on the Gingerbread website.
“Assumptions made about your morals, your motives for bringing your child into the world or your fitness to raise that child cut to the core of who you are.”
Rowling, who remarried in 2001, said that despite the “sudden, seismic and wholly unexpected shift” that came with the Harry Potter publishing phenomenon, she still remained a single mother first, in the public eye. “There was still no escaping the Single Parent tag; it followed me to financial stability and fame just as it had clung to me in poverty and obscurity,” she said.
She also attacked the ongoing stigmatisation of single parents who “desperately want to get back into the job market”.
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies
Comments