Trade Paperback
220 pages
Jan 2006
Harvest House Publishers

Review  |   Author Bio  |  Read an Excerpt

Review:

Author Cynthia Yates is a smart woman, a no-nonsense dynamo, who packs Living Well as a Single Mom with practical chapters. I wish Yates was my next door neighbor, but the next best thing is reading her book. Living Well as a Single Mom takes the hand of the dazed, shocked, and confused single mom and gets this vital person moving in a functional direction.

Once a single mom herself, Yates sidesteps judgment and guilt, tackling life from a "we're here now, what are we gonna do about it" perspective. Living Well as a Single Mom gives women permission, and marching orders, to be the best parent they can be. Some points she makes include:

• "Children, particularly young children, belong with their mothers." (173)
• It's tough to "be there" for your children when the single mom lives at poverty level without medical insurance.
• Most moms must go to work, which means the children lose both parents for the better part of the day.
• Moms must raise healthy children despite often having to regularly turn their children over to an estranged spouse who may act more like Peter Pan than a responsible parent.
• The church should be the first place single moms find support, yet is often the place where they find judgment and rejection.
• With 50 percent of marriages failing, the church has a grand opportunity to be on the cutting edge of ministry to this segment of the population.

Mothers are an essential influence in their children's lives. "I want to make the strongest case I can for your child's need for you," Yates says. "Motherhood is not a trial run. I exhort you to try to be in place for your children – especially if they are young. Provide stability and security for them and nurture them. Never forget that you are the first and foremost teacher your children will ever have."

Living Well as a Single Mom contains candid advice on self-care, time management, finances, choosing safe childcare, discipline, peer pressure, and emergency preparedness. Additional resources are listed at the end of each chapter for quick reference.

Being a single mom is an exhausting job with more to do in a day than can humanly be done. The fact is, the buck stops with the single mom and she can use all the support she can get. People tend to distance themselves from single moms. Yates comes alongside and encourages women to do what must be done, one day at a time.

A speaker on the well-received Divorce Care video program, Yates is also the author of Ditch the Diet and the Budget, and Living Well in Retirement. An award-winning humor columnist, Yates is the proud grandmother of three "grammy" awards.

With straight talk, Living Well as a Single Mom gives nuts and bolts advice, and is one of the top books on this topic. It's a road map to hope in an impossible situation. Put this book in the hands of any single mom, even if she's been single for years. – PeggySue Wells, Christian Book Previews.com

Book Jacket:

You are the most important person in the world...

...to your kids. No one can love and nurture them like you can. But it isn't easy.

• Racing between your home, the day care, and your job, you remember another errand you need to squeeze into your already overloaded day.
• You need to make important decisions about your kids, your finances, your home, and your car, but you're not sure when or how you can research all your options.
• You'd love to spend time with some people who are old enough to speak in full sentences, but most of your friends are either couples or just as busy as you.

This may not be the life you expected. Still, God's promise to you and your kids hasn't changed. He has a plan for your family, a future that is bright with hope. Your number one priority also hasn't changed: to live well so you can help your kids live well, too.